Philosophy and Humor

 

Professor:

Seth Halvorson

 

Course Number:

PHIL 114

CRN Number:

10661

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM – 4:50 PM Henderson Computer Center 101A

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

“Socrates walks into class and says…” This is a course on philosophical issues related to laughter, comedy, and humor. Historical and contemporary philosophical theories of humor as well as the psychological, political, and moral dimensions of humor will sit at the core of our inquiry. The course will explore jokes, the absurd, the forms and types of humor, as well as the possibilities of humor as a tool of personal and political transformation.  Examples from the visual, performing, and printed arts will run alongside our philosophical texts. This class is open to students new to philosophy, and will be of interest to students in the performing and written arts and students interested in the possibilities of humor as a site of activism and critique.

 

Introduction to Philosophy: Other Animals

 

Professor:

Jay Elliott

 

Course Number:

PHIL 140

CRN Number:

10253

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     8:30 AM - 9:50 AM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: Environmental & Urban Studies

We human beings have learned to think of ourselves as animals, and to think of our pets, laboratory subjects, inhabitants of the wild 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 in dialogue with a wide variety of sources, including the philosophy of Peter Singer and the fiction of Margaret Atwood.

 

Body and World: Selves and Social Sense-Making

 

Professor:

James Keller

 

Course Number:

PHIL 219

CRN Number:

10254

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

Our everyday accounts of perception, action, social norms, language, and intelligence take detached conceptual rationality as the essential feature of human life. A good deal of recent philosophy, though, explores the possibility that we might not be “rational all the way out” and that we use concepts to supplement more primary, embodied ways of knowing, being, and being with others. The first part of this course examines embodiment as basic to conceptual and nonconceptual ways that we make sense of reality. We then look at the extent to which bodies conform or not to social ideals of normalcy or reconfigure these norms. The readings that we encounter argue for a more inclusive form of realism in our accounts of perception, action, language and intelligence, and we consider a plurality of diverse embodiments and a range of understandings of the ways that bodied selves and social life are woven together. Readings include HL Dreyfus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Judith/Jack Halberstam, and others.

 

Philosophical Methods

 

Professor:

Jay Elliott

 

Course Number:

PHIL 283

CRN Number:

10258

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  

This course supports students as they make the transition from reading and writing about philosophy to doing philosophy for themselves. With that aim in mind, we read philosophical texts from a different angle, looking less at what philosophers say and more at what they do. We will attend to the ways that philosophical texts are constructed, how they express the movement of thought, and how they work on their readers. Central questions we will ask are: who does philosophy? Whom is philosophy for? Where, when, how and why is it done? Over the course of the semester, students will study philosophical texts exemplifying a variety of methods, try out a number of those methods for themselves, and put them to use in an independent research project on a topic of their choice. This course is required for all Philosophy majors beginning with the class of 2028, and should be taken before or at the time of moderation. Prerequisite: one previous course in Philosophy.

 

Madness and Philosophy

 

Professor:

Kathryn Tabb

 

Course Number:

PHIL 284

CRN Number:

10259

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 204

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

This course considers madness as a philosophical problem and provocation. Taking the form of a historical survey from the early modern period to the present, we will explore philosophical attempts to reckon with madness, and through them consider madness's relation to other states considered undesirable or even anathema to philosophy's enterprise, such as irrationality, mind-wandering, deviance, and delusion. We will pay special attention to madness's advocates. Readings may include works by Burton, Locke, Cavendish, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Coleridge, Foucault, Fanon, Sartre, Schowalter, Wilson, and Deleuze & Guattari.

 

Existentialism

 

Professor:

Ruth Zisman

 

Course Number:

PHIL 315

CRN Number:

10260

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 310

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

Existentialism is a philosophic, literary, artistic, and social movement - rooted in the 19th-century philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche - that emerged in 20th-century France during the Second World War. Living through widespread social/political upheaval and uncertainty about the future, existentialist philosophers could be found (in dark smokey cafes) asking questions about the meaning, value, and purpose of human existence. If life is meaningless, why and/or how should we live our lives? Albert Camus described his 1942 book, The Myth of Sisyphus, as “a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.” This course will likewise invite students to live and create in the midst of the desert. We will read selected writings of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Beauvoir, and Fanon - with a focus on unpacking recurring themes and concepts, such as the death of God, the threat of nihilism, the primacy of the individual, anxiety, authenticity, absurdity, and freedom - and we will consider the ways in which existentialism may provide a path forward through the upheavals and uncertainties of our own times.

 

Black Thought and the Ethics of Refusal

 

Professor:

Kwame Holmes

 

Course Number:

PHIL 329

CRN Number:

10255

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Olin Languages Center 118

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: Africana Studies; Human Rights

From the moment enslaved Igbo chose to join the ancestral world rather than experience chattel slavery in “The New” one, Black diasporic people in the West have produced rich and diverse ethics based in refusal. Alongside critical theorists Frank Wilderson, Jared Sexton, LaCharles Ward, Hortense Spillers, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Patrice Douglas, The Nap Ministry, Calvin Warren, Tiffany Lethabo-King, and everyday Black people who refuse to vote, refuse vaccines, refuse their given names or refuse to participate in the economy, we’ll ponder the feasibility, possibility, sustainability and worthwhileness of Black people's incorporation into Western nation-states, non-black majority workplaces, “safe” neighborhoods and legitimate political organizations. We’ll think through the distinction between refusal and renouncement, and the paradox presented by a philosophy of Black refusal; a phrase whose modifier reifies Western systems of participation and identification.

 

Psychoanalysis and Philosophy

 

Professor:

Archie Magno

 

Course Number:

PHIL 345

CRN Number:

10261

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 107

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

Psychoanalysis was invented by Freud at the beginning of the XX the century as a method of psychological treatment and a new psychological theory. However, with time it grew into an original philosophical teaching and became one of the most influential philosophical methodologies, leaving its traces most importantly in social thought. Everyone knows and uses such words as “unconscious”, “oedipal complex”, “identification”, “Super-Ego”: but do we understand their exact meaning or distinguish between the mythological and rational sense of Freud’s discoveries? What does it change ethically, to know that we are split and ambivalent in our desires? How can psychoanalysis help us to critically understand gender and sexuality? We will read such pathbreaking theorists as Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Lacan, Jessica Benjamin, Slavoj Žižek, and others. But the three main pillars of the course will be Freud, Lacan, and the Frankfurt school/Critical theory.

 

Contemporary Social Philosophy

 

Professor:

Yarran Hominh

 

Course Number:

PHIL 347

CRN Number:

10262

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue      12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin 107

 

Distributional Area:

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

Many areas in contemporary philosophy have undergone a "social turn" in the last twenty years, driven in part by the diversification of academic philosophers, interdisciplinarity, and a felt need to address a breaking world. How can philosophy speak to contemporary social issues? This course will be based around reading several works in progress by contemporary philosophers on a variety of issues concerning human social and political relationships and structures, both good and bad. Issues covered may include: forms of oppression or domination, including racism, patriarchy, and ableism; power, agency, and resistance to these forms; social movements; environmental catastrophe; the relationship between philosophy and other disciplines. Participants will be expected to attend the annual Social Philosophy Workshop, which will be held at Vassar College on May 9-10, 2025.

 

Feminist Philosophy

 

Professor:

Robert Weston

 

Course Number:

PHIL 360

CRN Number:

10256

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       3:10 PM - 5:30 PM Olin 101

 

Distributional Area:

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

 

Crosslists: 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.

 

Senior Project Colloquium

 

Professor:

Yarran Hominh

 

Course Number:

PHIL 403

CRN Number:

10257

Class cap:

15

Credits:

1

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon       12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Languages Center 118

 

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:

 

The Courage to Be: Courage in the Universities

 

Professor:

Maxim Botstein

 

Course Number:

CC 108 C

CRN Number:

10120

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 303

 

Distributional Area:

HA MBV Historical Analysis Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: German Studies; Philosophy

 

Perspectives on Trust

 

Professor:

Johnny Brennan, Theresa Law, and Sarah Dunphy-Lelii

 

Course Number:

CC 126

CRN Number:

10508

Class cap:

45

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Languages Center 115

 

 

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Henderson Comp. Center 101A

 

 

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

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value SA Social Analysis  

    Crosslists: Philosophy

 

Augustine, Perfectionism, and the Problem of the Will

 

Professor:

David Ungvary

 

Course Number:

CLAS 202

CRN Number:

10130

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed     10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 203

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: Literature; Philosophy; Study of Religions

 

Time, Space, and Infinity: Mathematical Perspectives on Philosophical Paradoxes

 

Professor:

Steven Simon

 

Course Number:

MATH 105

CRN Number:

11100

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    3:30 PM - 4:50 PM Hegeman 106

 

Distributional Area:

MC Mathematics and Computing  

 

Crosslists: Philosophy

 

Music and Pleasure

 

Professor:

Sean Colonna

 

Course Number:

MUS 181

CRN Number:

10467

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    1:30 PM - 2:50 PM Blum Music Center N217

 

Distributional Area:

AA Analysis of Art  

 

Crosslists: Philosophy

 

Authority, Equality, Freedom: Introduction to Political Theory

 

Professor:

Pinar Kemerli

 

Course Number:

PS 103

CRN Number:

10269

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

 Tue  Thurs    10:10 AM - 11:30 AM Olin 201

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis D+J Difference and Justice

 

Crosslists: Human Rights; Philosophy

 

The Political Life of Hope

 

Professor:

Michelle Murray

 

Course Number:

PS 350

CRN Number:

10272

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

   Thurs    12:30 PM - 2:50 PM Olin Language Center 118

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists: Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Philosophy

 

Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks: Ideology, Organizing, and Self-Emancipation

 

Professor:

Mie Inouye

 

Course Number:

PS 369

CRN Number:

10271

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

  Wed     3:30 PM - 5:50 PM Olin 107

 

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis  

 

Crosslists: Human Rights; Philosophy; Sociology

 

Mahayana Buddhism: The Great Vehicle

 

Professor:

Hillary Langberg

 

Course Number:

REL 265

CRN Number:

10249

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

 

Schedule/Location:

Mon  Wed    11:50 AM - 1:10 PM Olin 205

 

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value  

 

Crosslists: Asian Studies; Philosophy