Autumn

This course is an exploration of the analytic tradition in philosophy. We will have three goals. First and foremost, we will philosophize in the analytic style. Second, we will try to get a sense of the history of the tradition, beginning with Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, continuing through the logical positivist and ordinary language movements and the subsequent repudiation of these movements (by Strawson, Rawls, Searle, Nagel, Kripke, Lewis, and many others), and ending with a review of the current state of play. Third (and drawing on the history), we will try to answer these meta-questions: what is distinctive about analytic philosophy? How does it relate to the history of the subject? (Was Descartes an analytic philosopher? If not, why not?) What in the philosophy of Hegel, Bradley and others were Moore and Russell reacting to? What is the difference between analytic and continental philosophy? (Why was Husserl a continental philosopher while Frege--his interlocutor--was not?) (B)

An examination of ancient Greek philosophical texts that are foundational for Western philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the nature and possibility of knowledge and its role in human life; the nature of the soul; virtue; happiness and the human good.

This seminar will explore an advanced topic in philosophy. It is required as part of the intensive track of the Philosophy Major.

This will be a careful reading of what is widely regarded as the greatest work of modern philosophy, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Our principal aims will be to understand the problems Kant seeks to address and the significance of his famous doctrine of "transcendental idealism". Topics will include: the role of mind in the constitution of experience; the nature of space and time; the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of objects; how causal claims can be justified by experience; whether free will is possible; the relation between appearance and reality; the possibility of metaphysics. (B) (V)

This course is designed to provide MAPH students with an introduction to some recent and ongoing debates between philosophers working in the analytic tradition. The course is, however, neither a history nor an overview of analytic philosophy. Instead, we will focus on three different debates, spending about three weeks on each, with topics selected from the general areas of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.

This course will provide a close reading of Wittgenstein’s only published book. We will place the Tractatus in the context of Frege and Russell’s logical works, examining Wittgenstein’s debts to and critique of his predecessors. We will explore both the overall strategy of the book and the contemporary debate about how to read its mysterious, seemingly self-undermining conclusion, and the details of his views (e.g. the “picture theory” of language, the context principle and meaning, the nature of logic, the general form of proposition, the accounts of mathematics, science, and ethics). We will close with a brief discussion of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy in relation to the Tractatus. Secondary literature will include selections from Ramsey, Ryle, Anscombe, Geach, Hacker, Conant, Diamond, Goldfarb, Kremer, Ricketts, and Sullivan. (II)

In this course we will read, write, and think about Kant's ethics.  After giving careful attention to the arguments in the Second Critique, portions of the Third Critique, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Metaphysics of Morals, and several other primary texts, we will conclude by working through some contemporary neo-Kantian moral philosophy, paying close attention to work by Christine Korsgaard, David Velleman, Stephen Engstrom, and others. (A) (I)

We will examine the question of what it means to read religious texts and practices from a philosophical point of view.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed.

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