Graduate

“Interpretation” is called for in a wide variety of everyday and specialized domains.  Part of what attracts philosophical attention to the concept of “interpretation” are two implications which deployments of it usually seem to carry:  first, that there is a clarifying response to a meaning that is already there (i.e., “interpretation” is not pure invention); second, that, nonetheless, some creativity or innovation may be involved (i.e., “that’s one interpretation”).  How can both of these things be true?  How can the clarification or preservation of a meaning that is already there also involve innovation?  This puzzle is related to others which tend to inform contemporary debates about “interpretation”:  Is there such a thing as an objectively correct interpretation?  Can there really be a plurality of conflicting (but equally good) interpretations?  Is every take on the meaning of a text an interpretation of it, or are some meanings available without interpretation?  A further question concerns the unity of interpretation:  Does “interpretation” describe a distinctive form of understanding and explanation which, as some have claimed, picks out and structures the domain we call the “humanities”?  Or is “interpretation” rather a loose collection of different techniques for elucidation, which vary according to the type of thing being interpreted?  Taking up these questions, we will examine the concept of interpretation as it functions in a few different domains – e.g., law, literature, self-understanding – before turning to the broader question of the unity of interpretation across the humanities.  Readings will be from Wittgenstein, Kripke, Derrida, Gadamer, Iser, Sartre, Walter Benn Michaels, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Atonin Scalia, Alexander Nehamas, Stanley Cavell, Richard Moran, among others.

This seminar will examine one of the primary devices by means of which we talk about language ad mental content. Topics will include the varieties of quotation: direct, indirect, mixed, pure, and non-literal (scare-quotes); various current theories of direct and indirect quotation; the relation between quotation and meaning; context-sensitivity and quotation; and the pictorial character of quotation. More generally, the seminar will investigate quotation as a phenomenon on the border between semantics and pragmatics and between linguistic and non-linguistic modes of representation. Readings will be drawn from authors such as Frege, Quine, Tarski, Davidson, Bennett, Cappelen and Lepore, H. Clark, Recanti, Garcia-Carpintero, Geurts, C. Potts, Kaplan, T. Parsons, Predelli, BUrge Peacocke, Brandom, Reimer, Richard, Saka, Sperber and Wilson, and Washington. (II)

The main issues raised by the notion of "Revelation" are quite well-known. First, understood as the "deposit of faith", it has appeared somehow lately in the history of Christian theology; then, it has imposed itself mostly within a highly questionable dichotomy between revealed truths and truths conveyed by reason or nature, a distinction implying by the way the autonomy and primacy of philosophy; last, in its modern interpretation as propositional Revelation missed the hermeneutical and historical dimensions of biblical reports. – What revised concept of "Revelation" could be proposed? – Theologically, one should pay close attention to the fact that, in the New Testament (no matter whether in the Synoptics, Paul or John), apocalypsis refers first and mostly to the dis-covery un-covering the coming Kingdom of God, the musterion tou theou and the final salvation of the believers: therefore that it implies an eschatological event, both coming and yet to come, future oriented much more than a past and everlasting input of information. – Philosophically then, one may focus more on phenomena understood as events, rather than as objects, in order to build a renewed and consistent concept of a phenomenon of revelation in general.

In “Knowing How and Knowing That” (1945) and The Concept of Mind (1951), Gilbert Ryle famously argued for a sharp distinction between practical and propositional knowledge. This distinction was settled philosophical orthodoxy for several decades, but has more recently come under attack, beginning with J. Stanley and T. Williamson’s “Knowing How” (2001). Responses to their arguments have spawned a rich literature, from such authors as S. Schiffer, A. Noe, P. Snowdon, A.W. Moore, I. Rumfitt, K. Setiya, J. Hornsby, and many others, leading up to Stanley’s recent book Know How (2011). This course will delve into this literature, beginning with a careful reading of Ryle, briefly considering early responses to his arguments, and then turning to a discussion of Stanley and Williamson, their allies, and their critics. (III)

This seminar will focus on Spinoza’s and subsequent Spinozistic metaphysics, and in particular on substance monism. We will examine the arguments that lead to such a position, its implications, as well as objections and alternatives to it. (V)

This course will provide a rapid-fire survey of the philosophical sources of contemporary literary and critical theory.  We will begin with a brief discussion of the sort of humanism at issue in the critique—accounts of human life and thought that treat the individual human being as the primary unit for work in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.  This kind of humanism is at the core of contemporary common sense.  It is, to that extent, indispensable in our understanding of how to move around in the world and get along with one another.  That is why we will conduct critique, rather than plain criticism, in this course: in critique, one remains indebted to the system under critical scrutiny, even while working to understand its failings and limitations.  Our tour of thought produced in the service of critique will involve work by Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Freud, Fanon, Lacan, and Althusser. We will conclude with a couple of pieces of recent work that draws from these sources.  The aim of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to engage with some extraordinarily influential work that continues to inform humanistic inquiry.

This course will investigate the theory of human history developed by Marx and Engels - Historical Materialism, as it came to be known. Though we will primarily focus on texts by Marx and Engels, we will begin by considering some of Hegel’s writing on history, and we will end by looking at different attempts to explain, apply, and develop the theory within the Marxian tradition. (A) (IV)

The aim of the course will be to consider some of the most influential treatments of skepticism in the post-war analytic philosophical tradition—in relation both to the broader history of philosophy and to current tendencies in contemporary analytic philosophy. The first part of the course will begin by distinguishing two broad varieties of skepticism—Cartesian and Kantian—and their evolution over the past two centuries (students without any prior familiarity with both Descartes and Kant will be at a significant disadvantage here), and will go on to isolate and explore some of the most significant variants of each of these varieties in recent analytic philosophy.  The second part of the course will involve a close look at recent influential analytic treatments of skepticism. It will also involve a brief look at various versions of contextualism with regard to epistemological claims.  We will carefully read and critically evaluate writings on skepticism by the following authors: J. L. Austin, Robert Brandom, Stanley Cavell, Thompson Clarke, Saul Kripke, C. I. Lewis, John McDowell, H. H. Price, Hilary Putnam, Barry Stroud, Charles Travis, Michael Williams, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This will be an advanced lecture course open to graduate students and undergraduates with a prior background in analytic philosophy. (B) (III)

Human rights are claims of justice that hold merely in virtue of our shared humanity. In this course we will explore philosophical theories of this elementary and crucial form of justice. Among topics to be considered are the role that dignity and humanity play in grounding such rights, their relation to political and economic institutions, and the distinction between duties of justice and claims of charity or humanitarian aid. Finally we will consider the application of such theories to concrete, problematic and pressing problems, such as global poverty, torture and genocide. (A) (I)

In this class we are going to study and critically discuss fundamental components of Aristotle’s ethics, concentrating on wisdom and its role in the practice of the other virtues. Does Aristotle improve on the intellectualist assumptions made by Socrates? What is his conception of practical rationality, what teleologies does it involve? What is the place of practical reason in human nature? Does Aristotle give an adequate account of the difference between technical reasoning on the one hand and deliberation with a view to acting on the other? How do reasons / motives affect the ethical quality of conduct? How are individual virtues of character related to patterns of motivation? How do the wise know how to act?