Philosophy 190

This course is devoted to some central questions in political philosophy and ethics: authority, neutrality, rights, equality, pluralism, consequentialism and well-being. It is focused particularly on a close reading of Joseph Raz’s The Morality of Freedom. This is a proseminar – a novel format of class, different from most classes in our department. Instead of a standard lecture format, classes will be focused on the texts that form the basis of the course. The aim is that we should all together get to grips with these texts, making sense of what they claim and how they argue for it, by discussing collaboratively readings as we proceed. Participation is expected in every class. Classes in this format demand preparation in advance: it is essential that you do the set reading and think hard about it before each class. This is an upper-level philosophy course. Students should be philosophy majors and must have taken at least two prior upper-division philosophy courses. NOTE: as taught this semester, Phil190 satisfies the ethics requirement for the philosophy major.