Spring

Topic: The Critique of Ontotheology

According to Martin Heidegger, metaphysics has failed to confront its own basic question, namely that of the meaning (or truth) of being, on account of an occlusion of the significance of two distinctions. The first distinction is between onto-logic and theo-logic, or between, on the one hand, what, formally, beings are as such, and, on the other hand, the explanatory principle that accounts for it that beings as a whole exist at all. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically attempts to overcome this distinction in a unified “onto-theo-logical” account of the being of beings. The second distinction is between, on the one hand, the being of beings (a topic common to onto-logic and theo-logic), and, on the other hand, being as such. Heidegger claims that metaphysics characteristically forgets this second distinction as it struggles to overcome the first.

This course will critically consider Heidegger’s influential and sweeping “deconstruction” of the tradition, reading historical texts alongside Heidegger’s essays and commentaries, with a view to: understanding the relationship between these two distinctions; assessing the extent to which the distinctions can be drawn univocally (or analogically) across dramatic historical changes in the way philosophers have understood the fundamental concepts of metaphysics; weighing (against the testimony of the tradition and against alternative narratives) the plausibility of Heidegger’s claim that the distinctions have been mistreated or neglected and thus that the question of being has gone unasked; and testing the resources Heidegger purports to uncover for ameliorating this state of affairs. Heidegger thinks a proper appreciation of the question of being will have deep cultural, existential, and theological consequences for us; we will consider, finally, what these consequences may be. This will require in turn reflecting on how such themes as anxiety, fallenness, grace, and thankfulness could be implicated in the question of being, as well as on how being as such can be understood to take place as an event. In addition to Heidegger’s own works, readings may include short texts by Aristotle, Avicenna, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Hegel, Rosenzweig, Derrida.

Topic: The Human Being in Moral Imagination

What is it to recognize someone as a human being? Standard answers to this question presuppose that recognizing another as human is a matter of coming to know something about them, e.g. that they belong to the species homo sapiens or that they are the bearer of a certain capacity. On this view, to recognize someone as human is not yet to make an ethical determination: it is one thing to apply the sortal concept “human” and another to ask what is owed to those beings who fall under the concept. In this course, we will explore an alternative view on which the recognition of another human being is already, just as such, the taking up of an ethical orientation. In the course of our exploration, we will consider the significance of such everyday facts as that we have names and faces, that we have inner lives which may be rich or shallow, that we honor our dead, and that we often love or hate one another in ways that make us unreasonable. What bearing do such facts have on our understanding of what it means to lead a human life, and what does this mean for a philosophical account of recognition? In addition to the specific topics mentioned above, we will consider the question in its formal aspect, as regards the logical character of the relation that holds between any two human beings. Readings will include selections from Cora Diamond, Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, Raimond Gaita, Stanley Cavell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Buber, and Immanuel Levinas.

This course will consist of a focused reading of Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics. Our aim will be to understand Aristotle’s theory of knowledge, the significance of experience, and the nature of reasoning. Readings will include some of the Platonic antecedents of Aristotle’s work, including the Theaetetus and Sophist. (B)

We discuss the nature and philosophical implications of the practice of interpretation, focusing especially on the interpretation of philosophy. We will address questions such as: what is interpretation, and at what does it aim? What counts as success or failure? Is the interpretation of philosophy itself a form of philosophy? What is the ethical significance of interpretation? This course will involve a practical element. In addition to reading texts on the theory of interpretation, we will spend time in and out of class developing interpretations of selected philosophical texts. (B)

This course will consist of a close study of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding alongside Leibniz’s chapter-by-chapter response to Locke in his New Essays on Human Understanding. Locke’s Essay is the great manifesto and development of empiricism, and Leibniz’s New Essays is a detailed, sustained rebuttal of Locke’s book. As such, it is both a fascinating work by one of the giants of rationalism and a text that provides an opportunity to take seriously the idea that philosophy develops through dialogue. Topics to be discussed include innate ideas, necessary truths, reason, experience, substance, essence, personal identity, the nature of mind and body, and freedom, among others. We will also ask larger questions about the nature of the rationalist and empiricist traditions to which these philosophers belong – e.g., the extent to which empiricism is indebted to the experimental sciences, and whether rationalism is best understood as a doctrine concerning the sources of human knowledge or as a metaphysical claim about the intelligibility of being. (B)

The films of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman are among the most powerful, complicated and philosophically sophisticated portrayals of moral and religious, and failed moral and religious, life in the twentieth century. Bergman is especially concerned with crisis experiences and with related emotional states like anguish, alienation, guilt, despair, loneliness, shame, abandonment, conversion, and the mystery of death. We will watch and discuss eight of his most important films in this course with such issues in mind: Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Winter Light (1963), Persona (1966), Shame (1968), Cries and Whispers (1973), Autumn Sonata (1978), Fanny and Alexander (1982). (A)

Logic is, and always has been, a branch of philosophy. Why? What is logic? In this course we will explore the nature of logic, and how it relates to thought; to reasoning; to ordinary language; to mathematics; and to philosophy. We will read texts on the subject of logic by Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Black, Prior, Gödel, Kripke, Dummett, Boolos, Putnam, Benacerraf, Harman, Williamson, Priest, and others. The course will be completely non-technical: we will be trying to make philosophical sense of logic. (B)

Preparing papers to submit to journals for review and revising papers in response to the feedback received from journal editors and referees is an essential part of professional academic life, and students applying for academic positions with no publications to their name are at a disadvantage in today’s highly competitive job market. The Department of Philosophy has therefore instituted the Paper Revision and Publication Workshop to provide our graduate students with support and assistance to prepare papers to submit for publication in academic philosophy journals. The workshop was designed with the following three aims in mind:

1. to provide students with a basic understanding of the various steps involved in publishing in academic journals and to create a forum in which students can solicit concrete advice from faculty members about the publishing process;

2. to direct and actively encourage students to submit at least one paper to a journal for review on a timeline that would allow accepted submissions to be listed as publications on a student’s CV by the time they go on the academic job market; and

3. to create and foster a departmental culture in which the continued revision of work with the ultimate aim of publication in academic journals is viewed as an essential aspect of the professional training of our graduate students and in which both faculty and students work together to establish more ambitious norms for publishing while in graduate school.

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