CRN	93006	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 103
Title	History of Philosophy
Professor	Garry Hagberg
Schedule	Tu Th 3:00 pm -4:20 pm OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Classical Studies

A critical examination of the work of some major figures in the history of philosophy, emphasizing historical continuities and developments in the subject. Authors include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Nietzsche, and Russell.

CRN	93007	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 104
Title	Introduction to Philosophy: Multicultural Perspective
Professor	Daniel Berthold
Schedule	Wed Fr 8:30 am -9:50 am OLIN 201

Cross-listed: CCSRE

This course is an introduction to such major themes in the history of philosophy as the nature of reality and our capacity to know it; issues of ethics and justice; and conceptions of how one should live. Readings will include selections from a diverse range of traditions, including Western, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, African, Native American, Latin American, and feminist texts.

CRN	93008	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 108
Title	Introduction to Philosophy
Professor	Mary Coleman
Schedule	Mon Wed 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 201

Western philosophers address questions that most of us naturally find puzzling, such as: do we have free will?; do we know what the world around us is really like?; does God exist?; how should we treat one another? We will critically examine historical and contemporary texts which address these and other central themes of the philosophical tradition.

CRN	93217	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 210
Title	Personhood in Modern Philosophy
Professor	Mary Coleman
Schedule	Tu Th 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 204

Who am I? Am I the sum total of my experiences? Or am I something distinct from my experiences, the subject who has them? Am I the same person I was when I was three years old? If so, what is this me that I am still am? Would I continue to be the same person if I lost all of my memories of the past? Or if my personality changed radically? Is it conceivable that I could change bodies with another person and remain the same person I am now? Is it conceivable that I could survive the death of my body? We will focus on these and related questions about the nature of persons. We will study attempts to answer them by philosophers of one of the most fertile and influential periods in the history of Western philosophy, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Our readings will come from such philosophers as John Locke, David Hume, René Descartes, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.

CRN	93010	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 256
Title	Environmental Ethics
Professor	Daniel Berthold
Schedule	Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am OLIN 201

Cross-listed: Environmental Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, Human Rights

The course will explore a variety of ethical issues surrounding the relation of human beings to their environment. We will look at several far‑reaching critiques of the anthropocentric character of traditional moral paradigms by deep ecologists, ecofeminists, social ecologists, ecotheologians, and others who argue in different ways for fundamentally new accounts of the moral standing of nature and the ethical duties of humans to non‑human creatures and things. While we will concentrate on contemporary authors and debates, we will begin by looking at the precedents and origins of the contemporary scene in such nineteenth‑century writers as Henry Salt, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and E. P. Evans, and early twentieth‑century writers like Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson. Throughout our discussion of opposing theoretical constructs, we will give attention to the implications for social policy, legal practice, and political action.

CRN	93139	Distribution	A/D
Course No.	PHIL / CLAS 260
Title	Confucius and Socrates
Professor	William Mullen
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm LC 206

Cross-listed: Asian Studies, Classical Studies

Confucius (551–469 BC) and Socrates (470-399 BC) stand at the head of the Chinese and the Greek philosophical traditions, above all in the realm of ethical and political inquiry. The accounts left of their activity, and the schools of thought which rose around them during their lives and in the first centuries after their deaths, in both cases give evidence of two real historical figures whose time was consumed in passionate striving to find out what is the best life for a human being and the best form of government for human flourishing. And there is both a Confucian and a Socratic “problem”: we cannot be sure that any words attributed to either were actually theirs, and see growing differences among the subsequent thinkers and schools which pursued their work in either’s name. In search of Confucius we will read the complete Analects and selections from Mencius and Xunzi; of Socrates, dialogues by Plato and Xenophon and key passages in Aristotle and the Cynics. We will read the two sets of texts concurrently and sometimes pause to ask comparative questions. What differences can be seen in the accounts given of the virtues each thinker put forward as most essential to fulfilling one'’ humanity? Why is neither an advocate of democracy? Could Confucius and Socrates be friends? Open to first year students.

CRN	93078	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 352
Title	Philosophy of Language
Professor	Robert Martin
Schedule	Fr 10:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 303

How is it that we can use words to mean something, or express a thought about something? Is there room within a plausible worldview for the existence of such things as meanings? What is the connection between language and the world? What is the right analysis of definite descriptions ("the book on the table"), indefinite descriptions ("a book on the table") and proper names (Moby Dick)? What are speech acts (e.g., making a promise, issuing a warning, asking a question), and how are they related to other kinds of human action? Students read and discuss some of the seminal works of the "linguistic turn" of the 20th century: essays by Frege, Russell, Austin, Wittgenstein, Kripke, and others.

CRN	93012	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 357
Title	Law and Ethics
Professor	William Griffith / Alan Sussman
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm -3:50 pm ASP 302

Cross-listed: Human Rights

This course will combine elements of two disciplines, law and philosophy, and will be taught jointly by a member of the philosophy program and a constitutional lawyer. Issues to be studied, broadly conceived, include justice, equality, liberty, and responsibility. More specifically, these will include affirmative action, sexuality, the death penalty, the right to die, and the insanity defense. We shall study opinions of the United States Supreme Court, and judges on Circuit Courts, as well as works by philosophers, including Aristotle, J. S. Mill, John Rawls, H. L. A. Hart, Lon Fuller, Isaiah Berlin, and Ronald Dworkin. Enrollment limited to 15. Permission of instructor required. Priority for admission will be given to students with upper-college standing and/or a previous course in philosophy.

CRN	93009	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 371
Title	The Philosophy of Kant
Professor	William Griffith
Schedule	Mon Wed 3:00 pm -4:20 pm HEG 300

Cross-listed: German Studies

An introduction to one of the classic texts of western philosophy, Kant’s magnum opus, The Critique of Pure Reason. Prerequisite: a previous course in philosophy and permission of the instructor.

CRN	93011	Distribution	A
Course No.	PHIL 393
Title	Philosophy and the Arts: Three Foundational Texts
Professor	Garry Hagberg
Schedule	Fr 1:30 pm -3:50 pm OLIN 101

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts

Beginning with a close reading of Aristotle’s Poetics, we will explore the expansion of the concept of artistic representation derived from Plato, the nature and causes of our emotional response to the arts and the experience of aesthetic catharsis, the power of form as a determinant of the power of art, and the epistemological value of the arts. We will then turn to an investigation of David Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste”, placing it in its eighteenth century intellectual context and examining the delicate interplay of subjective and objective considerations in aesthetic perception. After analyzing Hume’s contribution to the problem of the justification of critical judgement, we then turn to Kant’s Critique of Judgement, in which many of the foregoing issues figure; we will add to the Kant’s analysis of the sublime in art and nature. We will end with a close look into the contribution Kant’s theory of the mind makes to our understanding of art and aesthetic perception.

Prerequisites: Upper college standing and a previous course in either Philosophy and the Arts or in Kant; some reading of Aristotle in your background would also be helpful.