PHIL BC 1001x (Section 1) What Is Philosophy?

There may not be an answer, but we can discover what makes something philosophical through studying some of the problems that have worried philosophers past and present.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL BC 1003x Philosophy and Human Existence

Philosophy and its rootedness in fundamental concerns of human existence. What is goodness? What is the self? What can we know? Is life meaningful or meaningless?
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL BC 1004y Truth, Value, and Knowledge

Are there many kinds of truth, or just one? Or none? What can we know? Are value judgments true or false? Is inquiry itself guided by values?
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL BC 1005x or y Morality, Self, and Society

How should we, as individuals, live? What would a just society be? Can disputes about moral values be settled by reason?
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA). Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL V 1401y Elementary Logic

Explicit criteria for recognizing valid and fallacious arguments,together with various methods for schematizing discourse for the purpose of logical analysis. Illustrative material taken from science and everyday life.
General Education Requirement: Quantitative and Deductive Reasoning (QUA).
3 points

PHIL V 2003x or y Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

Introductory course in the philosophy of art. What is art? Should we try to define art? Should photographs count as art? What does it mean to have an aesthetic experience? Can one person's judgment be better than another's? Why do we enjoy watching tragedies or horror movies?
3 points

PHIL V 2100y Philosophy of Education

Drawing on classical and contemporary sources, discussion will focus on the conditions necessary to produce free and responsible citizens of a just and democratic society. Readings from Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and others.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 2101x History of Philosophy I: Pre-Socratics through Augustine

Exposition and analysis of the positions of the major philosophers from pre-Socratics through Augustine.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 2110x or y Philosophy and Feminism

Is there an essential difference between women and men? How do questions about race relate to questions about gender? Is there a "normal" way of being "queer"? An introduction to philosophy and feminism using historical and contemporary texts, art, and public lectures. Focus includes essentialism, difference, identity, knowledge, objectivity, and queerness.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 2201y History of Philosophy II: Aquinas through Kant

Exposition and analysis of the positions of the major philosophers from Aquinas through Kant.
General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 2301x or y History of Philosophy III: Kant through Nietzsche

Exposition and analysis of texts by Kant and major 19th-century European Philosophers.
Prerequisites: None. General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 3237x Early Modern Philosophy

Study of one or more of the major philosophers from the Renaissance through the 18th century. Sample topics: substance and matter; bodies, minds, and spirits; identity and individuation; ideas of God; causation; liberty and necessity; skepticism; philosophy and science; ethical and political issues. Sample philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Conway, Locke, Berkely, Hume, Kant.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor. General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL W 3264x or y Hegel

Examines major themes of Hegel's philosophy, emphasizing his social and political thought. Topics include Hegel's critique of Kant, the possibility of metaphysics, the master-slave dialectic, and the role of freedom in social institutions. Readings from Fichte illuminate how Hegel's thought develops out of Kant's idealism.
Prerequisites: PHIL V2201 or W3251. Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL V 3351x or y Phenomenology and Existentialism

Survey of selected works of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Topics include intentionality, consciousness and self-consciousness, phenomenological and hermeneutical method, the question of being, authenticity and inauthenticiy, bad faith, death, and the role of the body in perception.

PHIL V 3352x or y Recent European Philosophy

Reading and discussion of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault. Topics include the crisis in metaphysics, the question of being, the structure of human existence, subjectivity, motivated irrationality, perception, the body, sociality, art, science, technology, and the disciplinary organization of modern society.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL V 3353x or y European Social Philosophy

Historical survey of European social philosophy from the 18th to the 20th century, with special attention to theories of capitalism and the normative concepts (freedom, alienation, human flourishing) that inform them. A further topic will be the relation between society and the state. Readings from Smith, Hegel, Marx, and Weber.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor. General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC).
3 points

PHIL BC 3398x or y Independent Study
Open to students who wish to pursue a project on an individual basis. The study consists in a combination of readings and papers over one semester under the direction of an appropriate instructor. The project and enrollment for the course are both subject to departmental approval.
1-3 points.

PHIL V 3411x or y Introduction to Symbolic Logic

Sentential and first-order logic; the significance of a formal system and its use for analysis of meaning and language. Technical exercises are combined with analysis and parsing of English texts. A weekly required discussion section in addition to lectures.
General Education Requirement: Quantitative and Deductive Reasoning (QUA).
4 points

PHIL V 3551x or y Philosophy of Science

Philosophical problems within science, and about the nature of scientific knowledge, from 17th- 20th centuries. Sample problems: space, time, and motion; causes and forces; scientific explanation; theory, law, and hypothesis; induction; verification and falsification; models and analogies; scientific revolutions.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor. General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 3601x or y Metaphysics

Systematic treatment of some major metaphysical topics, e.g., necessity, causality, particulars and universals, personal identity. Readings from classical and contemporary authors.
3 points

PHIL V 3653x or y Mind and Morals

Examination of theories of normative ethics against the background of studies in cognitive and social psychology. How important are empathy, self-knowledge, and cultural norms to determining what is the right thing to do? Topics include moral cognition, the rationality of certain ethical intuitions, and the possibility of altruism.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course. Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL V 3701x or y Moral Philosophy

Introduction to the central problems of moral philosophy; alternative moral ideals and their philosophical formulations; the status and justification of moral judgments; reasons for action; individual rights and social justice.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor. General Education Requirement: Reason and Value (REA).
3 points

PHIL V 3720y Ethics and Medicine

Philosophical examination of moral issues in medical theory and practice. Analysis of the ethics of the doctor-patient relationship, e.g., informed consent, truth-telling, paternalism; topics in bioethics, e.g., abortion, euthanasia, experimentation on humans; justice and access to health care; human genetics.

PHIL V 3740y Hermeneutics and the Humanities

Readings and discussion pertaining to the role of interpretation in our understanding of texts, institutions, and practices. Special emphasis on the nature of historical knowledge and competing contemporary accounts of the political and epistemological status of the humanities and social sciences. Authors include Dilthey, Gadamer, Foucault, Bourdieu.
3 points

PHIL BC 3900x Senior Seminar

Intensive study of a philosophical issue or topic, or of a philosopher, group of philosophers, or philosophical school or movement.
4 points

PHIL BC 3950x Senior Essay

A substantial paper, developing from an Autumn workshop and continuing in the Spring under the direction of an individual advisor.
4 points

PHIL BC 3951y Senior Essay

A substantial paper, developing from an Autumn workshop and continuing into the Spring under the direction of an individual adviser.
4 points

PHIL G 4227y Spinoza

Close study of the Ethics and parts of the Theologico-Political Treatise and other writings. Spinoza's Medieval antecedents and his relation to other 17th-century philosophers.
Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL G 4340x or y Topics in Phenomenology

Central issues in phenomenology-for example, intentionality, perception, and embodiment-in Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and with reference to relevant contemporary literature in philosophy and psychology.
3 points

PHIL G 4569x or y Critical Social Theory

Close reading of selected texts in twentieth-century Critical Theory. Topics include rationalization, reification, alientation, and the nature of capitalism and modernity. Theorists may include Weber, Lukacs, Horkheimer, Habermas, and others.
Prerequisites: Prerequisites for undergraduates: PHIL 3353 (or equivalent) and permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Not offered in 2009-2010.
3 points

PHIL G 4600x or y Philosophical Texts in German

Careful reading and translation of a classic German philosophical text to be chosen by the course participants in consultation with the instructor. Emphasis on the special problems of translating philosophical prose.
Prerequisites: Open to students with the equivalent of two years of college German.
2 points

PHIL G 4601x Philosophical Texts in French

Careful reading and translation of a classic French philosophical text to be chosen by the course participants in consulation with the instructor. Emphasis on the special problems of translating philosophical prose.
Prerequisites: Open to students with the equivalet of two years of college French.
2 points