Graduate

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

This course investigates the philosophical views of one of the most prominent philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, Donald Davidson.  We will focus on his later work, which is not so widely discussed as his earlier work, and which revolves around the articulation and defence of his triangulation argument, an argument that purports to shed light on the nature and possibility of language and thought.  We will discuss and assess the plausibility of various interpretations of the argument, exploring its implications for how we conceive of the relationship between mind and world.  Readings will include papers by Davidson and responses by his critics. (B) (III)

Our goal in this course will be to read through and understand the most important chapters of Hegel’s revolutionary book. Main topics will include Hegel’s new conception of philosophy and philosophical methodology, his agreements and disagreements with Kant, the nature of self-consciousness and human mindedness in general, individuality and sociality, and the relation between philosophy and history. (V)

The essence of freedom, Heidegger claims, is originally not connected with the will or even with the causality of human willing.  Human freedom, therefore, cannot be construed as autonomy. We shall read Heidegger’s seminar “The Essence of Human Freedom” and his essay “On the Essence of Ground” in which these ideas are developed.

Aristotle states that “being is said in many ways,” we shall seek to understand this statement and to study the history of its interpretations.                                  

Among the modern authors we shall discuss are Franz Brentano, Ernst Tugendhat, Charles Kahn, Aryeh Kosman, Stephen Menn, David Charles.

An examination of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict Spinoza. Each thinker, responding to contemporary political crises, developed theories of the absolute right of states, and connected this absolute right to the absolute power of a state. This course will examine these theories in relation to popular sovereignty, and explore whether either thinker has room for the possibility of radical democracy. Primary literature will focus on Hobbes’s Leviathan and Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise and Political Treatise. Secondary literature will look at the reception of these thinkers around the world, including work by Richard Tuck, Alexandre Matheron, Antonio Negri, and Sandra Leonie Field. (A) (V)

The concept of alienation is central to the practical philosophy of Hegel and Marx. Following the work of the latter, the notion became a basic critical concept of social theory: under certain social conditions human agents are said to be alienated from their own agency. When the notion of alienation is discussed in contemporary analytic action theory and ethics, it tends to appear primarily as a tension or contradiction within the mind: as an estrangement from one’s own desires or from demands, norms, or ideals one is aware of. This internalization stands in stark contrast to the considerations that appear under that heading in the work Hegel and Marx. Here, the whole discussion is framed through the idea that one can only know one’s own agency through its realization in the world. Consequently, the problem of alienation appears as the impossibility of seeing oneself in one’s work.

Given the conceptual frameworks on offer in contemporary analytic action theory, it is not clear whether one can make sense of a critique of social conditions along these lines. The current debate on knowledge of one’s own actions divides into two main camps. The one side defines the human condition as one where one necessarily encounters one’s deeds just like other events in world: as alien and given from without. The other side defines intentional action as necessarily known by its subject from within or self-consciously. In consequence, there seems to be no space for a critique of alienation: either because it seems inevitable or because it seems impossible. One of the central questions of the seminar will be how one has to understand human agency such that alienation is conceivable.

On closer inspection, what Marx’ calls “alienation” seems to be ultimately a privation of the kind of practical knowledge that Aristotle calls “practical wisdom” (phronesis) and the correlated form of agency that he calls praxis. We will discuss Marx’ account in relation to Aristotle’s and Hegel’s developments of these concepts as well as in relation the discussion of practical reasoning, practical knowledge, and practical truth in the work of contemporary philosophers such as G.E.M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Christine Korsegaard, Gilbert Ryle, and Michael Thompson. Marx famously distinguishes four dimensions of alienation: the workers is said to be alienated (1) from their products, (2) from the act of production, (3) from the human form of life, and (4) from their fellow human beings. We will consider the respective practical categories and the correlated forms of practical cognition. (I) (III)

In one of his most widely read pieces of writing—the chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding called “Of Identity and Diversity”—John Locke writes: “[S]ince consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person…”  Locke’s account of personal identity has puzzled, annoyed, and inspired readers since it was published in the second edition of his Essay, in 1694. One aim of this course will be to find a coherent reading of it, one that considers objections that later writers—most famously Butler and Reid—made to it as well as some recent readings of it. Part of the point of this endeavor will be to see what, if anything, we still can learn from Locke concerning what a person is. A second aim of the course will be to arrive at an understanding of consciousness that makes sense in light of what we’ve learned about persons and personal identity from Locke. (III)

In this seminar we will explore a set of interrelated topics in the philosophy of action. These include: the purposive structure of practical reason, the nature of the relationship between means and ends, the idea of ‘practical inference’, and the place of causation in the understanding of intentional agency. Course readings comprise a manuscript by the course instructor in conjunction with a constellation of primarily contemporary writings on these topics. (III)

A close reading of Alfred North Whitehead's seminal work.