2014-2015

A discussion of the third and final part of Hegel’s Science of Logic. (V)

This course meets in Autumn and Winter quarters.

How is the concept of causation to be applied in reflection on the activities of thought? In what way or ways should thoughts be understood as causally related to each other, and in what way or ways should they be understood as causally related to elements of the material world?  We pursue these questions through the close reading of a range of historical and contemporary writings, including works by Descartes, Mill, Ryle, Winch, Anscombe, Davidson, Dretske and Hornsby.  A guiding theme will be the conflict within the tradition between two broad approaches to these questions: one that attempts to derive the role of causation in thought from reflection on what thoughts themselves imply or otherwise commit their thinkers to, and another that seeks to impose causal patterns on thought’s activity drawn from models and considerations external to it. (III)

There is a long and venerable philosophical tradition which not only distinguishes considerations of love from considerations of reason, but which regards the two as fundamentally opposed.  On this traditional view, “love is blind” and to allow oneself to be led by considerations of love is to risk straying from the sunlit path of rational truth.  Yet there have also been prominent dissenters to this view of love, who have variously regarded a loving engagement with the world as a precondition for the successful operation of reason, or chosen to eschew reason in favor of eros, or argued that love is capable of a unique form of insight that outstrips our powers of ratiocination. Still others claim that the logic of eros is fundamentally continuous with our rationality. Adjudicating these debates involves reflecting on how we ought to conceive of our erotic investments – i.e. what we should take such relations to consist in – and asking what role they play in our mental life. Moreover, as these conceptions may be subject to historical shifts, we must ask whether and how such changes in our self-conception may affect the very constitution of the self we are attempting to describe.  With an eye on these metadiscursive questions, we will track this dialectic between love and reason as it works itself out both in historical texts and in more recent work.  Our historical readings will draw on Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, Augustine’s Confessions, Descartes’s The Passions of the Soul, and Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, among others. We will also draw on work by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Iris Murdoch (including her novel The Sea, the Sea), Jonathan Lear, and Martha Nussbaum. 

Key contemporary debates in the philosophical literature often rely on formal tools and techniques that go beyond the material taught in an introductory logic class.  A robust understanding of these debates---and, accordingly, the ability to meaningfully engage with a good deal of contemporary philosophy---requires a basic grasp of extensions of standard logic such as modal logic, multi-valued logic, and supervaluations, as well as an appreciation of the key philosophical virtues and vices of these extensions. The goal of this course is to provide students with the required logic literacy. While some basic metalogical results will come into view as the quarter proceeds, the course will primarily focus on the scope (and, perhaps, the limits) of logic as an important tool for philosophical theorizing. (B)

This class will be a close reading of Plato’s Phaedo, which is a dialogue about what it means to die, and what kinds of things escape death. In addition to interesting ourselves in the –dramatic and philosophical—structure of the dialogue as a whole, we will carefully examine each of Socrates’ arguments for the immortality of the soul. We will also read some contemporary philosophical literature both on the Phaedo itself, and on the problem of the afterlife. (IV)

This course will focus on authors from the Jewish tradition, although some attention will be given to Catholic and Protestant perspectives, as found, for example, in liberation theology and in certain forms of religious existentialism. We will look at the various ways in which contemporary philosophers of Judaism have dealt with suffering, evil and God, especially after the experience of the Shoah. We will examine the often repeated claim that Judaism has approached the philosophical and religious challenges of suffering more through an ethics of suffering than on the basis of a metaphysics of suffering. After an introductory discussion of Maimonides on the Book of Job, readings for the course may come from authors such as E. Lévinas, J.B. Soloveitchik, Y. Leibowitz, H. Jonas, A. Lichtenstein, D.W. Halivni, D. Shatz, and E. Berkovits. The course will culminate in a philosophical analysis of some of the most important writings of Primo Levi.

One can distinguish four ways in which science and aesthetics are related during the last two centuries. First, science has been the subject of artistic effort, in painting and photography and in poetry and novels (e.g., in Goethe’s poetry or in H. G. Wells’s Island of Doctor Moreau). Second, science has been used to explain aesthetic effects (e.g., Helmholtz’s work on the way painters achieve visual effects or musicians achieve tonal effects). Third, aesthetic means have been used to convey scientific conceptions (e.g., through illustrations in scientific volumes or through aesthetically affective and effective writing). Finally philosophers have stepped back to consider the relationship between scientific knowing and aesthetic comprehension (e.g., Kant and Bas van Fraassen). In this course, we will consider these four modes of relationship. The first part of the quarter will be devoted to Kant, reading carefully his third critique; then we will turn to Goethe and Helmholtz, both feeling the impact of Kant, and to Wells, a student of T. H. Huxley. We then consider more contemporary modes expressive of the relationship, especially the role of illustrations in science and the work of contemporary philosophers like Fraassen. (B) (I) (II)

Two of Cicero’s most enduring works are De Amicitia (On Friendship) and De Senectute (On Old Age).  We will read the entirety of both works in Latin and study their relationship to Cicero’s thought and life.  Other readings in translation will include related works of Cicero and quite a few of his letters to Atticus and other friends.  The first hour of each course meeting will be devoted to translation, the rest to discussion, in order to give opportunities for auditors who are reading in translation. The requirements include a midterm, a final exam, and a paper. Anyone from anywhere in the university may register if you meet the prerequisite.