Undergraduate

This seminar will offer a close reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, one of the great works of ethics.  Among the topics to be considered are: What is a good life?  What is ethics?  What is the relation between ethics and having a good life?  What is it for reason to be practical?  What is human excellence?  What is the non-rational part of the human psyche like?  How does it ever come to listen to reason?  What is human happiness?  What is the place of thought and of action in the happy life? We shall use the new translation by C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett Publishers). (A)

The study of logic in the second half of the 19th century was dominated by an algebraic approach to the subject. This tradition, as exemplified in George Boole’s Laws of Thought, aimed to develop a calculus of deductive reasoning based on the standard algebraic techniques employed in mathematics. In this course, we will trace the historical development of the algebraic tradition in logic, beginning with the early attempts of Leibniz to formulate a calculus ratiocinator. We will consider the various systems of algebraic logic developed in the 19th century in the works of De Morgan, Boole, Jevons, Peirce, and Schroder, and conclude by examining Frege’s critique of Boole’s system in relation to Frege’s own Begriffsschrift. (B) (II) (V)

Our goal in this course will be to read through and understand at least the first five 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, and the nature of self-consciousness. Undergraduates should have some background in philosophy; a knowledge of Kant would be especially helpful. (V)

This course will study topics in philosophy of mind in the writings of various figures from the early modern period. Topics to be discussed may include: theories of ideas, representation, consciousness, and affects (or passions). (V)

In this seminar and a second seminar to be taught in 2015 I shall present a new reading of Nietzsche’s most famous work. Thus Spoke Zarathustra combines philosophy and poetry, wisdom and prophecy, solitude and politics, speech and deed, preaching in riddles and parody of the Gospel. The work is a challenge to faith in revelation and a task for philosophical interpretation. In the spring of 2014 I shall interpret books I and II. Books III and IV I shall teach in the spring of 2015. This procedure may be justified in light of Nietzsche’s own procedure: He published each of the books before the following book was written and in fact without announcing that one, two or even three books would follow the first one. I shall use the English translation by Graham Parkes, Oxford World’s Classics (ISBN 0199537097). Those who can read the text in German should know that I use the Colli/Montinari edition (Kritische Studienausgabe, Bd. 4, DTV, ISBN 3423301546). The seminar will take place in Foster 505 on Monday/Wednesday, 10:30am-12:50pm during the first five weeks of the term (March 31-April 30, 2014).

(NOTE: This course will take place during the last 8 weeks of the quarter).Language is for imparting information, but it is equally a tool for communicating ignorance. This course aims to do three things: (i) introduce some of the more well-known ways that what we say depends upon uncertain or incomplete information, (ii) survey some basic tools for representing uncertainty and show how they can fit into a general semantic theory, and (iii) push the boundaries on aims (i) and (ii).

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?

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)

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)

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)