PHIL 20000. Introduction to Philosophy of Science. 100 Units.

An introductory exploration of some of the central questions in the philosophy of science. These will include: What is (the definition of) a science—such that the natural, formal, and social sciences all count as sciences, but (for example) philosophy and literary criticism do not? How, in the natural sciences, do theory-building and observation relate to each other? Can some of the sciences be reduced to other sciences? (What is reduction of this kind supposed to involve?) What is evidence? What are the old and new problems of induction? What is a scientific (or indeed any other form of) explanation? What is a law of nature? Do the sciences make real progress? (B)

Instructor(s): B. Callard     Terms Offered: Winter

PHIL 20100. Elementary Logic. 100 Units.

An introduction to the techniques of modern symbolic logic. The focus will be on the syntax and semantics of classical propositional and first-order quantificational logic. The course will introduce methods for determining whether a given argument is valid or invalid. We will discuss how statements and arguments of ordinary discourse can be represented within the formal language of propositional and quantificational logic. There will also be discussion of some important meta-theorems for these logical systems. (B) (II)

Instructor(s): M. Malink     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Course not for field credit.
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 33500,HIPS 20700,PHIL 30000

PHIL 20120. Wittgenstein’s "Philosophical Investigations" 100 Units.

A close reading of Philosophical Investigations. Topics include: meaning, justification, rule following, inference, sensation, intentionality, and the nature of philosophy. Supplementary readings will be drawn from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics and other later writings. (B) (III)

Instructor(s): J. Bridges     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): At leas one previous courses in the Philosophy Department required; Philosophical Perspectives does not qualify. 
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 30120,FNDL 20120

PHIL 20211. Kant’s Moral Theory. 100 Units.

Bernard Williams (1993: 63) famously rejected the Kantian claim that, as moral agents, we should think of ourselves as legislators. But why did Kant make this claim in the first place? The answer is first and foremost historical. In this course, we shall start by looking at the early Enlightenment context of moral thought (David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Christian August Crusius) to which Kant responds and try to locate the Kantian approach to moral theory within this context. After that, we shall read selected passages from Kant’s main writings on moral theory, the Groundwork, the Second Critique, and the Metaphysics of Morals. Finally, we shall look at some contemporary interpretations of Kant’s moral theory and—if time allows—on some contemporary moral theories that claim a Kantian heritage.

Instructor(s): C. Fricke     Terms Offered: Autumn

PHIL 20506. Philosophy of History: Narrative and Explanation. 100 Units.

This lecture-discussion course will trace different theories of explanation in history from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine the ideas of Humboldt, Ranke, Dilthey, Collingwood, Braudel, Hempel, Danto, and White. The considerations will encompass such topics as the nature of the past such that one can explain its features, the role of laws in historical explanation, the use of Verstehen history as a science, the character of narrative explanation, the structure of historical versus other kinds of explanation, and the function of the footnote. (B) (II)

Instructor(s): R. Richards     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 35110,PHIL 30506,CHSS 35110,HIST 25110

PHIL 20610. Goethe: Literature, Science, Philosophy. 100 Units.

This lecture-discussion course will examine Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's intellectual development, from the time he wrote Sorrows of Young Werther through the final states of Faust. Along the way, we will read a selection of Goethe's plays, poetry, and travel literature. We will also examine his scientific work, especially his theory of color and his morphological theories. On the philosophical side, we will discuss Goethe's coming to terms with Kant (especially the latter's third Critique) and his adoption of Schelling's transcendental idealism. The theme uniting the exploration of the various works of Goethe will be unity of the artistic and scientific understanding of nature, especially as he exemplified that unity in "the eternal feminine."

Instructor(s): R. Richards     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): German is not required, but helpful.
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 26701,CHSS 31202,PHIL 30610,GRMN 25304,GRMN 35304,FNDL 23511,HIST 25304

PHIL 21000. Introduction to Ethics. 100 Units.

In this course, we will read, write, think, and talk about moral philosophy, focusing on two classic texts, Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. We will work through both texts carefully and have a look at influential criticisms of utilitarianism and of Kant's ethics in the concluding weeks of the term. This course is intended as an introductory course in moral philosophy. Some prior work in philosophy is helpful, but not required. (A)

Instructor(s): A. Ford     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 21000

PHIL 21009. Aesthetics. 100 Units.

This course introduces problems in the philosophy of art with both traditional and contemporary texts. Topics include the definition of art, representation, expression, metaphor, and taste. (A)

Instructor(s): T. Cohen     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor

PHIL 21210. Philosophy and Literature. 100 Units.

This course is a reading of works by a variety of contemporary authors who deal with the question of whether, and how, fiction and philosophy are related to one another. (A) 

Instructor(s): T. Cohen     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 31210

PHIL 21225. Critique of Humanism. 100 Units.

This course will provide a rapid-fire survey of the philosophical sources of contemporary literary and critical theory. We will begin with a brief discussion of the sort of humanism at issue in the critique—accounts of human life and thought that treat the individual human being as the primary unit for work in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. This kind of humanism is at the core of contemporary common sense. It is, to that extent, indispensable in our understanding of how to move around in the world and get along with one another. That is why we will conduct critique, rather than plain criticism, in this course: in critique, one remains indebted to the system under critical scrutiny, even while working to understand its failings and limitations. Our tour of thought produced in the service of critique will involve work by Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Freud, Fanon, Lacan, and Althusser. We will conclude with a couple of pieces of recent work that draws from these sources. The aim of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to engage with some extraordinarily influential work that continues to inform humanistic inquiry.

Instructor(s): C. Vogler     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 12002,ENGL 34407,PHIL 31225

PHIL 21300. Tutorial. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter, Spring

PHIL 21301. Moral Theory. 100 Units.

Why be moral? Is there any principled distinction between matters of fact and matters of value? What is the character of obligation? What is a virtue? In this course we will read, think, and write about twentieth-century Anglo–North American philosophical attempts to give a systematic account of morality. (A)

Instructor(s): C. Vogler     Terms Offered: Winter

PHIL 21402. Unhappiness. 100 Units.

"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" says Nelly in Beckett's Endgame. We shall seek to distinguish between unhappiness, as the subject of poetic works, from unhappiness as it is understood by philosophy, which, I would argue, is precisely as funny as nothing. We shall discuss some famous unhappy families. A Greek tragedy (Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus), a Renaissance tragedy (Shakespeare, Hamlet), a modern theater of the absurd (Beckett: Endgame).

Instructor(s): I. Kimhi     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 31402,SCTH 25703,SCTH 35703

PHIL 21425. Karl Marx’s Theory of History. 100 Units.

This course will investigate the theory of human history developed by Marx and Engels—Historical Materialism, as it came to be known. Though we will primarily focus on texts by Marx and Engels, we will begin by considering some of Hegel’s writing on history, and we will end by looking at different attempts to explain, apply, and develop the theory within the Marxian tradition.

Instructor(s): A. Ford     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 31425,FNDL 21504

PHIL 21511. Forms of Philosophical Skepticism. 100 Units.

The aim of the course will be to consider some of the most influential treatments of skepticism in the post-war analytic philosophical tradition—in relation both to the broader history of philosophy and to current tendencies in contemporary analytic philosophy. The first part of the course will begin by distinguishing two broad varieties of skepticism—Cartesian and Kantian—and their evolution over the past two centuries (students without any prior familiarity with both Descartes and Kant will be at a significant disadvantage here), and will go on to isolate and explore some of the most significant variants of each of these varieties in recent analytic philosophy. The second part of the course will involve a close look at recent influential analytic treatments of skepticism. It will also involve a brief look at various versions of contextualism with regard to epistemological claims. We will carefully read and critically evaluate writings on skepticism by the following authors: J. L. Austin, Robert Brandom, Stanley Cavell, Thompson Clarke, Saul Kripke, C. I. Lewis, John McDowell, H. H. Price, Hilary Putnam, Barry Stroud, Charles Travis, Michael Williams, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Instructor(s): J. Conant     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): This will be an advanced lecture course open to graduate students and undergraduates with a prior background in analytic philosophy.
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 31511

PHIL 21600. Introduction to Political Philosophy. 100 Units.

In this course we will first investigate what it is for a society to be just. Among the questions we will consider in this portion are the following: In what sense are the members of a just society equal? What freedoms does a just society protect? Must a just society be a democracy? What economic arrangements are compatible with justice? Authors to be discussed here include John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and G. A. Cohen. In the second portion of the course we will consider one pressing injustice in society in light of our previous philosophical conclusions. Possible candidates include, but are not limited to, racial inequality, economic inequality, and gender hierarchy. Here our goal will be to combine our philosophical theories with empirical evidence in order to identify, diagnose, and effectively respond to actual injustice. (A)

Instructor(s): B. Laurence     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 21601,PLSC 22600,LLSO 22612

PHIL 21611. Topics in Medical Ethics: Examining the Moral Boundaries of Medicine. 100 Units.

Constant changes in health care settings, coupled with rapid advancements in technology, lead to increasingly complicated ethical dilemmas: Who decides what—patients, doctors, or family members—and on what basis? What is the telos of the medical profession and how does it bear on what doctors can and cannot provide their patients? Can doctors refuse to provide treatment for conscientious reasons? Are abortions, assisted suicides, organ sales, and surrogacy morally permissible? In this course, we attempt to answer these (and other) pressing questions. We will commence the course by analyzing two key concepts which are utilized in medical ethics debates: autonomy and paternalism. We will examine the value of autonomy and its relation to the question of competence, the difference between autonomy and authenticity, and the vexed question of when and how paternalism is justified. We will then discuss questions surrounding the telos of the medical profession, the physician’s duties as derived from this telos, and the circumstances, if any, in which the physician can deviate from this telos. We will also examine circumstances in which physicians can refuse to provide treatment on conscientious grounds. We will then proceed to examine specific medical ethical dilemmas surrounding the beginning and end of life. We will discuss ethical questions pertaining to abortion and parents’ right to refuse medical care for their newborn children, while examining the moral standing of fetuses and newborns. We will also examine ethical questions surrounding the autonomy, well-being, and interests of demented patients, while raising broader philosophical questions pertaining to the nature of personal identity. Finally, we will discuss the moral permissibility of euthanasia and the right to assisted suicide. We will conclude the course by analyzing some of the key characteristics of markets, as well as their moral limits, and utilize our analysis in order to understand the moral status of organ sales and surrogacy.

Instructor(s): N. Ben Moshe     Terms Offered: Winter

PHIL 21700. Human Rights I: Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights. 100 Units.

Human rights are claims of justice that hold merely in virtue of our shared humanity. In this course we will explore philosophical theories of this elementary and crucial form of justice. Among topics to be considered are the role that dignity and humanity play in grounding such rights, their relation to political and economic institutions, and the distinction between duties of justice and claims of charity or humanitarian aid. Finally we will consider the application of such theories to concrete, problematic and pressing problems, such as global poverty, torture and genocide. (V) (I)

Instructor(s): D. Holiday     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 20100,HMRT 30100,PHIL 31600,HIST 29301,HIST 39301,INRE 31600,LAWS 41200,MAPH 40000,LLSO 25100

PHIL 22820. Philosophy and Public Education. 100 Units.

This course will critically survey the various ways in which philosophy curricula are developed and used in different educational contexts and for different age groups. Considerable attention will be devoted to the growing movement in the U.S. for public educational programs in precollegiate philosophy.

Instructor(s): R. Schultz     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 22825

PHIL 23205. Introduction to Phenomenology. 100 Units.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to one of the most important and influential traditions in European philosophy of the 20th century: phenomenology. The main task of this course will be to present phenomenology’s main concepts and the meaning of phenomenology’s transformations from Husserl to Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, and Henry. The fundamental credo of phenomenology consists in the emphasis laid upon phenomena given to consciousness. This emphasis coincides with the “return to things in themselves” as formulated by Husserl. What can this kind of return actually mean? And what does this claim suggest about philosophical practices prior to phenomenology, idealism, or empiricism? In what way, for Husserl, was classical philosophy not able to give access to things such as they are truly given? And what is the meaning of the idea of "givenness"? Does phenomenology fall into the so-called "myth of the given"? No future phenomenologists after Husserl will question the fundamental idea of returning to things in themselves thanks to the phenomenological importance given to phenomena, but they will question the privilege of intentional consciousness postulated by Husserl. Heidegger will expand phenomenology to the ancient question of “being” (thanks to the existential clarification of the Husserlian concept of intentionality), and Levinas will question Husserl’s and Heidegger’s approaches of phenomenology—intentional and existential—as falling into the Western problem of ontology and totality against otherness and ethics. As we will see, even if phenomenology coincides with the philosophical description of our "openness to exteriority," this openness—intentional, existential, or ethical—entails necessarily not the abandonment, but a radical redefinition of the concept of "subjective immanence."

Instructor(s): R. Moati     Terms Offered: Winter

PHIL 23305. History of Aesthetics. 100 Units.

Readings from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Collingwood among others. (A) (II)

Instructor(s): T. Cohen, C. Vogler     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 33305

PHIL 23411. Being, Time, and Otherness: A Reading of Time and Other and Existence and Existents. 100 Units.

his course will be devoted to two early Essays of Levinas, Time and Other and Existence and Existents. We will try to situate these two works in the context of the French reception of German Existentialism. The major goal of this course will be to show that the concept of Otherness in Levinas’s philosophy does not entail a simple abandonment of the Heideggerian “ontological difference” but lies in a new deduction of it that entails a new concept of Time, beyond its ontological (and Heideggerian) meaning. We will try to explain how this new deduction of the ontological difference is based on the elucidation of phenomenological events that remain hidden to the so-called “phenomenological reduction” and that requires a reform of the phenomenological method that Levinas inherits from Husserl and Heidegger. Thanks to this new method, Phenomenology can be accomplished as an investigation that is able to go beyond intentional objects.

Instructor(s): R. Moati     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 33411

PHIL 24001. Partial Information in the Theory of Meaning. 100 Units.

Language is for imparting information, but it is equally a tool for communicating ignorance. This course aims to do three things: (i) introduce some of the more well-known ways that what we say depends upon uncertain or incomplete information, (ii) survey some basic tools for representing uncertainty and show how they can fit into a general semantic theory, and (iii) push the boundaries on aims (i) and (ii).

Instructor(s): T. Gillies     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 34001

PHIL 24716. Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 100 Units.

In this seminar and a second seminar to be taught in 2015 I shall present a new reading of Nietzsche’s most famous work. Thus Spoke Zarathustra combines philosophy and poetry, wisdom and prophecy, solitude and politics, speech and deed, preaching in riddles and parody of the Gospel. The work is a challenge to faith in revelation and a task for philosophical interpretation. In the spring of 2014 I shall interpret books I and II. Books III and IV I shall teach in the spring of 2015. This procedure may be justified in light of Nietzsche’s own procedure: He published each of the books before the following book was written and in fact without announcing that one, two or even three books would follow the first one. I shall use the English translation by Graham Parkes, Oxford World’s Classics (ISBN 0199537097). Those who can read the text in German should know that I use the Colli/Montinari edition (Kritische Studienausgabe, Bd. 4, DTV, ISBN 3423301546). The seminar will take place in Foster 505 on Monday/Wednesday, 10:30am-12:50pm during the first five weeks of the term (March 31-April 30, 2014).

Instructor(s): H. Meier     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 34716,SCTH 37316

PHIL 24800. Foucault and The History of Sexuality. 100 Units.

This course centers on a close reading of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, with some attention to his writings on the history of ancient conceptualizations of sex. How should a history of sexuality take into account scientific theories, social relations of power, and different experiences of the self? We discuss the contrasting descriptions and conceptions of sexual behavior before and after the emergence of a science of sexuality. Other writers influenced by and critical of Foucault are also discussed. (A)

Instructor(s): A. Davidson     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): One prior philosophy course is strongly recommended.
Equivalent Course(s): CMLT 25001,FNDL 22001,GNSE 23100,HIPS 24300

PHIL 25000. History of Philosophy I: Ancient Philosophy. 100 Units.

An examination of ancient Greek philosophical texts that are foundational for Western philosophy, especially the work of Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the nature and possibility of knowledge and its role in human life; the nature of the soul; virtue; happiness and the human good.

Instructor(s): G. Lear     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Completion of the general education requirement in humanities
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 22700

PHIL 25110. Maimonides and Hume on Religion. 100 Units.

This course will study in alternation chapters from Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, two major philosophical works whose literary forms are at least as important as their contents. Topics will include human knowledge of the existence and nature of God, anthropomorphism and idolatry, religious language, and the problem of evil. Time permitting, we shall also read other short works by these two authors on related themes. (II)

Instructor(s): J. Stern     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): JWSC 26100,RLST 25110,HIJD 35200

PHIL 25112. Philosophy, Talmudic Culture, and Religious Experience: Soloveitchik. 100 Units.

Joseph Soloveitchik was one of the most important philosophers of religion of the twentieth century. Firmly rooted in the tradition of Biblical and Talmudic texts and culture, Soloveitchik elaborated a phenomenology of Jewish self-consciousness and religious experience that has significant implications for the philosophy of religion more generally. This course will consist of a study of some of his major books and essays. Topics to be covered may include the nature of Halakhic man and Soloveitchik’s philosophical anthropology, the problem of faith in the modern world, questions of suffering, finitude, and human emotions, the nature of prayer, the idea of cleaving to God. Soloveitchik will be studied both from within the Jewish tradition and in the context of the classical questions of the philosophy of religion. Some previous familiarity with his thought is recommended. (I)

Instructor(s): A. Davidson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): DVPR 35112,HIJD 35112,PHIL 35112,RLST 25112

PHIL 25200. Intensive History of Philosophy, Part I: Plato. 100 Units.

In this course, we will read a number of Platonic dialogues and use them to investigate the questions with which Socrates and Plato opened the door to the practice of philosophy. Here are some examples: What does a definition consist in? What is knowledge and how can it be acquired? Why do people sometimes do and want what is bad? Is the world we sense with our five senses the real world? What is courage and how is it connected to fear? Is the soul immortal? We will devote much of our time to clearly laying out the premises of Socrates' various arguments in order to evaluate the arguments for validity.

Instructor(s): A. Callard     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course, together with PHIL 26200 Intensive History of Philosophy, Part II: Aristotle in the Winter Quarter, substitutes for and fulfills the Ancient Philosophy History requirement for the Autumn Quarter: Students can take these courses instead of taking PHIL 25000 History of Philosophy I: Ancient Philosophy. Students must take them as a two-quarter sequence in order to fulfill the requirement, but students who already have fulfilled or do not need to fulfill the Ancient Philosophy History requirement may take one quarter of the course without the other.

PHIL 25403. Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott, and Their Feminist Interlocutors. 100 Units.

What can psychoanalysis teach us about human psychological development in general and human sexual development in particular? Can the development of both men and women be captured in one general psychoanalytic framework or are two different explanatory schemes required? How has psychoanalysis evolved since Freud in the way it accounts for femininity, women’s psychological development, and the role of the mother in her child’s development? In this course, we will examine leading psychoanalytic accounts of human development, as well as feminist critiques and applications of these accounts. In the first part of the course, we will study some of Sigmund Freud’s classical texts which deal with sexual development, while discussing the relations between repressed ideas, bodily symptoms, and the talking cure, as well as the seduction hypothesis, infantile sexuality, and the Oedipal Complex. We will also consider some of Freud’s late writings about female sexuality and femininity, as well as early critiques by Karl Abraham, Karen Horney, and Helen Deutsch regarding Freud’s views on feminine development. In the second part of the course, we will discuss Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic account of human development, focusing on his characterization of both pre-Oedipal development and the Oedipal Complex. We will then examine three leading French feminist accounts: Simone de Beauvoir’s attempt to reconcile femininity and agency, Luce Irigaray’s critique of Freud and Lacan and her own account of feminine subjectivity, and Julia Kristeva’s use of the semiotic and her alternative account of the pre-Oedipal period. In the third part of the course, we will examine key psychoanalytic ideas from the object relations theories of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott, while paying close attention to their emphasis on the mother’s role in child development. We will then study Nancy Chodorow’s incorporation of object relations into feminist theory in her well-known book The Reproduction of Mothering, as well as more recent applications of Kleinian and Winnicottian ideas to feminist theory.

Instructor(s): N. Ben Moshe     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 27202

PHIL 26000. History of Philosophy II: Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. 100 Units.

A survey of the thought of some of the most important figures of this period, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. (A)

Instructor(s): A. Schechtman     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Completion of the general education requirement in humanities required; PHIL 25000 recommended
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 26000

PHIL 26006. The Early Modern Mind. 100 Units.

This course will study topics in philosophy of mind in the writings of various figures from the early modern period. Topics to be discussed may include: theories of ideas, representation, consciousness, and affects (or passions). (V)

Instructor(s): A. Schechtman     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 37303

PHIL 26200. Intensive History of Philosophy, Part II: Aristotle. 100 Units.

In this couse, we will read selections from Aristotle's major works in metaphysics, logic, psychology, and ethics. We will attempt to understand the import of his distinct contributions in all of these central areas of philosophy, and we will also work towards a synoptic view of his system as a whole. There are three questions we will keep in mind and seek to answer as readers of his treatises: (1) What questions is this passage/chapter trying to answer? (2) What is Aristotle's answer? (3) What is his argument that his answer is the correct one?

Instructor(s): A. Callard     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): This course, together with PHIL 25200 Intensive History of Philosophy, Part I: Plato in the Autumn Quarter, substitutes for and fulfills the Ancient Philosophy History requirement for the Autumn Quarter: Students can take these courses instead of taking PHIL 25000 History of Philosophy I: Ancient Philosophy. Students must take them as a two-quarter sequence in order to fulfill the requirement, but students who already have fulfilled or do not need to fulfill the Ancient Philosophy History requirement may take one quarter of the course without the other.

PHIL 27000. History of Philosophy III: German Idealism. 100 Units.

This course attempts to provide a broad survey of German philosophy from the time of Kant into the 19th century. This course is an introduction to German Idealism, through readings of Kant’s first and second Critiques, Fichte’s Vocation of the Scholar, and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We will focus especially on the concept of “recognition” and examine why for Kant and Fichte the social recognition— the recognition of the Other as a free agent—becomes intelligible thanks to practical reason. Once this background is clarified, we will then discuss Hegel’s famous “Master-Slave Dialectic” and try to explain the meaning of the so-called “struggle for recognition” in the economy of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

Instructor(s): R. Moati     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Completion of the general education requirement in humanities

PHIL 27500. Kant’s "Critique of Pure Reason" 100 Units.

This course will be devoted to an intensive study of selected portions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The focus of the course will be on the Transcendental Analytic and especially the Transcendental Deduction.  We will begin, however, with a brief tour of some of the central claims of the Transcendental Aesthetic.  Some effort will be made to situate these portions of the first half of the Critique with respect to the later portions of the book, viz. the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method.  Although the focus of the course will be on Kant’s text, some consideration will be given to some of the available competing interpretations of the book. The primary commentators whose work will thus figure briefly in the course in this regard are Lucy Allais, Henry Allison, Stephen Engstrom, Johannes Haag, Robert Hanna, Martin Heidegger, Dieter Henrich, John McDowell, Charles Parsons, Sebastian Roedl, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Strawson, and Manley Thompson. Our interest in these commentators in this course will always only be as a useful foil for understanding Kant’s text. No separate systematic study will be attempted of the work of any of these commentators.  Of particular interest to us will be topics like Kant’s criticisms of traditional empiricism, the distinction between sensibility and understanding, and his account of the relation between intuitions and concepts. The aim of the course is both to use certain central texts of recent Kant commentary and contemporary analytic Kantian philosophy to illuminate some of the central aspirations of Kant’s theoretical philosophy and to use certain central Kantian texts in which those aspirations were first pursued to illuminate some recent developments in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. (B) (V)

Instructor(s): J. Conant     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 37500

PHIL 27600. The Problem of Logically Alien Thought and Its Aftermath. 100 Units.

In what sense, if any, do the laws of logic express necessary truths? The course will consider four fateful junctures in the history of philosophy at which this question received influential treatment: (1) Descartes on the creation of the eternal truths, (2) Kant's re-conception of the nature of logic and introduction of the distinction between pure general and transcendental logic, (3) Frege's rejection of the possibility of logical aliens, and (4) Wittgenstein's early and later responses to Frege. We will closely read short selections from Descartes, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein, and ponder their significance for contemporary philosophical reflection by studying some classic pieces of secondary literature on these figures, along with related pieces of philosophical writing by Jocelyn Benoist, Matt Boyle, Cora Diamond, Peter Geach, John MacFarlane, Adrian Moore, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Ricketts, Sebastian Rödl, Richard Rorty, Peter Sullivan, Barry Stroud, Clinton Tolley, and Charles Travis.

Instructor(s): J. Conant     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): The course is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students with prior background in philosophy.
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 37600

PHIL 29100. Reading Course: Philosophy. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and director of undergraduate studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form

PHIL 29200. Junior Tutorial. 100 Units.

Prerequisite(s): Open only to intensive-track majors
Note(s): Junior and senior sections meet together. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.

WINTER QUARTER: SECTION 01. Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held. In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2,000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment. While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Instructor: J. Edwards

WINTER QUARTER: SECTION 02. Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good
If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

Instructor: M. Hopwood

SPRING QUARTER: SECTION 01. Topic: What is a “Science of Logic” for Hegel?
This course is designed to introduce students to the philosophical aims and method of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel often referred to the Logic as his most important work; by providing Hegel’s account of certain fundamental concepts—his concept of the concept, his account of self-consciousness and pure knowledge, and his idea of “absolute method”—the Logic serves both as a statement of what, for Hegel, philosophy is and, at least in a certain sense, as the ground upon which his philosophical system rests. Unfortunately, however, the Logic also has a strong claim to being Hegel’s most difficult work. We will attempt to ameliorate this difficulty a bit by beginning with an oblique approach to the text that situates it in its philosophical context. Specifically, we will seek to understand the Logic as a response to a determinate set of philosophical concerns that Hegel took himself to find in Kant—an approach to the text that is made possible by the fact that Hegel himself evidently understood the Logic not only as the culminating text of his own philosophical system, but also as the culmination of a philosophical project inaugurated by Kant. In particular, we will develop the relationship between Hegel’s “speculative logic” and Kant’s “transcendental logic” by examining three lines of thought in Kant: 1) Kant’s account of spontaneity (and of the relationship between understanding and sensibility) in the B-Deduction of the First Critique; 2) Kant’s transcendental idealism as it is presented and motivated in certain passages of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Dialectic; and, 3) Kant’s treatment of the idea of an “intuitive understanding” in §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Any one of these topics could rightly be the subject of its own course, but of necessity our concern here will be to focus narrowly on the difficulties and insights that Hegel himself finds in them. (Our narrow focus also means that prior familiarity with Kant’s philosophy will not be presupposed). In the latter half of the course, we will approach the Logic directly. We will orient ourselves by beginning with selections from the introductory materials (as well as a few of the concluding passages) of both the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic. These are the places in the text that contain Hegel’s most explicit reflections on his philosophical aims and methodology. From there, we will dive into the thick of the text and examine (as “case studies”) Hegel’s treatment of the progression from teleology to life to cognition.

Instructor: T. Evnen

SPRING QUARTER: SECTION 02. Topic: Logic and Thought
How does logic relate to thought? A course in elementary logic teaches us formal methods of evaluating arguments, but does it purport to tell us anything about how we actually reason? In this tutorial we will explore the difficulty of finding the right way to answer this question positively. We will concern ourselves with debates in the philosophy of logic concerning the most fundamental distinctions through which the subject matter of logic has been defined, and we will wonder how these distinctions reflect the nature of representation, of thought, and of reasoning. Of particular importance to us will be the views advocated by Frege and Wittgenstein. We will start by looking at Frege's and Wittgenstein's struggle to define the peculiar status of logic and to distinguish its concern with the laws of thought from the concerns of psychology. In the second part of the course we will explore how logic treats thoughts and their inner structure. In the third part we will focus on two puzzles concerning the notion of justification, and ask what a conception of logic must be like such that these puzzles can become worrying for it. In the final part of the course we will discuss different conceptions of the relation between logic and thought, and contrast Frege's and Wittgenstein's approaches with more recent alternatives. Apart from Frege and Wittgenstein, we will read Conant, Weiner, Bradley, Russell, Hylton, Geach, Carroll, Prior, Stevenson, Belnap, Gustafsson, Ricketts, Quine, Harman, MacFarlane, and Stroud.

Instructor: G. Nir

Prerequisite(s): Open only to intensive-track majors
Note(s): Junior and senior sections meet together. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.

PHIL 29300. Senior Tutorial. 100 Units.

Prerequisite(s): Open only to intensive-track majors
Note(s): Junior and senior sections meet together. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.

WINTER QUARTER: SECTION 01. Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held. In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2,000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment. While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Instructor: J. Edwards

WINTER QUARTER: SECTION 02. Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good
If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

Instructor: M. Hopwood

SPRING QUARTER: SECTION 01. Topic: What is a “Science of Logic” for Hegel?
This course is designed to introduce students to the philosophical aims and method of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Hegel often referred to the Logic as his most important work; by providing Hegel’s account of certain fundamental concepts—his concept of the concept, his account of self-consciousness and pure knowledge, and his idea of “absolute method”—the Logic serves both as a statement of what, for Hegel, philosophy is and, at least in a certain sense, as the ground upon which his philosophical system rests. Unfortunately, however, the Logic also has a strong claim to being Hegel’s most difficult work. We will attempt to ameliorate this difficulty a bit by beginning with an oblique approach to the text that situates it in its philosophical context. Specifically, we will seek to understand the Logic as a response to a determinate set of philosophical concerns that Hegel took himself to find in Kant—an approach to the text that is made possible by the fact that Hegel himself evidently understood the Logic not only as the culminating text of his own philosophical system, but also as the culmination of a philosophical project inaugurated by Kant. In particular, we will develop the relationship between Hegel’s “speculative logic” and Kant’s “transcendental logic” by examining three lines of thought in Kant: 1) Kant’s account of spontaneity (and of the relationship between understanding and sensibility) in the B-Deduction of the First Critique; 2) Kant’s transcendental idealism as it is presented and motivated in certain passages of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Dialectic; and, 3) Kant’s treatment of the idea of an “intuitive understanding” in §77 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Any one of these topics could rightly be the subject of its own course, but of necessity our concern here will be to focus narrowly on the difficulties and insights that Hegel himself finds in them. (Our narrow focus also means that prior familiarity with Kant’s philosophy will not be presupposed). In the latter half of the course, we will approach the Logic directly. We will orient ourselves by beginning with selections from the introductory materials (as well as a few of the concluding passages) of both the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic. These are the places in the text that contain Hegel’s most explicit reflections on his philosophical aims and methodology. From there, we will dive into the thick of the text and examine (as “case studies”) Hegel’s treatment of the progression from teleology to life to cognition.

Instructor: T. Evnen

SPRING QUARTER: SECTION 02. Topic: Logic and Thought
How does logic relate to thought? A course in elementary logic teaches us formal methods of evaluating arguments, but does it purport to tell us anything about how we actually reason? In this tutorial we will explore the difficulty of finding the right way to answer this question positively. We will concern ourselves with debates in the philosophy of logic concerning the most fundamental distinctions through which the subject matter of logic has been defined, and we will wonder how these distinctions reflect the nature of representation, of thought, and of reasoning. Of particular importance to us will be the views advocated by Frege and Wittgenstein. We will start by looking at Frege's and Wittgenstein's struggle to define the peculiar status of logic and to distinguish its concern with the laws of thought from the concerns of psychology. In the second part of the course we will explore how logic treats thoughts and their inner structure. In the third part we will focus on two puzzles concerning the notion of justification, and ask what a conception of logic must be like such that these puzzles can become worrying for it. In the final part of the course we will discuss different conceptions of the relation between logic and thought, and contrast Frege's and Wittgenstein's approaches with more recent alternatives. Apart from Frege and Wittgenstein, we will read Conant, Weiner, Bradley, Russell, Hylton, Geach, Carroll, Prior, Stevenson, Belnap, Gustafsson, Ricketts, Quine, Harman, MacFarlane, and Stroud.

Instructor: G. Nir

Prerequisite(s): Open only to intensive-track majors
Note(s): Junior and senior sections meet together. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.

PHIL 29400. Intermediate Logic. 100 Units.

In this course, we will prove the soundness and completeness of standard deductive systems for both sentential and first-order logic. We will also establish related results in elementary model theory, such as the compactness theorem for first-order logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, and Lindström’s theorem. (B) (II)

Instructor(s): A. Vasudevan     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 39400,CHSS 33600,HIPS 20500

PHIL 29406. Algebraic Logic and Its Critics: The History of Logic from Leibniz to Frege. 100 Units.

The study of logic in the second half of the 19th century was dominated by an algebraic approach to the subject. This tradition, as exemplified in George Boole’s Laws of Thought, aimed to develop a calculus of deductive reasoning based on the standard algebraic techniques employed in mathematics. In this course, we will trace the historical development of the algebraic tradition in logic, beginning with the early attempts of Leibniz to formulate a calculus ratiocinator. We will consider the various systems of algebraic logic developed in the 19th century in the works of De Morgan, Boole, Jevons, Peirce, and Schroder, and conclude by examining Frege’s critique of Boole’s system in relation to Frege’s own Begriffsschrift. (B) (II, V)

Instructor(s): M. Malink, A. Vasudevan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 39406

PHIL 29601. Intensive Track Seminar. 100 Units.

“That’s all well and good in practice . . . but how does it work in theory?” runs a joke made popular on the UChicago campus by student T-shirts. The joke presupposes a distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge—a distinction enshrined in philosophical orthodoxy since the publication of Gilbert Ryle’s Knowing How and Knowing That (1945). In the 21st century, however, some philosophers have questioned this orthodoxy, beginning with T. Williamson and J. Stanley’s Knowing How (2001). This course will introduce intensive majors to a lively debate in contemporary philosophy, beginning with a careful reading of Ryle’s classic texts, then turning to Stanley and Williamson’s arguments that knowing how can be reduced to a form of propositional knowledge, the responses that these arguments have engendered, and ending with selections from Stanley’s extended response in his recent book Know How (2011).

Instructor(s): M. Kremer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Open only to third-year students who have been admitted to the intensive track program.

PHIL 29700. Reading Course: Philosophy. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn

PHIL 29901. Senior Seminar I. 100 Units.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Instructor(s): Kevin Davey, Staff     Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter
Prerequisite(s): Consent of director of undergraduate studies
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are writing a senior essay.

PHIL 29902. Senior Seminar II. 100 Units.

Students writing senior essays register once for PHIL 29901, in either the Autumn or Winter Quarter, and once for PHIL 29902, in either the Winter or Spring Quarter. (Students may not register for both PHIL 29901 and 29902 in the same quarter.) The senior seminar meets all three quarters, and students writing essays are required to attend throughout.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of director of undergraduate studies
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are writing a senior essay.