Spring

Feminist political philosophy has a two-fold history: both as a persistent critique of canonical political philosophy, as well as generative of new models of justice altogether. This course will be an exploration of the two sides of the history of feminist political philosophy. We will begin with a survey of feminist critiques of the canon, including from liberal feminism, Black feminist philosophy, and Marxist feminist philosophy. We will then move on to the positive accounts that have come out of this tradition, asking whether new models of the state, of the person, and of gender are required in order to construct theories that adequately represent what justice requires in a world with gender-based oppression. We will read philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, Engels, John Rawls, Susan Okin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Mackinnon, and Christine Delphy. (A)

What is philosophy? And how can it help us understand – and occasionally answer – questions as wide-ranging as those in ethics, politics, moral psychology, language, feminism, and metaphysics? In this course, we will explore ideas in the history of philosophy in order to acquaint ourselves with the range of topics that can be the proper object of philosophical attention. Using the distinctive features of the discipline, including slow, reflective engagement with ideas, critical attention to argument, and precise analysis of the concepts underlying ordinary thought, we will ask ordinary questions about the world and discover that philosophy is the practice of answering them with a level of rigor and depth that gives us a greater grasp on the world and ourselves. Some of the questions we will explore during the quarter are: Can my goodness be a matter of luck? Why are some bodies declared “normal,” some “broken,” and some food? What is gender? And is there anything philosophical we can say about the pandemic? 

This course will be an introduction to the philosophical movement known as “existentialism” as it developed in France in the mid-twentieth century. We will approach this movement by reading two of its greatest works, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943) and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). In the first part of the course, we will examine Sartre’s account of consciousness, freedom, anguish, and bad faith, as well as his conception of basic relations to other persons such as desire, shame, and love. We will then turn to the development and critique of existentialist ideas in Simone de Beauvoir’s classic work of philosophical feminism, focusing on her critical reflections on love, independence, and the conception of woman as Other.

The ‘I think’ traditionally stands at the center of philosophical reflection. Yet there is a minority strand in the history of philosophy which has advocated that the second person pronoun is no less central. Human beings are social creatures. For this reason, addressing another as ‘you’ in communication is no less fundamental to human rationality than giving expression to oneself through saying ‘I.’ A guiding idea of the proposed seminar will be that, properly conceived, self-consciousness and recognition of another are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. In seeking to make out this claim, the seminar will explore the different aspects of the role of address in human life. It will take its point of departure from two guiding ideas: (1) the second-person present indicative form of interpersonal nexus is no less important for understanding human thought and action and logically no less fundamental than the corresponding first-person form, and (2) what is logically peculiar to the former form of thought is best brought to the fore if one examines what second-person thought in both its theoretical and practical guises have in common. The plan for the seminar is to alternate between examining problems in theoretical philosophy whose proper solution requires attention to the role of the second person and counterpart sorts of problem in practical philosophy. Under the first heading, we will explore the role of address and joint consciousness in speech act theory, the topic of shared understanding in the philosophy of language acquisition, and the problem of the apprehension of another human being as it arises in the epistemology of other minds. Interpolated between these topics, we will weave in and out of counterpart forms of philosophical difficulty arising out of reflection upon the place of the second-person in practical philosophy: in understanding the human striving for honor, in relations of justice, as well as in friendship and love. (I) (II)

This course is an introduction to the philosophy of aesthetics, with a focus on art and art objects. With respect to art, our questions will include: What is art? What is the point of making art? What is it to appreciate art? (Does discursive knowledge (of the technique, the history of the painting or its subjects, the artist’s life, etc.) help or hinder this appreciation?) What is the metaphysical character of art objects (symphonies, paintings, novels, etc.)? What is the ethical status of art? (Were Plato’s ethical suspicions about art warranted?) With respect to aesthetics more generally, our questions will include: is beauty in the eye of the beholder? (What is it for something to be in the eye of the beholder?) Does beauty track (or even constitute) scientific truth? If so: why? If not, why have so many mathematicians, physicists, and biologists been preoccupied with the beauty of their theories?

An exploration of some of the central questions in metaethics, moral theory, and applied ethics. These questions include the following: are there objective moral truths, as there are (as it seems) objective scientific truths? If so, how can we come to know these truths? Should we make the world as good as we can, or are there moral constraints on what we can do that are not a function of the consequences of our actions? Is the best life a maximally moral life? What distribution of goods in a society satisfies the demands of justice? Can beliefs and desires be immoral, or only actions? What is “moral luck”? What is courage? (A)

Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman constitute a trilogy which describe Socrates’ last days before his fatal trial. These dialogues represent some of Plato’s most mature and sophisticated reflection on knowledge, sense-experience, his theory of forms, and the nature of philosophy. We will read all three dialogues in their entirety, focusing on questions of overall structure and argument, rather than on close readings of individual passages. (B) (III)

Thomas Aquinas is sometimes labeled an “intellectualist,” because of the priority that he assigns to intellect or reason in human life. Nevertheless he treats love as a fundamental principle, not only of human life but of absolutely all life and even all reality, and he thought and wrote extensively about it.  In this course we will read and discuss sizeable passages, from several of his works, concerning the nature of love in general, its various kinds, its causes and effects, how it exists in different subjects — human, angelic, divine, and even non-rational — and what it has to do with morality, virtue, and happiness. As regards the history of the topic, the we shall especially want to consider how Aquinas’s thought on love relates to that of Aristotle and to the Platonic tradition. (A)

We will be interested in the special and problematic notion of an attitude toward the world as a whole, and in some questions that arise in contexts where people face what they experience as the end of their world or its vulnerability to destruction.  Readings will include texts from Freud, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, as well as more contemporary readings from Cora Diamond, Jonathan Lear, Brian O’Shaughnessy, and others.

Moral philosophers have approached their subject, the virtuous life, from different perspectives. More specifically, the ancients ask: What constitutes, and what kind of conduct advances, our happiness? while the moderns tend to ask: How is it right, or our duty, to act? The two perspectives may lead to very similar conceptions of what to do and what not to do. Nevertheless, not only as philosophers, but as agents, too, we seem to approach the project of living well quite differently, depending on whether we prefix it by should or would. – This course is to examine what is involved in the basically Aristotelian view that happiness is the central idea that ought to guide both ethical enquiry and moral orientation. What, then, do we mean by the word? What might happiness consist in – and how can we know this? Can it be attained in this life? Is good conduct conducive to it, or could it even consist in good conduct? Can the “quest for happiness” be a source of moral obligation? Does it not rather, at least occasionally, mean egoism and compete with the dictates of conscience? What do you ultimately mean to live for? – These and related questions will be discussed against the background of (chiefly contemporary) readings. (A) (I) (IV)