Graduate

Thinking about the nature of wisdom goes back to the Greek philosophers and the classical religious sages, but the concept of wisdom has changed in many ways over the history of thought. While wisdom has received less scholarly attention in modern times, it has recently re-emerged in popular discourse with a growing recognition of its potential importance for addressing complex issues in many domains. But what is wisdom? It's often used with a meaning more akin to "smart" or "clever." Is it just vast knowledge? This course will examine the nature of wisdom-how it has been defined in philosophy and psychological science, how its meaning has changed, and what its essential components might be. We will discuss how current philosophical and psychological theories conceptualize wisdom and consider whether, and how, wisdom can be studied scientifically; that is, can wisdom be measured and experimentally manipulated to illuminate its underlying mechanisms and understand its functions? Finally, we will explore how concepts of wisdom can be applied in business, education, medicine, the law, and in the course of our everyday lives. Readings will be drawn from a wide array of disciplines including philosophy, classics, history, psychology, behavioral economics, medicine, and public policy. The course will include lectures by philosophers and psychologists. This course is offered in association with the Chicago Moral Philosophy Project and the Good Life program (the Hyde Park Institute).

The year-long Workshop will expose students to work in "general jurisprudence" from roughly the last five years, including some new and forthcoming work. General jurisprudence is that part of philosophy of law concerned with the central questions about the nature of law, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal reasoning. ; Confirmed speakers include Emid Ataq (Cornell), Julie Dickson (Oxford), David Plunkett (Dartmouth), Stephen Sachs (Duke), and Kevin Toh (University College London). Students who have taken Leiter's "Jurisprudence I" course at the law school are welcome to enroll. Students who have not taken Jurisprudence I must contact the instructor with information about their prior study of legal philosophy. Detailed familiarity with Hart's The Concept of Law and Dworkin's criticisms of Hart is essential. A final paper of 20-25 pages is required.

The year-long Workshop will expose students to work in "general jurisprudence" from roughly the last five years, including some new and forthcoming work. General jurisprudence is that part of philosophy of law concerned with the central questions about the nature of law, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal reasoning. ; Confirmed speakers include Emid Ataq (Cornell), Julie Dickson (Oxford), David Plunkett (Dartmouth), Stephen Sachs (Duke), and Kevin Toh (University College London). Students who have taken Leiter's "Jurisprudence I" course at the law school are welcome to enroll. Students who have not taken Jurisprudence I must contact the instructor with information about their prior study of legal philosophy. Detailed familiarity with Hart's The Concept of Law and Dworkin's criticisms of Hart is essential. A final paper of 20-25 pages is required.

The year-long Workshop will expose students to work in "general jurisprudence" from roughly the last five years, including some new and forthcoming work. General jurisprudence is that part of philosophy of law concerned with the central questions about the nature of law, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal reasoning. ; Confirmed speakers include Emid Ataq (Cornell), Julie Dickson (Oxford), David Plunkett (Dartmouth), Stephen Sachs (Duke), and Kevin Toh (University College London). Students who have taken Leiter's "Jurisprudence I" course at the law school are welcome to enroll. Students who have not taken Jurisprudence I must contact the instructor with information about their prior study of legal philosophy. Detailed familiarity with Hart's The Concept of Law and Dworkin's criticisms of Hart is essential. A final paper of 20-25 pages is required.

In this course we'll read through philosophical work by Iris Murdoch spanning her whole career, along with several of her novels. Topics covered will include: Murdoch's criticism of the moral and practical philosophy of her time; her encounter with the work of Sartre and the existentialists; her engagement with the dialogues of Plato; her later work in moral psychology; and her discussions of aesthetics and the relation between art and philosophy. Primary philosophical readings will be taken from the collection 'Existentialists and Mystics,' and her last work 'Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.'

Kant is a watershed in political philosophy (as he is everywhere).  This often means that earlier work gets read as “pre-Kantian.”  In this course we will look at central texts by Hume and Rousseau in order to understand them in their own terms.  We will connect these writers to another non-Kantian, the early Marx.  The goal is to find, develop and assess ways of thinking of the tasks of political philosophy that do not presuppose a Kantian framework.

An introduction to the concepts and principles of symbolic logic. We learn the syntax and semantics of truth-functional and first-order quantificational logic, and apply the resultant conceptual framework to the analysis of valid and invalid arguments, the structure of formal languages, and logical relations among sentences of ordinary discourse. Occasionally we will venture into topics in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, but our primary focus is on acquiring a facility with symbolic logic as such.

Anxiety is discussed in modern philosophy as a mood which by contrast to fear is not directed to an object and thus reveals the "nothing" which dominates our engagement with beings. The class will be devoted to the modern philosophical discourse on "anxiety" and "nothing."

Among the texts that we shall study are: Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety, Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness. We shall also compare the philosophical concern with anxiety/nothing with the discussion of anxiety in psychoanalysis, especially in Lacan's Seminar Anxiety, (i.e., Seminar 10).

The course is devoted to the unity and the disunity in the evolution of Wittgenstein's philosophy. We shall question the prevalent view that the later work radically breaks with the earlier. In accord with Wittgenstein's own advice we shall study the Philosophical Investigations in light of the Tractatus, and the Tractatus from the perspective of the Philosophical Investigations. We shall also look at some of Wittgenstein's writing from the thirties (e.g., The Big Typescript).

Is opera an archaic and exotic pageant for fanciers of overweight canaries, or a relevant art form of great subtlety and complexity that has the power to be revelatory? In this course of eight sessions, jointly taught by Professor Martha Nussbaum and Anthony Freud, General Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, we explore the multi-disciplinary nature of this elusive and much-maligned art form, with its four hundred-year-old European roots, discussing both historic and philosophical contexts and the practicalities of interpretation and production in a very un-European, twenty-first century city.

Anchoring each session around a different opera, we will be joined by a variety of guest experts, one each week, including a director, a conductor, a designer and two singers, to enable us to explore different perspectives.

The list of operas to be discussed include Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Verdi's Don Carlos, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Wagner's Die Meistersinger, Strauss's Elektra, and Britten's Billy Budd. (A) (I)