Spring

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

This course will provide a rapid-fire survey of the philosophical sources of contemporary literary and critical theory.  We will begin with a brief discussion of the sort of humanism at issue in the critique—accounts of human life and thought that treat the individual human being as the primary unit for work in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences.  This kind of humanism is at the core of contemporary common sense.  It is, to that extent, indispensable in our understanding of how to move around in the world and get along with one another.  That is why we will conduct critique, rather than plain criticism, in this course: in critique, one remains indebted to the system under critical scrutiny, even while working to understand its failings and limitations.  Our tour of thought produced in the service of critique will involve work by Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Freud, Fanon, Lacan, and Althusser. We will conclude with a couple of pieces of recent work that draws from these sources.  The aim of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to engage with some extraordinarily influential work that continues to inform humanistic inquiry. (A)

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. (IV)

This course provides a historical survey of the philosophy of time. We begin with the problems of change, being and becoming as formulated in Ancient Greece by Parmenides and Zeno, and Aristotle’s attempted resolution in the Physics by providing the first formal theory of time. The course then follows theories of time through developments in physics and philosophy up to the present day. Along the way we will take in Descartes’ theory of continuous creation, Newton’s Absolute Time, Leibniz’s and Mach’s relational theories, Russell’s relational theory, Broad’s growing block, Whitehead’s epochal theory, McTaggart’s A, B and C theories, Prior’s tense logic, Belnap’s branching time, Einstein’s relativity theory and theories of quantum gravity. (B) (II)

Whereas philosophers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages generally hold that good conduct is required for happiness, modern moral philosophy conceives of it as required by law-like obligation. Anscombe has famously argued that such a conception makes no sense independently of belief in a divine law-giver. Is she right? Or should philosophy rather take seriously the experience of “feeling duty-bound” to keep promises, help people in need, work conscientiously etc. and conclude that there is such a thing as moral obligation independently of a legislating authority? What does the Natural Law tradition say about this? What is actually involved in the idea of a moral Ought? Can there be absolute practical necessities? or unconditional obligations without sanction? Would we have reason to comply? How can the content of a “moral law” be known? Are happiness-oriented ethics definitely incompatible with ideas of such a law? (A) (I)

This course will center on a close reading of significant parts of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, a famous set of meditations on knowledge, faith, and human nature, culminating in his famous “wager” for Christian religious faith. In the first half of the course, we will begin by providing some intellectual context, with selections from Montaigne’s essays (“That to philosophize is to learn how to die,” “Of physiognomy,” and excerpts from “Apology for Raymond Sebond”) and Descartes’s Discourse on Method (Parts 1-4). We will also briefly consider the writings of Pascal’s sister Jacqueline (“On the Mystery of the Death of our Lord Jesus Christ”) together with Pascal’s “Memorial” to understand Pascal’s own religious conversion, followed by a discussion of his “Discussion with Monsieur Saucy” and “The Art of Persuasion” to contrast his method in philosophy with that of Descartes. The second half of the course will then be devoted to a close reading of selections from the Pensées, chosen to emphasize the themes most important for a proper critical understanding of the wager argument.

We often readily accept the thought that a person (or their mind, soul, or self) can be divided. We find it natural to speak of a self as made up of distinct parts (“a part of me wants that doughnut, even though I know it’s unhealthy”). Versions of this idea have been embraced throughout the history of philosophy, psychology, and biology. In this course, we will trace and examine the history of this idea. In doing so, we will come to see how differently, and in such different contexts, the idea of a divided mind or self has been employed. In the first half of the course, we will examine the origin of the notion as it emerged in Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, especially in the works of Plato and Aristotle. In the second half, we will observe how these themes were later recycled for new problems, or how they were rejected as views of the mind and nature changed, up until contemporary philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, in thinkers like Du Bois, Freud, Fodor, and Davidson. (B)

The philosophical ideas and methods of Immanuel Kant's “critical” philosophy set off a revolution that reverberated through 19th-century philosophy. We will trace its effects and the responses to it, focusing on the changing conception of philosophical ethics. Kant’s famous Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals rejects any appeal to nature or religious authority grounding all ethical obligations in the very notion of freedom conceived as something that is for everyone. We will study how these ideas are taken up and transformed in the works of philosophers like J.G. Fichte, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Compassion, direct concern for the suffering of another, was the subject of a lively debate in German philosophy. In this course, we will engage with two of compassion’s sharpest critics and one of its greatest defenders. We will begin with a close reading of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, considering his claim that actions only have moral worth when motivated by respect for the moral law. We will then turn to the critique of Kant developed in Schopenhauer’s On the Basis of Morality, a text which argues that actions only have moral worth when motivated by compassion. Finally, we will discuss the critique of Schopenhauer developed by Nietzsche, working through a variety of texts where Nietzsche argues that compassion makes it harder to value our lives. (A)

What are the qualities of character that enable us to be valuable members of our political communities, the institutions that employ us, and any other groups of which we are a part?  Do the right answers to these questions depend on where you are situated in the community or on the form of political constitution in question?  Do they harmonize with each other? And are these the same as the qualities that make us morally good human beings?  These are questions that the Ancient Greek philosophers thought hard about and we will take the works of those thinkers as our starting point and constant companions.  But we will consider some moderns as well, and our goal will be to enrich our reflection about the kinds of people we ourselves would like to be.  Virtues we may discuss include: civic friendship, justice, forthrightness in public speech (parrhesia), courage, and (for lack of a better term) effectiveness. (A)