Spring

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

What does it mean to be free? What is a free action? Is freedom an absolute term or actions could be more or less free? Can we act ethically but not freely, i.e., do the right thing, without being free? Can one act freely but not ethically, i.e. freely do the wrong? The relation between the notion of free action and ethics has been central to practical philosophy since antiquity and different ways to answer these questions are at the heart of the main traditions in ethics. We will explore these questions in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant as well as contemporary texts by Korsgaard, Boyle, Rödl and Thompson.

What does it mean to be free? What is a free action? Is freedom an absolute term or actions could be more or less free? Can we act ethically but not freely, i.e., do the right thing, without being free? Can one act freely but not ethically, i.e. freely do the wrong? The relation between the notion of free action and ethics has been central to practical philosophy since antiquity and different ways to answer these questions are at the heart of the main traditions in ethics. We will explore these questions in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant as well as contemporary texts by Korsgaard, Boyle, Rödl and Thompson.

The philosophical ideas and methods of Immanuel Kant’s “critical” philosophy set off a revolution that reverberated throughout the 19th century. The only reaction it did not elicit was one of indifference. His revolution polarized the philosophical community, meeting with eager forms of inheritance as well as intense and varied resistance — and, as we shall see, usually both within a single thinker’s response to Kant. This class will seek to understand the nature of Kant’s philosophical innovations and the principle sources of his successors’ (dis-)satisfaction with them. This class will seek to introduce students to the outlines of Kant’s “critical” philosophy, well as its subsequent reception, as the first two generations of post-Kantian thinkers grappled with and reacted to his ideas. The first half of the course will be devoted to a careful reading of portions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; while the second half will focus on various aspects of its reception, transformation, and rejection at the hands of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. The course as a whole will focus on the following five topics: (1) the dialectical relation between skepticism and dogmatism in philosophy, (2) the difference between our theoretical and practical cognitive powers, (3) the proper account of the “finititude” of these powers, (4) the tendency of human reflection to overstep the boundaries of its legitimate employment, (5) what a satisfying treatment of the four preceding topics reveals about what philosophy is and what it can and cannot accomplish.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to one of the most important and influential traditions in the European Philosophy of the 20th Century: Phenomenology. The main task of this course will be to present Phenomenology’s main concepts and the meaning of Phenomenology’s transformations from Husserl to Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas and Henry. The fundamental credo of Phenomenology consists in the emphasis laid upon phenomena given to consciousness. This emphasis coincides with the “return to things in themselves” as formulated by Husserl. What can this kind of return actually mean? And what does this claim suggest about philosophical practices prior to phenomenology, idealism or empiricism? In what way, for Husserl, was classical philosophy not able to give access to things such as they are truly given ? And what is the meaning of such idea of « givenness ». Does Phenomenology fall into the so-called « myth of the Given » . No future phenomenologists after Husserl will question the fundamental idea of returning to things in themselves thanks to the phenomenological importance given to phenomena, but they will question the privilege of intentional consciousness postulated by Husserl - Heidegger will expand phenomenology to the ancient question of “Being” (thanks to the existential clarification of the Husserlian concept of Intentionality) and Levinas will question Husserl’s and Heidegger’s approaches of phenomenology - intentional and existential - as falling into the Western problem of Ontology and Totality against Otherness and Ethics. As we will see, even if Phenomenology coincides with the philosophical description of our "Openness to Exteriority", this openness - Intentional, Existential or Ethical - entails necessarily not the abandonment, but a radical redefinition of the concept of Subjective Immanence."

In this course we will explore some of the central questions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, these questions will include: What is knowledge? What facts or states justify a belief? How can the threat of skepticism be adequately answered? How do we know what we (seem to) know about mathematics and morality? In metaphysics, these questions will include: What is time? What is the best account of personal identity across time? Do we have free will? We will also discuss how the construction of a theory of knowledge ought to relate to the construction of a metaphysical theory—roughly speaking, what comes first, epistemology or metaphysics? (B)

“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?” 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 discuss atheistic arguments from evil in both “logical” and “evidential” forms. We will analyze attempts by theistic philosophers to construct “theodicies” and “defenses” in response to these arguments, including the “free-will defense” and “soul-making theodicies.” We will also consider critiques of such theodicies as philosophically confused, morally depraved, or both; and we will discuss the problems of divinely commanded or enacted evil and of divine hiddenness.

In the course of discussing how it is that a philosophical problem arises in the first place, Wittgenstein says, “The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent.” This isn’t the only place where Wittgenstein speaks as if being gripped by philosophical problems is a matter of succumbing to illusions--as if a philosophers are magicians who are taken in by their own tricks. In this course, we’ll discuss philosophy and magical performance, with the aim of coming to a deeper understanding of what both are about. We’ll be particularly concerned with Wittgenstein’s picture of what philosophy is and does. Another focus of the course will be the passion of wonder. In the Theatetus, Plato has Socrates say, “The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.” And when magicians write about their aesthetic aims, they almost always describe themselves as trying to instill wonder in others. Does magic end where philosophy begins? And what becomes of wonder after philosophy is done with it? (B)