Philosophy

 

Introduction to Philosophy: From Global Perspectives

 

Professor:

Yarran Hominh

 

Course Number:

PHIL 104

CRN Number:

90254

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs     1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Language Center 206

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value D+J Difference and Justice

What does it mean to be human? What should we do in life? Does anything matter, really? Philosophy asks questions about these deep and important matters of human concern. It is also, as bell hooks said, a liberatory practice. It helps you come to understand yourself, your community, your world in a clearer way. It helps you shed light on who you are and what matters to you. And it gives you the tools to think through the questions and issues that confront you. Philosophy is not limited to any one place or time. It is an expression of the universal human desire to make sense of things. But human beings may make sense of things differently in different places and times. And so though you may not have the answers when this class ends, you will hopefully have a better grasp of your questions and of ways of thinking that might help you find some answers.

 

Introduction to Philosophy: Arguing About Ethics

 

Professor:

David Shein

 

Course Number:

PHIL 132

CRN Number:

90255

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Barringer 104

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

In this class we will learn how to construct and respond to arguments about philosophical issues, with a focus on contemporary, real-world ethical dilemmas. We will begin with a study of moral theories and methods of argumentation, and then apply what we have learned by developing and responding to arguments about issues such as ChatGPT, campus speech codes, civil disobedience, corporate responsibility, reparations, etc.  The goal of the class is to hone our ability to engage substantively in disagreements that cannot obviously be resolved by appeal to 'the facts'.

 

Introduction to Philosophy: Other Animals

 

Professor:

Jay Elliott

 

Course Number:

PHIL 140

CRN Number:

90256

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

Environmental & Urban Studies; Environmental Studies

We human beings have learned to think of ourselves as animals, and to think of our pets, laboratory subjects, wild animals and those we slaughter for meat as “other animals.” Yet the lives of these other animals remain profoundly mysterious to us. Can we understand their thoughts, desires and lives? What do we owe them by way of justice, love or sympathy? How does the struggle for animal liberation intersect with questions of race, gender, class and disability? How might our understanding of ourselves be transformed by the thought that we are animals, too?  In this course, we will approach these questions through a wide variety of sources, including the philosophy of Peter Singer and Cora Diamond and the fiction of J. M. Coetzee and Margaret Atwood.

 

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy and/of Education

 

Professor:

Seth Halvorson

 

Course Number:

PHIL 154

CRN Number:

90257

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Henderson Comp. Center 106

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

This course is an introduction to Philosophy and Education and perennial questions regarding the purposes, methods, and problems of philosophy, education, and life.  Is education central to a good life?   How and why?  What is education? The course will study the dynamics between selves in formation, institutions, and society and explore the ways that education can be a catalyst for change and also reproduce social hierarchies and inequalities. What is Liberal Education and what is college about?  How can educational policy issues be understood philosophically? We will explore theories of teaching and learning, alternative and radical philosophies of education, the moral and political status of youth, and the connections between culture, technology, and education.  The course will focus on the ways in which core values and virtues like knowledge, wisdom, justice, belonging, freedom, individuality, and citizenship define political, academic, legal, and moral norms of education.  What does it mean to be educated and how does education shape our identities? Who should define knowledge, and how it is taught?  Who should control education? The course will draw from a wide range of classical and contemporary works in philosophy, as well as film, art, music, and literature, to try to answer the most fundamental of questions:  How should we understand the formation of the self?

 

Early Greek Thinking

 

Professor:

Jay Elliott

 

Course Number:

PHIL 212

CRN Number:

90358

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 308

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

Classical Studies

This course invites students into the discipline of philosophy through a critical consideration of its origins in ancient Greece. Philosophy emerged in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE in a context of rapid urbanization, expanding literacy, imperial warfare, and democratic experimentation. Without any established academic disciplines or traditions, the early Greek thinkers we now call the “first philosophers” experimented with an astonishing variety of forms and practices, including scientific observation, cryptic aphorisms, poetic narratives, and dramatic dialogue. As we follow the emergence of distinctively “philosophical” ways of thinking and living, we will also trace the shifting relations of philosophy to other aspects of ancient Greek culture, such as poetry, religion, theater, and politics. The course centers on the enigmatic figure of Socrates, in whose intellectual circle the term “philosophy” first came into common use. We will consider the conflicting accounts of Socrates and his circle that we find in the historian Xenophon, the comedian Aristophanes, and the tragedian Plato. Alongside this paradigmatic philosopher, we will also consider other thinkers who have a more contested relationship to the philosophical canon, including the so-called “Pre-Socratics” and the Sophists. In taking up the question of who counts as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy in Greek antiquity, we will attend to the role of class, gender and sexuality in the formation of philosophical communities.

 

Philosophy and Literature

 

Professor:

Ruth Zisman

 

Course Number:

PHIL 238

CRN Number:

90359

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 307

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

German Studies

In the introduction to his book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche famously laments that he should have “sung, not spoken” the text; "what a shame,” he writes, “that I did not dare to utter as a poet what I had to say at that time.” Reverence for the literary is, of course, not uncommon in the philosophical tradition. From Aristotle’s praise of metaphor making as the mark of genius to Heidegger’s conception of the saving power of poiesis, philosophers have been known to extol the virtues of literature. Yet the relationship between philosophy and literature is also fraught. Socrates exiled the poets from his city in speech, reminding his disciples that there is “an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry...an ancient antagonism.” In this course, we will explore the relationship between philosophy and literature by reading philosophical and literary texts in conversation with one another. Readings will include Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Goethe, Nietzsche, Rilke, Camus, Kafka, Heidegger, Celan, and Butler.

 

Great Debates in Contemporary Philosophy

 

Professor:

Archie Magno

 

Course Number:

PHIL 282

CRN Number:

90357

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Hegeman 106

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

Philosophy has experienced a veritable renewal and renaissance in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, this period has also been marked by an absence of an overarching paradigm and intense debates on key issues, both substantive and methodological. In this class, we will focus on those debates that were most dramatic, particularly those that led to actual disputes, whether oral or textual. By familiarizing themselves with the arguments of both sides, students will develop an understanding of the most pressing problems in philosophy. The course will involve an interactive staging of some of these debates (with a portion of the grade allocated for participation) and will require a detailed analysis of one of them in a final paper. Here are some of the key questions and debates that we will focus on: 1.     Is a human being finite or infinite? (Heidegger vs. Cassirer) 2.     Is mass culture emancipatory or totalitarian? (Benjamin vs. Adorno) 3.     Is "nothingness" (and other paradoxical notions) a legitimate concept? (Carnap vs. Heidegger) 4.     Does literal meaning exist? (Searle vs. Derrida) 5.     Is Modernity a repression of madness or a radicalized form of madness? (Foucault vs. Derrida) 6.     Can evil be banal? (Arendt vs. Žižek and Goldhagen) 7.     Must social struggles be universal? (Butler vs. Laclau and Žižek)

 

From Structuralism to Deconstruction

 

Professor:

Robert Weston

 

Course Number:

PHIL 323

CRN Number:

90361

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 309

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

Human Rights

As denoted by the term, “Poststructuralism” names a movement of thought developing from and responding to but also moving beyond structuralism. Drawing neat historical divisions in thought can be tricky, yet this course offers students the opportunity to examine these movements with sufficient context to identify Poststructuralism’s debts to Structuralism, as well as its critical departures. The course is divided into four parts. 1) We begin by examining core ideas of structuralism that develop in the field of linguistics (Saussure, Jakobson, Benvéniste) and tackle the basic structuralist proposition that beneath the variable surface phenomena of human culture there exist governing relations of abstract structure. 2) Pursuing the idea that human culture can be grasped by means of deep structures modeled on language, we turn to examine authors who adapt structural analysis for disciplines beyond linguistics, including anthropology (Lévi-Strauss), Marxism (Althusser), literature (Barthes), and psychoanalysis (Lacan). 3) We then turn to social constructionism and consider how Foucault views power and knowledge to operate in historical constructions of the subject. 4) Beginning with an overview of structuralism’s perceived limitations, for the remainder of the course we grapple with some core concerns in poststructuralist thought, such as the instability of meaning in language (Derrida), capitalism and desire (Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard), reality and simulation, (Baudrillard), identity and difference, including questions of sexual difference and gender construction (Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous, Butler). The course aims to familiarize students with a range of poststructuralist methodologies, including conceptual analysis, historicism, social constructionism, discourse analysis, schizoanalysis, écriture féminine, and deconstruction. Students can expect to acquire a nuanced grasp of key concepts such as metalanguage, the symbolic and the real, discourse, biopower, logocentrism, différance, alterity, desiring-production, and the precession of simulacra.

 

Hegel: A Logic for the Topsy-Turvy World

 

Professor:

Archie Magno

 

Course Number:

PHIL 346

CRN Number:

90360

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 301

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

German Studies

This is an advanced seminar devoted to a single author, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, who lived in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, is often considered to be the most important philosopher in history and the most famous representative of what is called "German Idealism." He left us a systematic body of theories, ranging from pure philosophical methods to the spheres of law and biology. According to Hegel, we live in a topsy-turvy world, where categories and roles transform into each other and flip. Slaves become masters, knowledge becomes recognition, Enlightenment becomes terror, wealth produces poverty, and substance becomes subject. However, all of this produces not a vicious circle but eventual progress, because the previous roles survive as well, and something new may emerge as a result. Hegel was a notoriously difficult writer, and his purpose was to bring together ("mediate") apparently contradictory statements. However, when one gets used to his pace, the reading becomes thrilling. It is for this reason that Hegel’s work became enormously popular and largely informed some later schools of thought such as Marxism, French existentialism, the Frankfurt School, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is the task of this class to present Hegel's ideas in an accessible way, in dialogue with his illustrious disciples such as Marx, Kojève, Marcuse, and Lacan, as well as contemporary commentators such as Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, and Robert Pippin. We will study the life and historical context of Hegel’s work and read excerpts from his major books, focusing on the two most classical ones: The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of Logic. The conceptual focus of the class will be the dialectical method. There will be a midterm test on quote recognition and a final research paper.

 

Philosophy of Language

 

Professor:

Garry Hagberg

 

Course Number:

PHIL 352

CRN Number:

90362

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Olin 309

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

We will begin with Nietzsche on the relation between literal and metaphorical meaning. Next we will read Wittgenstein's Blue Book, a powerful and short volume that begins with the question "What is the meaning of a word?" We then turn to some articles by J. L. Austin that clarify questions concerning linguistic meaning and that develop the ideas of words-as-deeds and speech acts. Turning then to Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, we will consider how close attention to language and verbal usage can clarify and inform questions concerning perception and knowledge. Austin's successor H. P. Grice comes next, with issues of linguistic implication, speaker's meaning, and hearer's understanding coming to the fore. This will lead us into selected writings by Stanley Cavell on the nature of the individual voice and its importance for philosophy. Our final readings in the seminar will be selected from recent writings that give a sense of where philosophical thinking about language is at present and how it might further develop.

 

Senior Project Colloquium

 

Professor:

Kathryn Tabb

 

Course Number:

PHIL 403

CRN Number:

90363

Class cap:

18

Credits:

1

 

Schedule/Location:

    Fri   9:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 310

 

Distributional Area:

None   

Great philosophers don’t think alone. This course supports the work of the senior project by providing a communal setting in which students will give and receive feedback on their senior project in progress. Over the course of the semester, we will work collaboratively to cultivate the habits and skills essential to a successful senior project, such as setting goals, planning and organizing your work, and revising your writing in response to comments. Students will also practice oral presentation and discussion skills. This course is required for all students enrolled in PHIL 401.

 

Cross-listed Courses:

 

Parables of Abolition

 

Professor:

Kwame Holmes

 

Course Number:

AFR 311

CRN Number:

90310

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Hegeman 300

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

American & Indigenous Studies; Experimental Humanities; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human Rights; Philosophy

 

The Meanings of Movement

 

Professor:

Yarran Hominh, Ingrid Becker and Yebel Gallegos

 

Course Number:

CC 122

CRN Number:

90534

Class cap:

30

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Campus Center MPR

 

Distributional Area:

MBV PA Meaning, Being, Value Practicing Arts D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Dance; Human Rights; Philosophy

 

Plato’s Symposium: Desire, Sexuality, And The Purposes Of Love

 

Professor:

Daniel Mendelsohn

 

Course Number:

CLAS 362

CRN Number:

90090

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

FL Foreign Languages and Lit  

 

Crosslists:

Gender and Sexuality Studies; Literature; Philosophy

 

Dignity and the Human Rights Tradition

 

Professor:

Roger Berkowitz

 

Course Number:

HR 235

CRN Number:

90343

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Reem Kayden Center 102

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

German Studies; Philosophy; Politics

 

Authority, Equality, Freedom: Introduction to Political Theory

 

Professor:

Pinar Kemerli

 

Course Number:

PS 103

CRN Number:

90267

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Human Rights; Philosophy

 

Latin American Political Theory

 

Professor:

Lucas Guimaraes Pinheiro

 

Course Number:

PS 216

CRN Number:

90369

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Hegeman 106

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists:

Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies; Philosophy

 

Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism

 

Professor:

Roger Berkowitz and Jana Mader

 

Course Number:

PS 250

CRN Number:

90365

Class cap:

30

Credits:

2

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      9:10 AM - 11:30 AM Henderson Comp. Center 106 (Sept2 – Oct 29)

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists:

Human Rights; Philosophy

 

Feminist Resurgence and Decolonization

 

Professor:

Pinar Kemerli

 

Course Number:

PS 318

CRN Number:

90374

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Olin 308

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

American & Indigenous Studies; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human Rights; Middle Eastern Studies; Philosophy

 

Theories of Racial Capitalism

 

Professor:

Lucas Guimaraes Pinheiro

 

Course Number:

PS 397

CRN Number:

90376

Class cap:

16

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      9:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 107

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists:

Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Philosophy

 

Islamic Ethics and Aesthetics

 

Professor:

Erin Atwell

 

Course Number:

REL 219

CRN Number:

90566

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM – 1:10 PM Olin Language Center 206

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value

 

Crosslists:

Middle Eastern Studies; Philosophy