DIVISION OF SOCIAL STUDIES
PHILOSOPHY
PHIL 101 Introduction
to Philosophy: Problems in Philosophy
Professor: W. Griffith
CRN: 91644 Distribution: A
Time: M Th 10:30 am 11:50 am ASP 302
of related interest: French Studies
An introduction to the problems, methods, and scope of philosophical inquiry. Among the philosophical questions to be discussed are those associated with morality, the law, the nature of mind, and the limits of knowledge. Philosophers to be read include Plato, Descartes, David Hume, William James, A. J. Ayer, Sartre, C. S. Lewis, and Lon Fuller.
PHIL 103 Introduction
to Philosophy: History of Philosophy
Professor: G. Hagberg
CRN: 91675 Distribution: A
Time: Tue Th 3:40 pm 5:00 pm OLIN 201
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.
PHIL 105 Reason, Language, & Argumentation
Professor: D. BertholdBond
CRN: 91666 Distribution: A
Time: M W 9:00 am 10:20 am OLIN 204
This is a course in informal logic. We will examine the functions of language and reasoning as they occur in everyday discourse. Beginning with an analysis of the structure of a wide variety of informal fallacies, we will turn to an investigation of how these fallacies are employed for such purposes as persuasion, deception, and indoctrination. Examples will be taken from the spheres of politics, the news media, advertising, and the writing of educational textbooks.
PHIL 213 Nineteenth Century Continental Philosophy
Professor: D. BertholdBond
CRN: 91665 Distribution: A
Time: Tue Th 10:30 am 11:50 am OLIN 204
Cross-listed: German Studies
Readings from Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (and possibly others, e.g. Fichte, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer), stressing the very different answers each philosopher gave to such shared questions as the nature of selfconsciousness, the nature and the role of the state and of religion, the relation of the individual to the community, and the nature of value.
PHIL 251 Ethical Theory
Professor: W. Griffith
CRN: 91645 Distribution: A
Time: M Th 3:40 pm 5:00 pm LC 206
Most people believe that they have one life to live, that this life will be of a roughly specifiable duration, and that it must be lived under specifiable conditions. Furthermore, they believe that they will determine and must determine by active choice the precise form their life shall assume out of an indefinite number of different possible lives. Given these assumptions, as a rational being, how should one proceed? Upon what principles should one choose to live ones life? Many philosophers have thought this question to be extremely important, a proper subject of rational thought, and answerable. Answerable or not, it is a question we all must face. We shall critically examine the answers to this question which have been given by four influential Western philosophers: Aristotle, Epictetus, Kant, and J. S. Mill.
PHIL 340 The Birth of Analytic Philosophy
Professor: R. Martin
CRN: 91896 Distribution: A
Time: Tue 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm OLIN 306
In this course we will study the emergence of what is now called Analytic Philosophy. In 1890, when Bertrand Russell came to Cambridge University to study mathematics, the so-called "English Hegelians," including Bradley and McTaggart, dominated the philosophical scene. In 1892 Russell was joined at Cambridge by G.E. Moore, who had come to study classics; the two of them mounted a full-scale intellectual rebellion against the prevailing philosophy. By 1905, the year of Russell's essay "On Denoting," the rebellion was essentially complete. Readings will be drawn from the works of English idealist philosophers and the early essays of Moore and Russell.
PHIL 372 The Philosophy of Kant II
Professor: G. Hagberg
CRN: 91676 Distribution: A
Time: W 1:20 pm 3:20 pm ASP 302
Cross-listed: German Studies
A close examination of The Critique of Practical Reason along with the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, and The Critique of Judgement. We will investigate in detail Kant's conception of duty, his arguments concerning moral reasoning, and his mature aesthetic theory. At the end of the course we will consider the relations between Kant's epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic writings in the three Critiques.
PHIL 373 The Philosophy of Hegel
Professor: D. BertholdBond
CRN: 91677 Distribution: A
Time: M 1:20 pm - 3:20 pm ASP 302
Cross-listed: German Studies
Readings from two of the
four works Hegel saw to publication, The Phenomenology of Spirit
and The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and
from two of his four posthumously published lecture cycles, Lectures
on the Philosophy of History and Lectures on Aesthetics.