Easter 2006

Note: All 100- and 200-level courses except Logic (Phil. 201) meet the general distribution requirement in Philosophy.

PHILOSOPHY 101A: WHY BE MORAL? (MOSER)

We typically suppose that there are some things we ought to do, other things we ought not to do; that some people, characters, and actions deserve our praise while others do not; and that some lives are better or more meaningful than others. These are all suppositions about ethical demands and ideals operating in our lives. But what gives these demands and ideals their authority? Why should we take them seriously? In other words, why be moral? In considering how best to understand and address this question, we'll look at classic texts by Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as various films related to these texts.

PHILOSOPHY 101B: CLASSICAL THEORIES AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES (GARLAND)

We will study works by three influential thinkers in the history of Western thought-Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche. We will also look at representative ethical theories and see how these theories illuminate contemporary debates on equality and discrimination, globalization, animal rights, environmental issues, and violence and terrorism. Throughout the course, we will look at various films that have philosophical themes, such as "Being John Malkovich," "Field of Dreams," and "Unforgiven." There will be two hour-exams, several short papers, a final exam, and weekly journals. There will also be several class debates.

PHILOSOPHY 101C: THE MEANING OF LIFE (PETERS)

This course will examine a diversity of philosophical and literary perspectives on the meaning of human life. We will study philosophical and literary texts, as well as films that present rival accounts of what it means to be human. We will strive to understand the rationality of these diverse accounts and appreciate their distinctive insights into the meaning of human existence. Major authors we will read are Plato, Wendell Berry,  Pascal, Phillip Yancey, Nietzsche, and Thomas Moran. Students will be expected to think critically and to clarify and defend their own philosophical worldview.  We will investigate as well some specific contemporary issues, applying the philosophical perspectives we have studied to some of the major cultural and social questions being debated in our society.

PHILOSOPHY 101D: INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY: GOD, SELF, AND RATIONALITY (SIMMONS)

In this course, we will explore what it means to do philosophy by asking some of the truly "big" questions. For example: "What does it mean to be a self?" "Can the existence of God be proven?" "Do I have an ethical duty to other people?" and "What is the relationship between belief, knowledge, and truth?" In order to wrestle with these questions we will be reading selections from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, and contemporary philosophers Rorty and Wolterstorff. Although this material is meant to provide an historical introduction to the broad movements of western philosophy, the course will be primarily devoted to learning to think critically and write analytically. Rather than merely observing what philosophers down through the years have done, we will attempt to actually enter the philosophical conversation itself by adding our voices to the debates. The class will depend heavily upon in-class discussion and require careful reading. The assignments for the course will consist of two short papers and a final exam.

PHILOSOPHY 201: LOGIC (CONN)

An introduction to informal, propositional, and predicate logic. We will begin by examining the different kinds of arguments which are advanced in ordinary language, and with the various ways in which apparently successful (i.e., psychologically convincing) arguments can be logically defective. We will subsequently apply these principles to actual examples of good and bad arguments which have been advanced in a variety of contexts. We will, for example, examine arguments concerning the innocence of O.J. Simpson, the nature of poetry, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the existence of God. In the second half of the class we will examine two increasingly powerful methods of formally representing and evaluating the logical structure of these sorts of arguments. We will begin each class by examining logic problems from past GRE and LSAT exams.

PHILOSOPHY 204: MODERN PHILOSOPHY FROM DESCARTES TO KANT (CONN)

An introduction to Western Philosophy during the 17th and 18th Centuries, through an examination of works by René Descartes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, Thomas Reid and Immanuel Kant. The following themes will be most prominent: the nature of knowledge and perception, the existence and nature of God, the existence of the material world, the origin of linguistic meaning, the mind/body problem, and the problem of personal identity. We will start with Descartes' Meditations, in which he employs radical skeptical hypotheses to prove that he exists, that God exists, that the empirical world exists (and hence that his body exists), and finally, that his mind and body must be two distinct things. We will subsequently examine Locke's answer to Cartesian rationalism. On his view, many of Descartes' philosophical positions are either meaningless or unknowable. Armed with his empiricist conceptions of knowledge and meaning, he subsequently attempts to give better arguments for the existence of God and the material world. Berkeley attempts to show that the latter objective is itself inconsistent with this empiricist agenda. On his view, it makes no sense to affirm the existence of mind-independent, physical objects; he instead argues that reality includes only two sorts of things: spirits (God and souls) and ideas. Hume takes this empiricist agenda one step further: he argues, first, that any talk about selves or spirits or substances is incoherent; second, that only ideas exist (since minds are nothing more than collections of ideas); and third, that we don't know anything beyond our past and present mental states. In the final phase of the course we will examine two radically different responses to Humean skepticism. In particular, we will examine Thomas Reid's defense of direct realism, and Immanuel Kant's defense of transcendental idealism. Although Reid and Kant agree that we can know a great deal about the empirical world, Reid contends that we are directly aware of this world (and hence that it exists independently of this awareness), while Kant maintains that the empirical world is merely an appearance of some deeper, underlying reality which cannot itself be known or experienced.

PHILOSOPHY 230: ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS (PETERS)

This course will examine a rich variety of philosophical, literary, and religious perspectives on the proper place of human beings in the natural world.  Some of the major questions we will explore will include: "What are the root forces of environmental disintegration and how might they be reversed?", "Why should human beings care about the systematic abuse of human and natural communities? ", " and "What are the human and environmental costs of the global corporate treatment of nature as a mere commodity for human consumption?"  .Students will be required to clarify and defend their own environmental ethic and write several short papers.

PHILOSOPHY 252: EXISTENTIALISM (SIMMONS)

This class will be an in-depth consideration of the philosophical attitude and movement known as "Existentialism." We will begin by exploring the philosophical roots as found in the work of such 19 th century thinkers as Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, then turn to the 20 th century development of the existentialist school in the works of Heidegger and Sartre - paying close attention to the relationship between existentialism and phenomenology - and finally look at the contemporary inheritors and critics of existentialist thought. The primary themes that we will investigate are selfhood, meaning, freedom, faith, despair, and rationality. Questions that will guide our semester include: "What does it mean to understand selfhood as a struggle?" "Does existence have meaning after the 'Death of God'?" "Is Christian existentialism possible?" "Why is faith best understood as a 'risk'?" And, "How can rationality be advocated by a movement that is critical of speculative reason?" Turning to critiques of existentialism, we will investigate whether existentialism is merely irrational, morally nihilistic, and ultimately un-philosophical. This course will depend heavily on class participation and close textual analysis. The assignments will include two short papers and a final exam.

PHILOSOPHY 310: FAITH IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION (PETERS)

We will examine selected literary texts and critical essays of Flannery O'Connor, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, works which explore the meaning of religious faith in human life.  In the course of this exploration, we will consider the different ways in which story, poetry and philosophy raise profound religious and philosophical questions and seek to give us insights about the proper role of faith in human life.  We will give special attention to the vision of the grotesque in O'Connor, the importance of myth and fantasy in Lewis and Tolkien.  This class will be conducted as a seminar with occasional presentations by students. Students will be required to write a weekly journal and a several medium-length essays. 

PHILOSOPHY 311: AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY (GARLAND)

This course will cover seven major American philosophers and movements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. First we will look at the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau; next we will investigate the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, and the anti-pragmatism of George Santayana. We will end the semester with a consideration of the environmental vision of Wendell Berry. Class will be conducted as a seminar that combines lectures and class discussion, and students will present class reports from time to time. There will be two hour exams during the semester and a term paper project, and students will be asked to hand in weekly journals. There will also be a take-home final exam.

PHILOSOPHY 411: WITTGENSTEIN (MOSER)

Ludwig Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work is often said to have revolutionized philosophy twice: first, in his early work, with the publication of the Tractatus , and later with the ideas that went into the Philosophical Investigations . We'll look at his work during both periods, focusing, among other things, on (a) his hostility toward philosophical theory, and his substitution for such theorizing of a therapeutic mode of engagement with philosophical questions, (b) his contention that philosophical questions and problems are products of confusions concerning language, and (c) the ethical import of his work. The class will be conducted as a seminar, with student presentations and an independent paper project.