Winter

Is love, in the deepest sense of the word, something that occurs only between “persons”? Contemporary philosophers often think so. And they tend to understand “personhood”, moreover, in terms of the possession of the special psychological capacity for self-reflective reasoning. But this conception of personhood notably excludes some cognitively disabled humans, infant humans, and non-human animals from the category of “persons”. This raises the questions: who can love, and who can be loved? To answer these questions, we will put some influential philosophical conceptions of love and “personhood” into conversation with other contemporary philosophical work, as well as personal memoirs, literature, and film, that speak to the possibility of loving “non-persons”: infants, neonates, and fetuses; the severely cognitively disabled; and non-human animals. (A)

Global income and wealth are highly concentrated. The richest 2% of the population own about half of the global assets. Per capita income in the United States is around $47,000 and in Europe it is around $30,500, while in India it is $3,400 and in Congo, it is $329. There are equally unsettling inequalities in longevity, health, and education.

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we ask what duties nations and individuals have to address these inequalities and what are the best strategies for doing so. What role must each country play in helping itself? What is the role of international agreements and agencies, of NGOs, of political institutions, and of corporations in addressing global poverty? How do we weigh policies that emphasize growth against policies that emphasize within-country equality, health, or education?

In seeking answers to these questions, the class will combine readings on the law and economics of global development with readings on the philosophy of global justice. A particular focus will be on the role that legal institutions, both domestic and international, play in discharging these duties. For, example, we might focus on how a nation with natural resources can design legal institutions to ensure they are exploited for the benefit of the citizens of the country. (I)

"Epicurus's old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?" (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)This course will consider the challenge posed by the existence of evil to the rationality of traditional theistic belief. Drawing on both classic and contemporary readings, we will analyze atheistic arguments from evil, and attempts by theistic philosophers to construct "theodicies" and "defenses" in response to these arguments, including the "free-will defense," "soul-making theodicies," and "suffering God theodicies." We will also consider critiques of such theodicies as philosophically confused, morally depraved, or both; and we will discuss the problem of divinely commanded or enacted evil (for example the doctrine of hell). (A) 

The history of anarchism, or cooperative politics without leaders, is itself anarchic, coming in a rich diversity of forms and contexts.  But from Bakunin’s anarchist critique of Marx and Kropotkin’s re-reading of evolutionary cooperation, through the Haymarket martyrs, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, and Helen Keller, down to Colin Ward, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Ursula La Guin, and David Graeber, anarchism has repeatedly generated electrifying forms of political critique and mobilization, with political and ethical imaginaries that proved visionary.  This course will explore the rich legacy of anarchist movements and philosophies, emphasizing how relevant they are to addressing the global political crises of the world today, particularly in the form of Green and Eco-anarchism, crucial forces in the movements for environmental justice and animal liberation. (A)

What is “civic engagement” and why should colleges, universities, and other educational institutions practice and encourage it? How, for example, does the University of Chicago’s Office of Civic Engagement define the theory and practice of civic engagement, fitting it within the University’s core mission and valorizing certain approaches to it for students, faculty, staff, and the University as a whole? What alternative models might be available? And what are the limitations of such institutionalized efforts, as highlighted in efforts to “decolonize” institutions of higher education? When, in short, does such institutionalized civic engagement conflict with efforts to move beyond the discourses of diversity and civic education to embrace more critical perspectives on the settler colonial ideologies informing educational institutions in current neoliberal societies? This course will be developed in active collaboration with the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project, which for two decades has explored alternatives visions of civic friendship on Chicago’s South Side. (A) (I) (IV)

This course will be an introduction to the history of analytic philosophy from its beginnings in the development of modern logic, and the realist reactions to British idealism, through philosophies of logical and metaphysical analysis, to logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy. We will read “canonical figures but also more neglected authors who helped to shape the tradition. Figures to be discussed will include Gottlob Frege, F H Bradley, G E Moore, Bertand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein (early and late), Susan Stebbing, Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Margaret MacDonald, and Gilbert Ryle. Readings will be from primary sources. (B) (IV)

This is a workshop for 3rd year philosophy graduate students, in which students prepare and workshop materials for their Topical Exam.

Plato and Aristotle are paradigms of the intellectual attempt to know reality in some objective sense. They are also entangled in their social and material circumstances as historical individuals. The primary aim of this class is to survey a series of topics in which these two strands come together: how Plato and Aristotle’s pursuit of authoritative knowledge both challenges and reproduces their social and material circumstances. Topics include leisure and freedom in Plato’s epistemology; Plato’s philosophical engagement with sex and gender, and racial and ethnic difference; Aristotle’s application of natural teleology to social hierarchy, and his philosophical engagement with reproduction and sexual difference. We will also read from related Greek intellectual texts (such as the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places), social histories of ancient Greece, and contemporary epistemology. (III)