Summer 2024 Session D

Undergraduate courses

2  Individual Morality and Social Justice. McIntosh. MTuWTh 10-12, Dwinelle 233.

An introduction to central theories and issues in moral and political philosophy, with a focus on questions such as the following: What does it take for an action to be morally right? Are we morally permitted to abort a fetus, kill in war, or commit suicide? Does justice require redistribution of resources, reparations for slavery, or the elimination of sex markets? Is “What’s in it for me?” an acceptable response to the demands of morality? Are there any objective moral requirements, or is it “all just relative”? Could there be anything morally wrong with pursuing a genuinely meaningful relationship and life project? No background in philosophy required.

3  The Nature of Mind. Huang. MTuWTh 10-12, Social Sci 50.

This course is an introduction to the central topics in the philosophy of mind, with a focus on the following questions: What is the mind, and how is it related to the brain or the body? How do our thoughts have content that represents the world? How is the mind shaped by the environment? How do we acquire knowledge about others’ and our own minds? What is it for our mental life to be healthy or ill? In the first half of the course, we will take a close look at the mind-body problem and some of its proposed solutions, including dualism, behaviorism, interpretationism, and functionalism. In the second half of the course, we will explore issues at the intersection of philosophy of mind and other disciplines: mind and language, knowledge of the mind, and mental health and disorders.

12A  Introduction to Logic. Duvalier. TuWTh 10-12:30, Wheeler 108.

Introduction to propositional and first-order logic. Syntax, semantics, formal deduction.

25A  Ancient Philosophy. Gooding. MTuWTh 12-2, Wheeler 220.

This course is an introduction to Ancient Greek philosophy, focusing especially on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, with briefer glances at the Presocratic philosophers, as well the main Hellenistic schools (the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics).

The ancient Greeks formulated many of the problems that continue to occupy philosophers, and so the course will provide an introduction to philosophical thinking in general. But the study of ancient philosophers is exciting not only because we share many of their philosophical concerns: We will be attempting to understand a way of thinking that is, in some respects, deeply alien to our own. By doing so, we can come to see our own philosophical assumptions and prejudices in a new light.

Some of the questions that ancients asked and which we will consider include: How should we understand the fundamental structure or nature or reality? What kinds of beings can be said to truly exist? What is it to possess knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion? What kind of life should I live and what kind of person should I aspire to be? What does justice require of us, individually and collectively?

25B  Modern Philosophy. Casleton. MTuWTh 10-12, Wheeler 120.

The 17th century was a revolutionary period in Western philosophy. Medieval philosophy came to an end and (early) modern philosophy began. The purpose of this course is to understand the new and exciting ideas that emerged in this time period, and to see how they shaped our own intellectual world. We will study the primary texts of a number of important authors starting with René Descartes and ending with Immanuel Kant. This will give us a chance to think about some of the “big ideas” in philosophy: the existence of God, the concept of the human soul or mind, and our knowledge of the fundamental nature of reality.

160  Plato. Gooding. TuWTh 3:30-6, Social Sci 174.

Philosophy 160 is an opportunity to study and discuss some of the greatest works by the one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. As taught this term, the class will focus especially on Plato’s epistemology—his account of what knowledge (as opposed to mere opinion) is, how it might be acquired, and why it is valuable. But the systematic character of Plato’s thought, and the fact that one of his central epistemic concerns is with ethical knowledge, means that, along the way, we will discuss a wide range of other philosophical topics, including: the structure of the soul (psychē); what justice requires of us; the value and meaning of love (erōs); how virtue is acquired; the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric; and what it means to live a philosophical life. We will also pay particular attention to the literary and dramatic qualities of his work, in order to consider the relationship between the Platonic dialogue as literature and as philosophy.

Our goal will be both to gain an overview of Plato’s philosophical thought and to study his writing with the care and closeness it deserves. To that end, in the first half of the course, we’ll read several of Plato’s dialogues that touch on questions about knowledge, including the Meno, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic (excerpts from IV, V-VII), and Phaedrus (excerpts). But, in the second half, we will undertake a much closer reading of one of Plato’s most exciting and philosophically sophisticated works, the Theaetetus—a dialogue which, although less widely read than works like the Symposium or Republic, has been an important source of inspiration to later philosophers, from Aristotle to Leibniz to Wittgenstein.

N188  Phenomenology. Kassman-Tod. TuWTh 1-3:30, Wheeler 200.

This course will be oriented around three major works in phenomenology: Martin Heidegger’s Being & Time, Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Our reading of these texts will bring us to reflect on certain central themes in phenomenology: intentionality and perception, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, embodiment and intercorporeality, affect and emotion, spatiality and temporality, and art and appearance. To support our reading of these texts we will consult the thoughts of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.

We will also trace controversies within the phenomenological tradition, such as questions about what it is for phenomenological inquiry to bring us ‘back to the things themselves’. In this vein we will examine how canonical phenomenological insights have been both inspirational to and questioned by contemporary writers such as Sara Ahmed (Queer Phenomenology) and Lisa Guenther (on incarceration).