Graduate

Leo Strauss's Socrates and Aristophanes (1966) discusses not only the most important and most influential of all comedies, The Clouds, but also all the other comedies by Aristophanes that have come down to us. The book is the only writing of Strauss's that deals with the whole corpus of a philosopher or poet. And it is the most intense and most demanding interpretation of Aristophanes a philosopher has presented up to now.

In Socrates and Aristophanes Strauss carries on a dialogue with Aristophanes on the wisdom of the poet, on the just and unjust speech, on philosophy and politics, on the diversity of human natures, and on an œuvre that asks the question: quid est deus? what is a god?

In this course we will explore new and cutting edge philosophy of human rights. We will focus on three new books: Allen Buchanon’s The Heart of Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni Human Rights without Dignity, and Pablo Gilabert’s Human Rights and Human Dignity. Using these texts we will explore debates about questions like the following: does human dignity really provide the foundation for human rights? What is the relationship of human rights to equality and egalitarianism? What is the role of international human rights law in setting the agenda for the philosophy of human rights? How contextual are human rights norms? How does the theory of human rights relate to the practice of human rights?

In this class we explore the philosophical foundations of human rights, investigating theories of how our shared humanity in the context of an interdependent world gives rise to obligations of justice. Webegin by asking what rights are, how they are distinguished from other part of morality, and what role they play in our social and political life. But rights come in many varieties, and we are interested in human rights in particular. In later weeks, we will ask what makes something a human right, and how are human rights different from other kinds of rights. We will consider a number of contemporary philosophers (and one historian) who attempt to answer this question, including James Griffin, Joseph Raz, John Rawls, John Tasioulas, Samuel Moyn, Jiewuh Song, and Martha Nussbaum. Throughout we will be asking questions such as, “What makes something a human right?” “What role does human dignity play in grounding our human rights?” “Are human rights historical?” “What role does the nation and the individual play in our account of human rights?” “When can one nation legitimately intervene in the affairs of another nation?” “How can we respect the demands of justice while also respecting cultural difference?” “How do human rights relate to global inequality and markets?” (A) (I)

The so-called “master-slave” dialectic in G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit belongs to the most quoted passages in philosophy. The scene of the struggle is nearly as famous as Plato’s Cave and arguably just at as obscure as the shadows on its wall. In the course, we will study the passage against the background of philosophical thought on enslavement and recognition in the western tradition. The class divides into three parts. In the first part, we will begin with the question of the “unthinkability” of slavery, as it is discussed in recent analytic ethics. Then we turn to philosophical thought in the “unthinkable” relation: we study the philosophical articulation of the act of liberation; and we analyze the way in which the thought of the “master” is deeply rooted in the tradition of western philosophy. In the second part of the course, we will study Hegel’s account of the struggle for recognition. We will read the famous sections from the Phenomenology of Spirit and situate it in the wider context of Hegel’s development of the idea of recognition in his Philosophy of Mind. In the third part of the course, we will discuss the potentiality and the limitations of Hegel’s theory of recognition by considering three “contradictions” that arise (in one way or another) in Hegel’s account of the concrete recognitive community of ethical life in his Philosophy of Right. In intricate ways, those “contradictions” are related to what in contemporary discourse figures under the headings of sex, class, and race. (A) (I)

In this seminar we will examine the concept of mimesis as a way of thinking about poetry and the arts and also as a way of thinking about human life more generally.  Our focus will be Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics, though we will consider relevant passages from other dialogues and treatises.  What should we make of the fact that Socrates figures both the unjust person and the philosopher-ruler as a mimetic artist? In what way is his critique of mimesis ontological, psychological, and political?  Are there differing explanations of the influence of mimetic speech, sound, and sights? Why do Plato and Aristotle believe that poetic mimesis is a necessary element of moral education?  How does Aristotle’s different, more dynamic account of poetic mimesis reflect a different understanding of the nature poetry and its place in human life?  If time permits, we will briefly consider Epictetus’s idea that we should think of ourselves as actors playing a role in the cosmic drama. (IV)

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.

Course begins in late Spring quarter and continues in the Autumn quarter.