Graduate

In the last two books of his Metaphysics (M-N), Aristotle critiques his predecessors' and contemporaries' views about mathematical objects and first principles. He also gives his own account of the nature of mathematical objects. There is much that should be of great interest here; yet M and N are under-examined and under-appreciated. This neglect is not without reason, as the text is exceedingly dense and appears to be quite disorganized, and in many cases it is unclear what view Aristotle is targeting. We will undertake a close reading of M-N, with the aim of finding structure where we can, making the best possible sense of the arguments, identifying likely targets, and seeing what light Aristotle's criticisms can shed on his own mathematical and metaphysical views. While knowledge of Greek is not required for this course, we will discuss the Greek (as inclusively as possible) whenever it bears on a matter of philosophical interpretation.

What is the role of the other, the second person, in ethics? The class inquiries into the relation between three aspects of being with others - the normative, the recognitive and the communicative: (1) What we owe to each other, (2) what think and know of each other, and (3) what we say to each other. Obviously, they are interrelated in our lives in intricate ways. But what is the conceptual connection between them? Under the heading of 'bipolar obligations' or 'directed duties', the first has recently received quite a bit of attention. A directed duty is a duty I have to someone. And it is correlated with a right the other has against me. Here, 'right' and 'wrong' take on a relational form: wronging someone or doing right by her. The current debate tends to be focused on the following questions: Can this relational form of normativity be explained in terms of non-relation norms or is it irreducible and basic? And if it is basic, what is the 'source' of this form of normativity? Furthermore: Is the relation of right essentially reciprocal and thus a relation between persons; or can the status 'bearer of rights' be extended to kinds of beings that principally have no duties to me (animals, plants, or perhaps the environment)? Moreover, is having rights really essentially relational such that my status as a bearer of rights, a person, depends on there being others who have duties to me? If so, does understanding myself as a person depend on my knowledge of the actuality of other wills? We will approach these questions by investigating the role that the recognitive and the communicative has to play in a proper account of bipolar obligations. Of course, in human life this kind of normativity is connected with specific kinds of attitudes towards persons - respect, blame and resentment - and specific kinds of speech acts that paradigmatically involve the second person pronoun: consent, protest and demand. But common views suggest a conceptual separation: on the one hand, the idea that sub-rational beings can have rights; on the other hand, the idea that knowledge of the fundamental normative principle must be independent of the actuality of communicative exchange with others. The hypothesis of the class is that such a separation is untenable. A proper account of what we owe to each other must at same time be an account of how we know of each other and how we address one another. One might call this "linguistic idealism" about rights and directed duties. In this way, treatment of the other in ethics requires venturing into philosophy of mind and language: the puzzles about knowledge other wills and the puzzles about the logical grammar of 'you.' (I)

Two questions that we’ll be addressing in this course are: (1) How should we understand the difference between conscious states of mind and conscious behaviors, on the one hand, and unconscious states of mind and unconscious behaviors, on the other? And (2) How, if it all, might a satisfactory answer to question 1 help us to think about the kinds of relations we bear to our own past states of mind and behaviors? Texts will include: the famous chapter of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding called “Of Identity and Diversity” (where Locke speaks of consciousness’s being “extended backwards” to past actions and thoughts), selections from late Wittgenstein’s writings, and various articulations of more contemporary theories of consciousness and self-knowledge. (III)

About half of the sessions will discuss philosophical and legal issues related to animal rights, and the other half will discuss issues of environmental ethics, focusing on the ethics of climate change. This is a seminar/workshop many of whose participants are faculty from various related disciplines. It admits approximately ten students. Its aim is to study, each year, a topic that arises in both philosophy and the law and to ask how bringing the two fields together may yield mutual illumination. Most sessions are led by visiting speakers, from either outside institutions or our own faculty, who circulate their papers in advance. The session consists of a brief introduction by the speaker, followed by initial questioning by the two faculty coordinators, followed by general discussion, in which students are given priority. Several sessions involve students only, and are led by the instructors. Students write a 20-25 page seminar paper at the end of the year. The course satisfies the Law School Substantial Writing Requirement.

In this class we will consider closely attempts to understand tragedy philosophically. Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Shakespeare's Hamlet, two texts that have particularly attracted philosophical attention will serve as constant reference points, but other paradigmatic tragedies (Euripides Bacchae, Goethe's Faust, Beckett's Endgame) will also be considered. Among the philosophical contributions to be considered are works by Aristotle, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Scheler, Schmitt, Benjamin, Murdoch, and Menke. Major issues to be dealt with: the structure of tragic plot; the tragic affects; catharsis; ancient and modern tragedy; tragedy and the tragic; the aesthetics of tragedy; tragedy and society; tragedy and the sacred.

(II)

The workshop involves discussion of general issues in writing the essay and student presentations of their work. Although students do not register for the Summer quarter, they are expected to make significant progress on their preliminary essay over the summer.

I shall present a new interpretation of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and discuss Nietzsche's book form the beginning to its end in detail.

Emotions figure in many areas of the law, and many legal doctrines (from reasonable provocation in homicide to mercy in criminal sentencing) invite us to think about emotions and their relationship to reason. In addition, some prominent theories of the limits of law make reference to emotions: thus Lord Devlin and, more recently, Leon Kass have argued that the disgust of the average member of society is a sufficient reason for rendering a practice illegal, even though it does no harm to others. Emotions, however, are all too rarely studied closely, with the result that both theory and doctrine are often confused. The first part of this course will study major theories of emotion, asking about the relationship between emotion and cognition, focusing on philosophical accounts, but also learning from anthropology and psychology. We will ask how far emotions embody cognitions, and of what type, and then we will ask whether there is reason to consider some or all emotions "irrational" in a normative sense. We then turn to the criminal law, asking how specific emotions figure in doctrine and theory: anger, fear, compassion, disgust, guilt, and shame. Legal areas considered will include self-defense, reasonable provocation, mercy, victim impact statements, sodomy laws, sexual harassment, shame-based punishments. Next, we turn to the role played by emotions in constitutional law and in thought about just institutions - a topic that seems initially unpromising, but one that will turn out to be full of interest. (A) (I)