17583

PHIL 111 Three philosophical problems

David Shein

M W 8:30am-9:50am

OLIN 202

MBV

HUM

Philosophers attempt to formulate general questions about ourselves, each other, and our place in the world – and to give reasoned answers to them.  This course introduces major approaches to three such questions: How do we know what we know? What sorts of things exist? What sorts of things are we? Our emphasis will be on the (often conflicting) answers philosophers have given to these questions, but at least one other question about our endeavor will also be at issue: Is there a right and a wrong way to go about answering these questions – and who has the authority to decide?  Readings will include classical formulations of and answers to these questions as well as contemporary versions and responses to them.

Class size: 22

17464

PHIL 118 Human Nature

Kritika Yegnashankaran

T Th 4:40pm-6:00pm

OLIN 203

MBV

HUM

Cross-listed: Human Rights; Mind, Brain, Behavior; Science, Technology & Society Is there a human nature? Does it matter? An ancient tradition claims that we have a detailed set of inborn capabilities and limitations, rich in implications for how we can live our lives and organize society. An opposing tradition emphasizes plasticity and indeterminacy; at the limit, it pictures us as "blank slates," ready to form ourselves or to be formed by society. What remains of this debate once we refine the claims of each side? If there is a human nature, what is it, who can speak with authority about it, and what implications does it have for changing what we are? If there isn’t a human nature, does this more freely license the genetic and technological development of what we are? We will investigate these and other questions in the course through an interdisciplinary mix of readings from philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Class size: 22

17456

PHIL 2044 History of Philosophy II

Daniel Berthold

M W 10:10am-11:30am

OLIN 204

MBV

HUM

We will examine selected texts in the history of philosophy, emphasizing historical connections and developments from the 18th to the 20th century. Authors include Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, DuBois, Russell, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Eve Browning Cole. Like this course’s predecessor (PHIL 203: History of Philosophy 1, which is prerequisite), we will keep questions of philosophical methodology in mind as we engage questions of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, the nature of consciousness and selfhood, and the philosophy of language.

Class size: 22

17466

PHIL 221 Philosophy of Science

Marco Dees

M W 11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 310

MBV

HUM

Cross-listed: Science, Technology & Society This course is an introduction to the philosophy of science, with particular emphasis on the nature of scientific experiment. Understanding this notion raises such central questions as: what is science? What is the scientific method? What is relationship between experiments and scientific theories? How do experiments provide experimental support for a given hypothesis? What are laws of nature? What is the aim of science, and does it succeed? Class size: 18

17467

PHIL 230 Philosophy and the Arts

Garry Hagberg

T Th 1:30pm-2:50pm

ASP 302

MBV

HUM

This course explores the ways that philosophers (and philosophically engaged critics) have approached issues concerning the nature and value of art. After a discussion of Plato’s influential account of representation and the place of art in society, we will turn to questions raised by painting, photography and film, and music. From there, we will turn to broader topics that cut across various art forms: Are serious (or “high”) and popular (or “low”) art to be understood and evaluated differently? How do we evaluate works of art, and why do we so often disagree on their value? And what, if anything, do the various items and activities that we classify as “art” have in common? Readings include Hume and Kant on taste, Stanley Cavell on the moving image, and Theodore Adorno and Walter Benjamin on mass culture. Class size: 22

17452

HR / PS 243 Constitutional Law: theory and comparative practice

Roger Berkowitz Peter Rosenblum

T Th 1:30pm-2:50pm

RKC 103

SA

SSCI

Cross-listed: Philosophy; Political Studies See Political Studies section for description.

17468

PHIL 245 Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

Ruth Zisman

T Th 11:50am-1:10pm

OLIN 205

MBV

HUM

Cross-listed: German Studies; Human Rights This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, three German-language thinkers who in radical and yet radically different ways revolutionized modern philosophy. Writing from the mid-19th century through the 1930s, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud each worked to reformulate notions of selfhood and subjectivity, history and politics, god and religion, art and interpretation. In this course, therefore, we will bring these thinkers into conversation with one another in order to examine the ways in which their writings form the basis of contemporary critical thought. What does it mean to be a critical thinker? What is the task of the critic? What is at stake in offering a critique? In asking these questions, we will explore the ways in which Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud each employed a critical method to carry out their intellectual projects. Class size: 22

17470

PHIL 271 Philosophy of Language

Robert Martin

T Th 10:10am-11:30am

OLIN 305

MBV

HUM

Cross-listed: Mind, Brain, Behavior Twentieth century analytic philosophy experienced what has been described as “the linguistic turn,” in which the enduring problems of philosophy were seen as arising from incorrect views about language. We will examine this and related developments, with readings in Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, Paul Grice and Saul Kripke. Prerequisite: Philosophy 237 (Symbolic Logic) or the equivalent. Class size: 18

17471

PHIL 302 A Philosophy Research Seminar

Kritika Yegnashankaran

W 1:30pm-3:50pm

OLIN 302

MBV

HUM

An intensive advanced seminar required of all philosophy majors in their junior year. A problem in contemporary philosophy is carefully selected, exactingly defined, and thoroughly researched; an essay or article is written addressing the problem, going through numerous revisions as a result of class responses, faculty guidance, and further research; the article is formally presented to the seminar, followed by discussion and debate; and the article in its completed form is submitted to an undergraduate or professional journal of philosophy or to an undergraduate conference in philosophy. The seminar integrates the teaching and practice of writing into the study of the subject matter of the seminar. Emphasis will be placed on the art of research; the development, composition, organization, and revision of analytical prose; the use of evidence to support an argument; strategies of interpretation and analysis of texts; and the mechanics and art of style and documentation. This course is required of all junior Philosophy majors. Class size: 15

17599

PHIL 302 B Philosophy Research Seminar

Kritika Yegnashankaran

Th 1:30pm-3:50pm

OLIN 310

MBV

HUM

See above. Class size: 15

17100

PHIL 322 Citizens of the World, Ancient, modern, contemporary

Thomas Bartscherer

M 4:40pm-7:00pm

HEG 204

MBV

HUM

Cross-listed: Experimental Humanities; Human Rights; Literature “I am a citizen of the world.” First attributed to the 4th century philosopher Diogenes, the concept of “global citizenship” has a complex history and urgent relevance to the present historical moment. This course explores a tension at the heart of the idea of global citizenship: the relationship between the particularity that defines membership in a given cultural and political community and the universality that characterizes the human condition. We will examine the philosophical and historical development of the concept of global citizenship and its political, ethical, and psychological implications from antiquity through to the present day. Authors to be read include Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Ibn Tufayl, Kant, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Arendt, Darwish, Coetzee, Nussbaum, and Appiah. This course will be co-taught simultaneously in Berlin and Annandale-on-Hudson. Interested students should contact the professor in advance of registration [email protected]. Class size: 15

17485

PHIL 342 Metaphysics

Marco Dees

M 1:30pm-3:50pm

RKC 115

MBV

HUM

This course will engage with central issues in the metaphysics of space and time. Does space exist in its own right or are there merely spatial relations between material objects? Is the present time objectively special? Or are dinosaurs and martian outposts real but merely temporally distant? Is time travel possible? What is time? What is space? What makes them different? Where does the direction of time come from? Class size: 16

17472

PHIL 350 Pragmatism

Garry Hagberg

M 4:40pm-7:00pm

OLIN 101

MBV

HUM

A detailed examination of the content and methods of a number of classic works of American philosophy, emphasizing issues in epistemology. Authors include Peirce, William James, Royce, Dewey, Santayana, Mead, and more recent writers. The philosophical movements discussed include transcendentalism, pragmatism, empiricism, and realism. The investigation of these works will involve problems in the philosophy of religion, ethics, aesthetics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of education, and social and political philosophy. Class size: 15

17465

PHIL 360 Feminist Philosophy

Daniel Berthold

M 1:30pm-3:50pm

OLIN LC 115

MBV D+J

HUM DIFF

Cross-listed: Gender and Sexuality Studies; Human Rights The course will examine a variety of feminist philosophical approaches to issues surrounding modern culture's production of images of sexuality and gender. Some background readings will provide a sketch of a diverse range of feminist theoretical frameworks -- liberal, socialist, radical, psychoanalytic, and postmodern -- with readings from Alison Jaggar, Simone de Beauvoir, Annie Leclerc, Christine Delphy, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, and Hélène Cixous. We will then turn to an exploration of such issues as the cultural enforcement of both feminine and masculine gender identities, the mass-marketing of popular cultural images of sexuality, gender, and race, the urban environment and women's sense of space, the intersection of feminism and environmentalism, the logic of subjection governing cultural ideals of women's bodies (dieting, exercise, clothing, bodily comportment), issues of rape, sexual violence and harassment, pornography, and feminist perspectives of different ethnic groups. We will also screen a number of films and videos, including the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, Madonna's "Truth or Dare," and documentaries on the pre-Stonewall femme-butch bar-scene culture of the 1950s and 60s, anorexia, rape on campus, the pornographic film industry, and several others. Class size: 18

17494

PHIL 361 Introduction to Caribbean Philosophy

Ariana Stokas

W 10:10am-12:30pm

HEG 201

MBV D+J

HUM

Cross-listed: Latin American & Iberian Studies This course will introduce students to the rich tradition of philosophical ideas in the Caribbean. The course will aim at doing philosophy and not only knowing philosophers. This distinction is important as areas with a legacy of epistemological colonialism, like the Caribbean, have many works that contain a substratum of philosophical ideas but have not necessarily been welcomed as canonical works of philosophy. Thus we will seek to engage in philosophy as a questioning activity that attempts to answer epistemic, aesthetic, normative and metaphysical questions. Some threads of analysis unique to this geography that this course will cover, include: the idea that philosophy is a contextual project rooted in a specific place rather than an abstract, ideal theory; the effect of colonialism on culture and education; the exploration of creolization; and the critical analysis of “modernity” as a European project. Course texts include works by Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Eugenio Maria Hostos, Julia de Burgos and Franz Fanon. This course is part of the Courage To Be College Seminar Series; students are required to attend three lectures in the in Courage to Be Lecture Series sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center.

Class size: 15