CRN |
14089 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 101 |
||
Title |
Problems
in Philosophy |
||
Professor |
William Griffith |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm ASP 302 |
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.
CRN |
14092 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 106 |
||
Title |
Introduction
to Philosophy: Reality, Knowledge and Value |
||
Professor |
Robert Martin |
||
Schedule |
Wed Fr 11:30 am - 12:50 pm OLIN 201 |
An introduction to some key issues in three of the
main areas of Western philosophy:
metaphysics, epistemology and value theory. Readings in each area will be drawn from the classical and modern
traditions: for example, Plato,
Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Bertrand Russell. In all cases we will attempt to see the connections between the
traditional problems of philosophy and the concerns of our own lives.
CRN |
14002 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 230 |
||
Title |
Philosophy
and the Arts |
||
Professor |
Garry Hagberg |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm OLIN
202 |
Cross-listed: Integrated Arts
We will critically investigate a wide range of
theories and problems in the philosophy of art, emphasizing issues of artistic
meaning. Among the topics to be discussed are whether there exists an aesthetic
experience unique to the art world; the nature of representation and mimetic
theories of art; the role of expression in artistic definition and criticism;
formalism and the form/content distinction; the logic of aesthetic evaluation
and its relation to ethical argument; and subjectivity and objectivity in
aesthetic perception. We will examine both classical and contemporary theories
as they apply to questions arising out of architecture, dance, drama, film,
literature, music, painting, and photography.
CRN |
14006 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 237 |
||
Title |
Symbolic
Logic |
||
Professor |
William Griffith |
||
Schedule |
Tu Fr 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm HEG
300 |
Students will learn to use several different
symbolic systems, some developed thousands of years apart, in order to formally
test the validity of deductive arguments expressed in ordinary language of
various levels of complexity. Beginning
from the common notion of a valid argument the course progresses through: truth tables; a system of natural deduction
for propositional logic, which is proven to be consistent and complete;
Aristotelian logic - immediate inference, mediate inference, the square of
opposition; Venn diagrams; monadic quantificational theory; general
quantificational theory, including identity.
At each level the interrelationship between formal systems, their
consistency and completeness being kept in view, and their interpretation in
English is stressed. The course ends with a discussion of the extension of such
work into higher orders of logic and the foundations of mathematics and the
surprise (at the time) of Gödel’s incompleteness proof. No prerequisite.
CRN |
14090 |
Distribution |
A/C |
Course
No. |
PHIL 240 |
||
Title |
Liberalism
and Its Critics |
||
Professor |
Mary Coleman |
||
Schedule |
Mon Wed
10:00 am – 11:20 am HDR 302 |
Cross-listed:
Human Rights
Liberalism is the dominant
trend in the political thought of Modernity. It has profoundly shaped our
political institutions and our thinking about them. However, since its birth,
it has been at the center of political and theoretical debate. In this course,
we will explore some of the central questions of this debate: What role(s) does
the state play in the lives of individuals? Is its role solely coercive, or
does it also facilitate the realization of human potential? What is the nature
of political freedom? What forms of government are preferable? What is the
source of civil laws? When and why do you obey the state and its functionaries?
What is the ground of their power over you? We will study these questions
through the writings of Locke, Mill, Kant, Constant, Hayek, Rawls, Rousseau,
Hegel, Marx, and Schmitt. This course
is part of the Bard-Smolny Virtual Campus Project. Bard students will use
innovative technologies, including live videoconferencing, to work with
students taking the same course concurrently at Smolny College in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Enrollment in the Bard section of the course will be
limited to 10 students.
CRN |
14088 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 251 |
||
Title |
Ethical
Theory |
||
Professor |
William Griffith |
||
Schedule |
Tu Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am ASP 302 |
What is it to be a “moral” being, i.e., what is the
“moral dimension” of our lives? What
are its key elements? Is there such a
thing as “happiness,” “the good life,”
“virtue,” “wisdom?” Are there “rights,” “duties?” If so, how do we recognize them?
We will critically examine the primary texts of four philosophers whose
thoughts on these fundamental questions have had a permanent influence on
western philosophical thought:
Aristotle, Epictetus, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill. (No prerequisites. Open to First Year students.)
CRN |
14080 |
Distribution |
A/B |
Course
No. |
PHIL / THEO 301 |
||
Title |
Working Theologies: Søren Kierkegaard
|
||
Professor |
Daniel Berthold / Nancy Leonard |
||
Schedule |
Wed 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm OLIN
310 |
Cross-listed: Theology
This seminar will explore some of the main paths
taken by the Danish Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard towards
theology. The seminar, limited to
fifteen, is planned for students
concentrating in theology as well as moderated philosophy majors and others
interested in the subject. While Kierkegaard rejected the title of “theologian,”
and called himself “essentially a poet” (or sometimes a “humorist”), his poetic
experimentation -- even in the most apparently non-theological “aesthetic”
works of many of his pseudonyms, and even in the many tracts written in the
last five years of his authorship which together make up his Attack Upon Christendom -- was, in his
words, “from first to last in the service of God.” We will commit ourselves to
interrogating just what this service amounted to -- a commitment requiring our
willingness to enter the labyrinth, since whatever else it was, Kierkegaard’s
service to God was exquisitely complicated by his commitment to the authorial
strategy of “indirect communication,” a mode of discourse marked by disguise,
hidden intentions, the proliferation of competing voices, and what he called
“the disappearance of the author.” Readings will be drawn from such
pseudonymous works as Either / Or (Victor Eremita), Repetition (Constantine Constantius), Fear and Trembling (Johannes de Silentio), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Johann Climacus), Training in Christianity and The Sickness Unto Death (Anti-Climacus),
as well as some of the sermons or “Edifying Discourses” written under
Kierkegaard’s own name. We will also read a variety of writers who have engaged
Kierkegaard’s authorship in ways central to the several projects of modernity
and postmodernity, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel
Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Sylviane Agacinski (and other feminist commentators).
CRN |
14091 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 360 |
||
Title |
Free
Will |
||
Professor |
Mary Coleman |
||
Schedule |
Mon 4:00 pm - 6:20 pm OLIN
307 |
Do you have free
will? Do you ever freely choose what to do? It may seem obvious that you do.
Couldn’t you have chosen to eat something other than what you actually had for
dinner last night? Or it may seem obvious that you don’t. Aren’t all of your
decisions and actions ultimately determined by a confluence of your genetic
make-up and the social environment in which you find yourself? What is free will?
Do we have it? What difference does it make whether we have it or not? The
problem of free will is one of the most familiar, enduring, and difficult
problems of western philosophy. We will begin by studying some classic texts
that offer a wide range of answers to these central questions about free will,
but we will spend the majority of the semester studying “state of the art”
writings about free will from such philosophers and philosophically-minded
thinkers as Daniel Dennett, Robert Kane, Benjamin Libet, Timothy O’Connor, and
Daniel Wegner.
CRN |
14004 |
Distribution |
A |
Course
No. |
PHIL 403 |
||
Title |
Philosophy
Research Seminar |
||
Professor |
Garry Hagberg |
||
Schedule |
Th 7:00 pm - 9:20 pm ASP
302 |
An intensive advanced seminar primarily for senior
majors in philosophy. The fundamental
purposes of the seminar are to: (1) carefully select, exactingly define, and
thoroughly research a problem in contemporary philosophy (including the
contemporary interpretation of historical authors), mastering selected recent
writing directly relevant to that problem; (2) write an essay or article on
that problem, going through numerous revisions and refinements as a result of
class responses, faculty guidance, and further research; (3) formally present
the article to the seminar, followed by detailed discussion and philosophical
debate; and finally (4) submit the article in its most complete form to an
undergraduate or professional journal of philosophy or to an undergraduate
conference in philosophy. In addition
to working on the article throughout the semester, each participant will be
expected to read and comment on all of the other articles produced in the
seminar and to prepare for the discussions following each presentation. All the standard and relevant specialized
research tools, bibliographies, and reference works in philosophy will be
introduced and used as needed in the course of developing the papers. In
addition, students will gain familiarity with the various aspects of journal
editing and publishing in connection with Philosophy
and Literature, edited in Bard’s philosophy program. May be of particular interest to those
contemplating graduate work in the field.