Courses in Philosophy

PHIL 101R Introduction to Philosophy/TBA
This course introduces students to some of the major philosophical views in the history of Western thought beginning with Plato and ending with some contemporary thinkers. We will discuss questions regarding the nature of truth, god, the “good” life, freedom, beauty, the relationship between the mind and the body and other topics of interest.

PHIL 101S Introduction to Philosophy/TBA
An exploration of a significant range of the main areas of philosophy, e.g., the nature of reality, knowledge, mind, society, life, values.

PHIL 101T Introduction to Philosophy/TBA

PHIL 105/AAAS 105 "H" Intro. to Asian Philosophy/GOODMAN

Covers the basic concepts and teachings of several Asian traditions, including Hinduism, Confucianism and Daoism, with a focus on Buddhism. Readings to include scriptural texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao De Jing, and selections from the Pali Canon, as well as the works of Asian philosophers, such as Vasubandhu, Mencius, Zhuang Zi and Shantideva. Examines such issues as the existence of God, the nature of truth, and the difference between right and wrong.

PHIL 111A/COLI 180P/JUST 280P/FRIEDMAN
This reading-intensive introductory course will explore the many philosophical (and some methodological) questions which emerge from a study of religious thought. Topics will include the nature of religious subjectivity, divinity, prayer, sacrifice, and faith. We will study some central biblical and non-Western stories and narratives and literary, philosophical, and theological responses to them. Students will practice techniques of textual exegesis and directly engage texts.

In addition to the content of this course, students will practice the process skills of reading and writing critically. Students will be expected to read the texts carefully and to come to class prepared to ask and answer questions. The course will require at least 100 pages of reading each week.

PHIL 121 Methods Of Reasoning/Sciaraffa
The logic of critical thinking as it is employed in science and other related areas such as law and public policy. Topics include informal fallacies, deductive and inductive inferences, models, nature of evidence and analogical reasoning.

PHIL 146 Law and Justice/ PENKSY
An introductory, lecture-based course exploring topics in classical, modern, and contemporary moral issues, law and legal philosophy, politics, and most importantly the intersections between these topics. Readings include both philosophical texts and modern and contemporary legal documents including Supreme Court and lower court opinions. Students are expected to gain a familiarity with the scope and depth of political and moral philosophy and how they intersect with controversies in law, with how to read and interpret philosophical and legal texts, how to identify and evaluate arguments, and how to write short essays responding to interpretative and evaluative questions. Regular attendance at lectures and weekly discussion sections is a requirement along with in-class examinations and quizzes. Required texts to be announced.

PHIL 148A Medical Ethics/ GOTLIB
This course provides an introduction to a philosophical exploration of moral commitments and conflicts arising at the intersection of medical theory, practice, and policy. We will engage in the analysis of concepts of health and disease, problems surrounding life-and-death decisions, issues of professional and client relationships, as well as the difficulties involved in the allocation and rationing of limited resources. Topics to be discussed may include patient rights and autonomy, informed consent, assisted suicide, genetic therapy, HIV/AIDS, and others.

Philo 201/SCHL 280F Plato and Aristotle/PREUS
Description: Introduction to Greek Philosophy to 323 BCE. Brief introduction to philosophy before Socrates; more extensive study of Socratic dialogues and Plato’s philosophy; general introduction to Aristotle’s science, metaphysics, and ethics. For majors and non-majors. Many short quizzes and three equal essay exams.
No prerequisites or co-requisites. This course is appropriate for first year students.
Books:
Curd & McKirahan, A Presocratics Reader, mostly not available online.
Plato, Complete Works, ed. Cooper, dialogues also available online.
Aristotle, A New Aristotle Reader, ed. Ackrill, most readings also available online.
and on Blackboard

PHIL 340: Ethical Theory/KNAPP
This course will be an introduction to contemporary theories of morality. Our first concern will be what it is to act rightly. Central topics here will be the theory of value and the moral constraints on promoting value. Theories covered in this portion of the class will include consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. Our second concern will be the very nature of morality itself. The central question here will be what it is we are discussing when we discuss whether an act is right or wrong, a person virtuous or vicious or an outcome good or bad. In response to these questions, we will consider various forms of subjectivism, cultural relativism, expressivism and realism.

PHIL 373, AAAS 375, COLI 321P, PIC 280F,WOMN 312A
NEGOTIATING CONTEMPORARY ‘ASIA’/ALLEN
Is ‘Asia’ a narrative of one’s own making? Can it ever be? Contemporary ‘Asia’, not as simply given but as constantly in formation through complex, multi- layered narratives of continent, nation, diaspora, colonization and globalization, is the focus of the course.

How is contemporary ‘Asia’ produced, if it is, by the poetics and politics of how we know, remember, imagine? by the tensions, the upheavals, and the shifts of power and meaning that these activities engender? Where cultural, economic, and artistic interpretations of ‘Asia’ offered by new generations produce a plurality of ‘Asias’, what sorts of differences does that make?

The class will emphasize recent transnational feminist, queer, and diasporic theory and cultural interpretation, film, new media technologies, and activist practices by writers and visual artists such as Amitava Kumar, Rey Chow, Trinh T:. Minh-ha, Deepa Mehta, Myung Mi Kim, Kimiko Hahn, Gayatri Spivak, Kim Soo-Ja.
Prerequisites: One course in Philosophy or one course in Asian Studies, Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, or Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

JUST 411A/ PHIL 411A/COLI 380V/ PHIL 680M Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Religion: Immanence and Transcendence / FRIEDMAN
This seminar will examine central questions in the philosophy of religion. Topics may include, creation, revelation, law, evil, and redemption.
Figures will include: Job, Maimonides, Dilthey, Husserl, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Wyschogrod

PHIL 431/510H Metaphysics/GOODMAN
The philosophy of scientific realism teaches that there is a real, objectively existing external world whose nature is wholly independent of our words and concepts, and that scientific theories can show it to us as it actually is. We will study several versions of scientific realism and investigate their conceptions of truth, reality, knowledge and objectivity. Then we will examine critiques of scientific realism by neopragmatist philosophers such as Hilary Putnam. Through class discussions, students will explore these different views and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

PHIL 455 Advanced Philosophy of Law/SCIARAFFA
Critical study of legal concepts and philosophical problems arising within the law; criminal responsibility, nature of punishment, nature of law. Prerequisite: PHIL 345.

PHIL 456R/460R Nietzsche on Society and Culture/WEISS
A critical study of Nietzsche from an ethical and socio-cultural perspective. Some main questions: What are the roots of morality? of violence? of social class? of religion? of anti-Semitism? Can we determine if a culture is "vital" or "decadent"? How does our own form of culture fit into this picture? What hope might there be for a more emancipated society of the future?
Readings will include (All by Nietzsche in the Walter Kaufmann translations): On the Genealogy of Morals; The Birth of Tragedy; The Portable Nietzsche
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy , of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 456T Rawls' Theory of Justice./ZINKIN
Aim of seminar is to give students a thorough understanding of this seminal text. Readings from Raws' other writings and from his critics will be included.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy , of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 457A/ENVI 481A: Ethics and Consumption/KNAPP
This course will discuss ethical issues that arise with respect to our consumption of natural resources and consumer goods. Topics will include the source and nature of our obligations to future generations; our moral relationship to those who live in poverty; and the ways in which consumption can contribute to and detract from the consumer’s quality of life. We will also discuss some of the policy implications of these ethical issues.

PHIL 457B/PLSC 487B Contemporary Moral Problems and Law/GOTLIB
This course is an advanced exploration of the intersection between a number of pressing social issues within our society, moral norms, and the legal system. Some of the topics that we will cover include human rights, justice and war, race and affirmative action, euthanasia and assisted suicide, and punishment and the death penalty. Assignments will consist of written work, in-class presentations, and class discussion. Prerequisites: PHIL 140, 142 146, 147, 148, 149, 242, 340 or 345.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 550A/ PLSC 679J Hegel’s Philosophy of Right /PENSKY
Intensive exegetical seminar studying Hegel's philosophy of law and politics. The great majority of the seminar will be taken up with a close reading of Hegel's text. In addition the seminar will study topics closely related to the text: the context of Hegel's philosophy of law and politics in the works of Rousseau and Kant; relevant precedents in the philosophy of law, specifically conflicts between the Historical School and theories of natural law; Hegel as critic of democracy in the theory of estates; issues of nationalism, national belonging and collective political sovereignty; the contemporary relevance of Hegel's Philosophy of Right for issues in current democratic theory.
        Course Requirements: regular active participation in ongoing seminar discussion; rotating discussion leadership; research paper..
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy

PHIL 486A/605A   Advanced Topics in Ethics: Moral Dilemma/TESSMAN
The “moral dilemmas debate” begins with the question of whether there such a thing as a genuine moral dilemma, namely a situation of moral conflict in which there is a compelling moral reason to enact each of two possibilities, where it is not possible to enact both. We’ll go well beyond this question, to questions that include: Is it wrongheaded to conceive of the task of ethics as providing a perfect decision procedure for resolving moral conflicts? When a dilemma can be resolved, does one of the initial moral requirements get cancelled? What moral conditions give rise to dilemmas? Must we pay attention to the role and the impact of moral dilemmas in order to give good descriptions of what actual moral life is like? Do aspects of one’s social position (race, gender, etc.) affect the “dilemmaticity” of one’s moral life? Strict prerequisite of two prior philosophy courses.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 504 Philosophy of Art/ZINKIN
Classical readings in the philosophy of art from Plato to the present, with %50 of the class devoted to the 20th century. Questions include What is art? How do we evaluate art? Is there an objective standard of taste? The relation of aesthetics to epistemology and moral theory. Readings will most likely include: Plato Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Greenberg, Shapiro, Danto, Goodman, Walton.

PHIL 508 Theorizing Politics/BAR ON
This course engages readings that are concerned with the theorization of politics. The topics included are the possibility and methodology of the theorization of politics, the time and space of politics, agency and power, political speech, action, and judgment.

                          Courses Cross Listed in Philosophy
                                Fall 2008

AFST 180D/PHIL 180C Art of the African World/NZEGWU
This survey course introduces students to some of the key concepts in art and aesthetics in the African and African Diaspora. Focusing on certain art works and art forms, it will attempt to answer two basic
questions: How was art conceived of historically? How was it conceived of in different African cultures and in the diaspora? And what are the critical aesthetic concepts and responses that are relevant in art appreciation in these regions of the world. Part of what we will do is attend to the dispersal and deployment of African symbols and ideas in the works of artists around the world-right from the founding moments of the African diaspora. Some concepts such as /maat, ase/, /neku/, blues, /ndombolo,/ Africobra, carnival, vodun, and Santeria will also be critically examined.

PIC 280D/PHIL 280L The Animal and the Ethical/ STANESCU
This course will explore the relationship between ethics and non-human animals. We will review the classical utilitarian and rights frameworks for understanding our ethical duty to animals. We will then exam the recent ethical interest in animals from both feminist and continental traditions. At stake in these explorations will be various questions: Is it possible to have an ethics that includes animals? Can we extend current ethical frameworks to include the animal, or does inclusion of the non-human cause us to rework what it means to be ethical?

AFST 389F/PHIL 380Q/SOC 380L African Metaphysics/EPIRIM-DONKOR
This course looks critically at African view of the universe and the principles that help shape their understanding of existential conditions. While the starting point of analysis is always the spiritual, it is the mundane that provides the contextual framework for metaphysical speculations, however. In this way, the primacy of the metaphysical world is affirmed, even in the mundane. But far from dualism, African conception of the metaphysical is needed in order to establish the basis for a holistic personality and an ordered universe. Thus, in this course, students are exposed to the on-going debate about African metaphysics and philosophy, as African intellectuals and academics grapple with issues of ontology, the supernatural, and the ultimate meaning of existence.

GERM 380Y/PHIL 380F/COLI 380J Ubermen and Underlings: The Aesthetics of Superiority and Inferiority/ZILS
To be overwhelmed by what is inconceivably huge or loud is an aesthetic experience well known to the visitor of cathedrals or rock concerts. This course follows the historical and contemporary perusal of what is fearfully big, the notion of the sublime. We investigate Nazi architecture as well as the idea of globalization. And we find out about the opposite of the sublime: aesthetics of dirt or humility in youth culture, religious orders, ghetto literature. This is a tri-continental course that has regular exchanges via video conferences and over the Internet with student groups from the University of Freiburg, Germany, and the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Each group will bring in specific experiences from their country. Course taught in English. Readings include selected texts by Immanuel Kant, Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk, and Albert Speer.

COLI 480F/ 691F/ PHIL 480B/550T Actually Existing Communism/ HAVER
This seminar seeks to elucidate a single proposition: the principle of the common is not property, but circulation. We will seek first of all a philosophical elucidation in texts by Karl Marx and Nishida Kitaro. In Marx, we will pay particular attention to the constitution of the Industrial Reserve Army as a specifically circulatory collectivity that as such is the very possibility of poiesis. In Nishida, we will pay especial attention to his formulation of the concept of the co-immanence of the many and the one in contradictory self-identity. Correlatively, we will attempt to think actually existing communism as the constitution or auto-poiesis of the common in various practices of circulation, in the practices of an ontological promiscuity that does not reduce appropriation to property.

COLI 480H/PHIL 480W Capital/HAVER
This course is very modest in its ambition. We will seek only to understand the manifest sense of the fundamental concepts of volume 1 of CAPITAL. We therefore embark on a patient reading of the text. The work of the course will consist precisely in that work of reading. Our wager is that something new, something indispensable, appears in Marx’s articulation of fundamental concepts. So our goal is not to read Marx in relation to the verisimilitude of his explanations and diagnoses of what counted for him as the world, but as a philosopher. In other words, we seek the use-value of Marx’s work. It is further part of our wager that it is precisely at this level that a reading of Marx is indispensable in these dark times.

COLI 574V/PHIL 640N Specters of Comparison/ERTURK-LENNON
Comparison, which posits a likeness between the dissimilar, is always profoundly haunted by the question of its ground and judgment. This seminar will examine the comparative logic of capitalist modernity in the works of Marx, Weber, Adorno and Horkheimer, Foucault, Heidegger, and Benjamin. We will ask the following questions: How is equivalence established between nonequivalent objects? How are actual social relations quantified and converted into abstract representations, and is there an ethics to modern forms of comparability? How does language reflect and produce these operations? Or, to put it differently: What are the forms through which difference "haunts" us? We will pay special attention to figures of the double and the ghost in Hoffmann and Freud. Other topics to be covered include rationalization and the disenchantment of the world, the modern uncanny, metaphor as exchange, "mediauras," colonial comparison, and the ethics of incommensurability.

JUST 411A/ PHIL 411A/COLI 380V/ FRIEDMAN
This seminar will examine central questions in the philosophy of religion. Topics may include, creation, revelation, law, evil, and redemption.

PIC 645A/ PHIL 647M Narratives of Survivance/ALLEN
Emergent diasporic and feminist narratives, drawn primarily from recent African and Asian visual productions, literatures, and theorizings, will be the focus of the class.

Motile debris, the residue of post-, neo-, and trans- colonial implosions, scatters everywhere, not into a collection of readily identifiable categories, but into a fractious gnawing at the marrow of contemporary life. Ever in relation to memory and vast forgetting, omissions, burials, and denials, the course will examine the critical implications and promise of narratives that persistently erode predictable parameters, that inhabit transborder flows, unstable dimensions, gelatinous intervals and glossy strands. Might such entangled narrative forms render ecologies of survival?

In “Water Works,” Noriko Ambe cuts tracks, distortions, and lands of emptiness into books of anatomy, geography, and dictionaries. Her aim is not to cut perfect lines, but to stay with the process. Similarly, participants will keep a record, which may be in any medium, essay, creative writing, film, multimedia, etc., of their reflections and journeys during the course. Drawing from that record, participants will develop individually or in small groups one or two projects.
BIOL 570 /PHIL 630B Evolution and Human Affairs/TBA
TBA

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SPRING 2008

PHILOSOPHY 107/COLI 180P/JUST 280F: INTRODUCTION TO EXISTENTIALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY/FRIEDMAN
Existential philosophy, starting with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and running through Sartre and others, poses directed questions at the heart of human existence. In this class, we will explore all of the basics: meaning, freedom, anxiety, life with/out God, death . . . and so on. On one side, we find Sartre and Nietzsche who work from the assumption that there is no God. On the other side, we will find a great many voices trying to tackle some of the basic questions from their situation in various religious traditions. The course will work from representative pieces of literature, to central philosophical texts. Students will meet in weekly sections to discuss the readings and lectures.

PHIL 121: METHODS OF REASONING/GOODMAN
Studies the nature of arguments as they are deployed in science, law, public policy, and everyday life. Students will learn to analyze the structure of arguments and distinguish between good and bad arguments. Students are required to learn some mathematics, including probability theory, and study certain important scientific theories.

PHIL140R: INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS/GÜRSÜZLÜ, S.
The goals of this course are to provide an insight into the major traditions of ethical thought and to help students to gain ability to critically evaluate ethical positions.
The first half of the class will include readings from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill and Sartre. In the second half of the class we will continue with contemporary writers such as Bernard Williams, Rosalind Hursthouse and we will also examine applications of ethical positions through some issues such as sexism, racism, hunger and poverty, and global warming.

PHIL 148V: MEDICAL ETHICS/GOTLIB
This course provides an introduction to a philosophical exploration of moral commitments and conflicts arising at the intersection of medical theory, practice, and policy. We will engage in the analysis of concepts of health and disease, problems surrounding life-and-death decisions, issues of professional and client relationships, as well as the difficulties involved in the allocation and rationing of limited resources. Topics to be discussed may include patient rights and autonomy, informed consent, assisted suicide, genetic therapy, HIV/AIDS, and others.

PHIL 149/ENVI 149: ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS/GÜRSÖZOLÜ, F.
In this course we will examine basic issues in environmental ethics. It will serve as a foundation to consider our relation and ethical responsibility to environment. We will discuss different positions on specific topics such as environmental degradation, endangered species, preserving wilderness, resource depletion, global warming, and so on.

PHIL 202: DESCARTES, HUME & KANT/GUAY
This course is a survey of modern philosophical attempts to understand and assess social institutions by situating them within historical narratives. The course will cover both the methodological issues that arise, such as the sense in which phenomena could be distinctly historical and the identification of historical dynamics, and substantive issues, such as the extent to which modernity represents a decisive break with the past, what direction or structure can be identified in history, and what import the historical contingency of values and commitments has. The authors represented will be Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Adorno, and Foucault.

PHIL 311/COLI 380J: FAITH AND REASON/DIETRICH
This course will examine the conflict between religion (spirituality) and reason. We will look at such issues as the irrationality of faith and the anti-scientific basis for religion, in spite of which, religion continues strong and unabated. What explains this? What does religion supply that reason cannot? Doesn’t any answer to this latter question mean that religion is not irrational? What is it about science that prevents it from being a religion? How important is this property? Suppose it could be shown that religion evolved in humans just like our language use. Would this prove that religion was just a biological artifact? Finally, we will examine many different religions, looking for commonalities and differences. Are some religions better than others? This delicate question requires being asked if we are going to ask if science is better than religion.
Prerequisite: One course in philosophy.

PHIL 336/510H/AAAS 336: BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS/GOODMAN
Examines philosophical theories about reality, and our knowledge of reality, developed by Buddhists in India and Tibet. Emphasizes comparisons between Buddhist and Western metaphysical theories. During class discussions, critically investigate Buddhist arguments and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. Explore questions about time and change, causation, personal identity, and the nature of knowledge.
Prerequisites: One course in philosophy.

PHIL 345: PHILOSOPHY OF LAW/MOLINA
Philosophical problems emerging from law such as natural law and its alternatives, punishment, responsibility, tort and contract. Prerequisite – any one of the following: PHIL 140, 142, 146, 147, 148, 149, 340, 342, or 344.

PHIL 403A/543B: SOCRATES/PREUS
Socrates has been the inspiration for a great deal of the history of philosophy. We will start by reading Aristophanes’ Clouds and Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates, and continue with the reading of most of the dialogues of Plato in which Socrates plays a major and typical “Socratic” role. Prerequisite: Philosophy 201 or equivalent, or two other prior courses in philosophy. Readings are likely to be mainly available online.
Grades based on Oral Presentations (three during the course of the semester); weekly Reading Reports; attendance; portfolio; final examination.
Prerequisite: Two courses in philosophy

PHIL 455: ADVANCED PHILOSOPHY OF LAW: JUSTICE AND PUNISHMENT/PENSKY
"An advanced seminar-format undergraduate course exploring the justice and justifiability of criminal sanctions. In what circumstances, and to whom, are criminal sanctions -- punishments for lawbreaking -- justifiable? Is punishment justified through reference to its effects, whether for society, the perpetrator, the victims or some combination, or is it justified independently of its effects? Is there a duty to punish criminal wrongdoing -- does a society act unjustly if it does not punish? Does the rule of law require punishment because of the nature of law, or the nature of humans, or both? How does law determine fitting or just punishment? Is capital punishment justifiable? What other models are available for understanding the appropriate legal and social responses to criminal wrongdoing?
Course requirements include regular attendance and participation in class discussion, a take-home mid-term examination, and a final paper. PHIL 345, Philosophy of Law, is strongly encouraged as a prerequisite.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy

PHIL 456R/460R: HEGEL, MARX AND MARCUSE/WEISS
A course on three great dialectical thinkers: Hegel, who was the originator of modern dialectical reason; Marx, who famously turned the Hegelian dialectic into the basis of revolutionary thinking; and Marcuse, the twentieth century philosopher who was most successful in achieving a revolutionary Hegel-Marx synthesis.
Texts: Tucker (ed.): The Marx-Engels Reader; Marcuse: Reason and Revolution.
Course Requirements: Two papers and a mid-term exam. May not be repeated. Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 456S: PROBLEMS, LAW AND POLITICAL THEORY/MOLINA
The course will cover a number of central topics in the philosophy of
law: What is law?, the relations between legal rules and the rules of ethics and custom, the case for civil disobedience, the difference between law and mere coercion, the social and ethical foundation of law and legitimacy, the limits of law and the state, citizens' rights against the state and one another, and the norms of our legal system, their beneficiaries and alternatives.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy, one of which is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 458H: HISTORY AND THE MEANING OF POLITICS/GUAY
This course is a survey of modern philosophical attempts to understand and assess social institutions by situating them within historical narratives. The course will cover both the methodological issues that arise, such as the sense in which phenomena could be distinctly historical and the identification of historical dynamics, and substantive issues, such as the extent to which modernity represents a decisive break with the past, what direction or structure can be identified in history, and what import the historical contingency of values and commitments has. The authors represented will be Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Adorno, and Foucault.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy, one of which is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 458J: ROSSEAU/PENSKY
An intensive seminar style reading of major texts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Texts to be determined. Course requirements include a mid-term written examination and a final paper on a topic to be chosen in consultation with the instructor.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy, one of which is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 488R/COLI 480B/PLSC 487F: POLITICAL JUDGMENT/BAR ON
This course focuses on “political judgment.” Some of the questions that we will engage with are: What is “political judgment”? What are the characteristics of “good” “political judgment” (and (by implication) how does one know whether a “political judgment” is “good”)? Can “political judgment” be learned? And, finally, in a democratic polity, who should be expected to exercise “political judgment”? In order to discuss these questions we will read a mixture of theoretical and empirical works.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 505: CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: ETHICS AND FEMINIST THEORY/TESSMAN
This course serves as the first-year ethics seminar for graduate students in the program in Social, Political, Ethical and Legal Philosophy (SPEL). While surveying a variety of topics within contemporary ethical theory, this course will consider the relationship between ethics and feminist theory. We will study both non-feminist and feminist ethical theory, and will consider how feminist ethical approaches have impacted on the wider field of ethics. The course assumes a background familiarity with ethics in the history of Western philosophy.

PHIL 507/PIC 610A: EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS SEMINAR / DIETRICH
This course will survey the history of philosophy from the point of view of a
particularly puzzling and long-lived paradox. Briefly, this paradox is that human thought
has boundaries beyond which we can nevertheless go. So the boundaries both limit us
and point the way to a profound expansion beyond the limits. The resolution of the
paradox seems to require us to admit some contradictions as true. Our goal will be to
analyze this requirement from logical, metaphysical, and epistemological perspectives.
Philosophy as a whole (including Buddhist philosophy) is teeming with versions of this
paradox. Ethics is also subject to it. For philosophy students, grades will depend primarily on class participation and a paper.

PHIL 605S/COLI 574E: NARRATIVE ETHICS/GOTLIB
This course is motivated by two worries: First, a worry about the efficacy and the direction of our quest for moral certainty, and second, a worry about the subsequent backlash of this quest, mostly in some versions of moral relativism. This course suggests alternative approaches to both by exploring the relationship between normative ethics, identity, and stories. In so doing, we will consider two competing paradigms in moral philosophy: the universalist and the contextualist models, paying special attention to how the latter has been viewed by narrative ethicists. We will explore the relationship between the telling, writing and hearing of stories and the creation of a moral universe, and ask: What can a moral philosopher do with stories -- and can she do without them?

PPL 487A/COLI 480S/ENG 380Y: LAW AND LITERATURE/BOSNICK
Life follows Art and vice versa. This is a course in legal philosophy as reflected in the literature of the eras. Writers are, after all, the prophets and pilot fish of their time. The readings and their historical context shadow, parallel and anticipate the evolution of western jurisprudence. Justice is the Law tempered by Mercy. Anything less is vengeance, which has no role in the law.
The reading list is extensive, including novels, non-fiction and drama. There are papers, quizzes, oral presentations and a field trip down to NY to visit the Tombs where we will watch arraignments, talk to judges, prosecutors and public defenders. We will see the justice system writ large in the busiest precinct in the United States.
This class is not for everyone, but nothing that aspires ever is.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy.

OTHER COURSES CROSS LISTED WITH PHILOSOPHY

WOMN 100A/PHIL 180M/01: INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN STUDIES/MALATINO
Women’s Studies, emerging in the U.S. in the late 1960s from the socio-political milieu of what has since been periodized as feminism’s ‘second wave,’ is an explicitly interdisciplinary field of study which focuses primarily on the diffuse and differential modes of women’s being, thinking, and creative and political activity in gendered societies in response to the vast historical elision – both within and outside the academy -- of the specificity of women’s experience. Despite a relatively short history of academic inclusion, Women’s Studies has thrived and consistently expanded, producing a number of critical theoretical and analytical frameworks in order to address the positionality of women placed multiply in relation to interlocking systems of oppression including, but not limited to, sexism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, racism, classism and heterosexism.

The aim of this course, then, is dually-pronged: to provide students with a working knowledge of women’s positionality in relation to these aforementioned interlocking systems of oppression and, secondly, to reach this understanding through close analysis and thorough discussion of texts (conceived broadly as encompassing written, visual as well as aural documents) which actively react to, resist, and reconfigure these positions and modes of social relation. The first section of the course seeks to provide a framework through which to historicize feminist movements, focusing on productive debates and disagreements within feminism, i.e. the tensions between liberal, socialist and anarchist feminists within the first quarter of the 20th century; the multiple interventions regarding the elision of race and ethnicity within mainstream ‘second-wave’ feminist movement; the infamous ‘Sex Wars’ of the 1980s; and the heated debates around transsexuality and women’s space beginning in the 1970s. Moving forward from this historicizing effort, and utilizing knowledge of the methodological and political disjuncts which both precipitated and grew out of these debates, we will move collectively towards an understanding of what constitutes contemporary feminist research, knowledge production, and socio-political movement, pairing theoretical work with more intimate experiential narratives addressing the imbrication of multiple feminisms with issues surrounding militarization, neo- and de-colonialism, and queer and transgender/transsexual political action.

WOMN 100A /PHIL180M/02: INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN STUDIES/YOON
In this course, we will examine select theories in a variety of presentations, attitudes, and applications. We will endeavor not to agree or disagree (a simple enough task) with the writers who offer different ways of making meaning and making sense in complicated and often violent worlds, but to cogitate, masticate, and critically analyze the texts before us. The questions to be developed in this course are not: “Is this feminist?” or “What are the qualities of being feminist?” or even, “What is women’s studies?” Instead, we will interrogate socially constructed and historically weighted categories in their embodied and visceral manifestations, and determine how the interlocked institutions of power and difference have informed our social and philosophical understandings of justice, normalcy, and outrage. In particular, we will examine how feminists have critiqued, and popular culture often references, the dichotomous constructions of women’s bodies and their attendant sexualities: either women are virgins or they are whores; either women have worth or they are trash. Women’s bodies and sexualities are then rigidly policed and constrained, and their personhoods defined by their adherence to these strictures. How then, can we understand girls who choose to “go wild?” Who are the girls and women who choose to live the life of a slut? What does it mean for a woman to choose degradation (for survival or for fun)? What is the meaning of sexual liberation? We will examine these questions, and more importantly, determine the meaning of “slut” for women of color, for whom the dichotomy always already locates them in the absence of a “virgin alternative.” We will interrogate the spaces of tension and interlocution between race and sexuality, between the virgins and the whores, and examine the ramifications of current attitudes toward women’s bodies for women, their sexualities and their lives.

PIC 280M/PHIL280K: SECURITY, TERRITORY, MULTITUDE/KAYE
This course will serve as an introduction to two of the most important political theorists in recent memory Antonio Negri and Michel Foucault. We will move slowly through two important books providing a historical analysis to illuminate the current conjuncture. Foucault’s recently published lectures at the College de France entitled “Security, Territory, Population”, and Negri’s publication with Michael Hardt on the role of war in contemporary democracy. We are at a historic conjuncture, the Cold War has ended and a new era of perpetual war seems to be dawning. War unlike any other kind in history where frontiers are becoming less defined and where no counter-hegemony to America exists to balance its power. Meanwhile, America is experiencing unprecedented levels of wealth stratification and a transition in its economy from material to immaterial labor (producing goods to producing services). We will examine ways in which the multitude has previously resisted the pervasiveness of biopower, and what is at stake in this transition to immaterial labor. We will discuss how Western political theory has had an impact on theories of globalization and war. We will also examine just what it means to have “security” in an era in which this conception has become a political necessity… or nightmare?
Rubric – Each student will be responsible for creating a portfolio of papers totaling 15-20 pgs. Each student will be responsible for facilitating a class discussion on a chapter at least once. Students will be graded on their mastery, and analysis of these socio-political concepts. Presentation – 25%, Participation 25%, Papers 50%

PIC 550U/PHIL 460Q/655B/COLI 574D: FOUCAULT’S VOICES/ROSS
A course reading Michel Foucault, including selected works spanning his career.
Because the course includes so many works, many of considerable difficulty, I suggest that we keep open the possibility that we might decide to spend more time on a given text. If so, we will have to cut back on others. I find myself wanting to include something from as many works as possible.
Students are responsible for presenting on different texts, so that there will be at least one presentation on each work, including some of the ones not required. Presentations will include short handouts of passages that help make sense both of the presentation and of the text in question. Every student will present twice during the semester and once at the miniconference at the close of the semester, the Tuesday after classes.
Students are responsible for 15 minute presentations (in a 30 minute time slot), raising questions and initiating discussions. Students are also responsible for 30 minute presentations at a class miniconference at the end of the semester.
Questioning is the moving spirit of the course, extending Heidegger's words: "questioning is the piety of thought" (QT, 317).
In the spirit of questioning, I suggest that each presentation employ and present images from the following sensory or expressive modalities and media: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama, dance, film, photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds, aromas, textures; etc. etc.

JUST 480L/PHIL 480A/640M: ADVANCED TOPICS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: CREATION, REVELATION AND REDEMPTION/FRIEDMAN
This reading intensive seminar will tackle the neo-Kantian philosophy of Hermann Cohen and examine his two most esteemed interpreters, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Cohen both looks to Kantian philosophy and to the Judaic tradition, creating a conversation of sorts which introduces many of the questions that occupy Buber and Rosenzweig, and indeed, most of 20th Century Judaic thought and philosophy of religion. In Religion of Reason, Plato and Kant meet Ezekiel and Maimonides: these engagements allow Rosenzweig to address Hegel, and Buber to offer a dialogical possibility at the heart of his rendition of ‘creation’ and ‘revelation.’ We will examine these categories of religious thought, as well as the role of ‘God’ in history. Other figures will include: Emil Fackenheim and Emmanuel Levinas.

PIC 620D/PHIL 480B/504: AFRICAN AESTHETICS/NZEGWU
This course explores the principles of aesthetics and creative
expression of visual arts in Africa and the African diaspora. First,
the course examines the conceptual and methodological issues that
define this field; next, by engaging the issues that are of aesthetic
interest in the field, it challenges the presumption that issues of
aesthetic interest must approximate what occurs in European aesthetics;
third, it outlines the concepts and issues of interest in African
visual arts; and fourthly, it examines the interrelationship of art and
aesthetics in societies that have experienced forms of domination,
slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism to understand artists'
appropriation, deployment, or rejection of Africa in their works.
Open to juniors, seniors and graduate seniors only.
Format:
Seminar. Course is based largely on discussions of texts by
philosophers and scholars in the field, notably, Barry Hallen, Nkiru
Nzegwu, Rowland Abiodun, Sylvia Boone, Olabiyi Yai, and others in the
field. Each text is contextualized with an introduction of its author
videos will be shown to provide further elaboration of issues discussed.
and the backgrounds to the writing. Whenever possible, slides and

PIC 604G/ARTH 504B/COLI 608E/PHIL 480J/604G: THE WORLD AS IMAGE/ROSS
the world is . . . an aesthetic phenomenon (Nietzsche)
the image . . . does not resemble . . . (Blanchot)
The image, with its likenesses the imagination, the imaginary, and mimêsis presents a recurrent theme through which human beings express themselves and understand themselves and the world. Many of these understandings have been disparaging, yet the image returns, affirmatively and radiantly. Images visual, sonorous, performative, linguistic, bodily, etc.; also artistic, commercial, fashionable, ornamental, private, public, everyday, etc. pervade the world, especially in an advertising, consumer, and technological culture, but also as expressions of wonder and abundance. This course will explore the production and expression of images of all kinds, together with reflections on them, again of all kinds. Materials will be drawn from philosophy and religion, east and west, north and south, arts and aesthetics, cultural studies and feminism. Approximately half the course will be concerned with traditional images around the world and how they are understood. The other half will be concerned with contemporary images advertising, consumer, technological, everyday images, etc.
Students are responsible for 15 minute presentations initiating small group discussions, raising questions rather than supporting theses. At least one such presentation is required at each discussion. Students are also responsible for 30 minute presentations at a class miniconference at the end of the semester.
Each presentation is to employ and present images from the following sensory or expressive modalities and media: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama, dance, film, photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds, aromas, textures; etc. etc.
Readings/authors such as: Blanchot, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Plato, Goodman, Foucault, Spinoza, Whitehead, Bergson, Bachelard, Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari; plus topics such as: wonder, consumer aesthetics, comics, appearance, dress, law, simulation, bourgeois art and aesthetics, eating, consumption; abundance: quantum aesthetics, everyday aesthetics, Buddhism, feminist aesthetics, performativity, domestic aesthetics, eating, urban aesthetics, culture, borderlands, African/African American art, zen; giving, for giving.

CHIN 462/ PHIL480U: CONFUCIUS’ ANALECTS/CHEN
This is an advanced course of Chinese language and culture. Students will read passages from the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius, or Kongzi (551-479 BCE), in its original text and the accompanying exegeses in modern Chinese, with focuses on these passages’ linguistic, literary, and philosophical aspects. Thus, this course combines Chinese language and philosophy as well as classical and modern Chinese. Prerequisite: three years of Chinese language or equivalent.

FALL 2007

PHIL 105/AAAS 105 "H" Intro. to Asian Philosophy/GOODMAN
Covers the basic concepts and teachings of several Asian traditions, including Hinduism, Confucianism and Daoism, with a focus on Buddhism. Readings to include scriptural texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao De Jing, and selections from the Pali Canon, as well as the works of Asian philosophers, such as Vasubandhu, Mencius, Zhuang Zi and Shantideva. Examines such issues as the existence of God, the nature of truth, and the difference between right and wrong.

PHIL 111P/ COLI 180P/JUST 280P Introduction to Philosophy of Religion/FRIEDMAN
This reading-intensive introductory seminar will explore the many philosophical (and some methodological) questions which emerge from a study of religious thought. Topics will include the nature of religious subjectivity, divinity, prayer, sacrifice, and faith. We will study some central biblical and non-Western stories and narratives and literary, philosophical, and theological responses to them. Students will practice techniques of textual exegesis and directly engage texts. In addition to the content of this course, students will practice the process skills of reading and writing critically. Students will be expected to read the texts carefully and to come to class prepared to ask and answer questions. The course will require at least 100 pages of reading each week.

PHIL 122E Elementary Logic/DIETRICH
This course will first introduce students to classical propositional and first-order, predicate logic. The focus will be on the formal, technical nature of reasoning and argumentation. Students will examine the structure of arguments and learn to detect valid and invalid arguments. Then we will turn our attention to non-classical logics, exploring the philosophical implications of logics that relax or abandon one or more classical assumptions, such as the assumption that a contradiction can never be true.

PHIL 140Q Introduction to Ethics/OZKARACALAR
This course provides an introduction to those problems of philosophy that are problems of moral philosophy, or ethics. Ethics deals with what is right or wrong in human behavior and conduct. It asks such questions as what constitutes any person or action being good, bad, right, or wrong, and how do we know ? What part does self-interest or the interests of others play in the making of moral decisions and judgements ? What theories of conduct are valid or invalid, and why ? Should we use principles or rules or laws, or should we let each situation decide our morality ? Are killing, lying, cheating, stealing, and sexual acts right or wrong, and why or why not? This course is appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 201 Plato and Aristotle/PREUS
Description: Introduction to Greek Philosophy to 323 BCE. Brief introduction to philosophy before Socrates; more extensive study of Socratic dialogues and Plato’s philosophy; general introduction to Aristotle’s science, metaphysics, and ethics. For majors and non-majors. Many short quizzes and three equal essay exams.
No prerequisites or co-requisites. This course is appropriate for first year students.
Books: Cohen, Curd, and Reeve, Readings In Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales To Aristotle, Hackett Publishing, 2005
Other readings posted on Blackboard

PHIL 380R/AFST 380S African American Philosophy/TESSMAN
This course surveys works in African American Philosophy. Themes include: slavery and freedom; the construction of race; black existential thought and the phenomenology of blackness; racism, and social and political justice; gender and sexuality in relation to race.
Prerequisites: one course in philosophy.

PHIL 405 Kant’s Moral Philosophy/PENSKY
An exploration of Immanual Kant's moral philosophy, through intensive readings of Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, and sections of the Critique of Pure Reason, The Metaphysics of Morals, and Kant's writings on moral anthropology. Topics to be covered include the role of Kant's moral philosophy in the overall project of Kant's critical philosophy, the development of moral deontology and its relation to theories of moral sentiments, problems of free will, causation, and compatibilism, the coherence and intelligibility of Kantian deontology, and the implications of Kant's moral philosophy for contemporary moral theory. Course is a mixture of lecture and discussion. Students will be expected to make regular short class presentations, and will take a mid-term and final examination.
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 431 Metaphysics/DIETRICH
Morpheus said it best: "What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." Apparently, Morpheus was assuming brains are real. What if they aren't either? So what is real?
In this course we will try to find out what is Real, paying close attention to the role our strange minds play in conjuring up the "real." We will examine the fundamental nature of existence, universals, particulars, time, concepts, consciousness, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, and our own examining in hopes of finding something like our ordinary world in them somewhere.
FORMAT: Seminar/discussion. Grades based on papers and quizzes.
BOOKS: To be determined, and selected papers
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 436 Philosophy of Mind/GOODMAN
Investigates the nature of mind. Are mental processes just activities of the brain, or do they have some independence from the physical world? Through class discussions, explores different answers to this question and the difficulties they face. Considerable attention paid to the issue of free will. Are our decisions and actions determined by previous causes and conditions? If so, can we be truly free?
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 451/650J/COLI 535K Continental Philosophy: Nietzsche/GUAY
This class will consist in a close reading and analysis, with reference to selected secondary literature, of _The Gay Science_. This work of Nietzsche’s spans his so-called middle and late periods, and in addition to its extended treatment of the theme suggested by the title, namely the interrelation between knowledge and some version of flourishing, contains some of Nietzsche’s most famous passages, such as those concerning the death of God and the eternal recurrence.
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy.

We will briefly consider the original formulation of the idea of recognition of others as the basis of moral relations in Fichte and Hegel, and then consider recent appropriations of recognition in the consideration of culture, identity, and gender, primarily in the works of Charles Taylor, Axel Honneth, Jessica Benjamin, and Patchen Markell.
May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 456R/460R Hegel, Marx, Marcuse /WEISS
A course on three great dialectical thinkers: Hegel, who was the originator of modern dialectical reason; Marx, who famously turned the Hegelian dialectic into the basis of revolutionary thinking; and Marcuse, the twentieth century philosopher who was most successful in achieving a revolutionary Hegel-Marx synthesis.
Texts: Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader
Marcuse, Reason and Revolution
Course Requirements: Two papers and a midterm exam.
May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 456S /STAFF
May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 457A/ENVI 481A Ethics and Consumption/KNAPP
This course will discuss ethical issues that arise with respect to our consumption of natural resources and consumer goods. Topics will include the source and nature of our obligations to future generations; our moral relationship to those who live in poverty; and the ways in which consumption can contribute to and detract from the consumer’s quality of life. We will also discuss some of the policy implications of these ethical issues.
May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 45C/605R Law and Medical Ethics/GOTLIB
This course provides an advanced introduction to, and a further exploration of, issues at the intersection of medicine, biotechnology, moral theory, and the law. Among the questions we will explore are: How are we to reconcile the apparent need for new medications and treatments with the morally troubling implications of research on human subjects? Ought biotechnologies be regulated, and if so, how and by whom? What is the relationship between autonomy, personhood, and the right to die? Is there a right to health care, and, given resource scarcity, how do we ration it justly? Topics to be discussed will include human autonomy and rights, informed consent, confidentiality, and privacy, dying and decision making at the end of life, research ethics, abortion, disability, and national and international perspectives on health care rationing. The readings will be drawn from both philosophical and interdisciplinary sources, with a focus on the questions that arise when moral theory is confronted by the demands of medical practice, biomedical research, and public policy.May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.

PHIL 508 Political Philosophy: Justice Beyond Borders/PENSKY
An introduction to contemporary political theory through an examination of current work on justice and its relation to national belonging. What does justice require that we do to, for, or with one another? What sort of political society, what sorts of institutional arrangements and distributions of benefits and burdens, are just? What does justice demand that we do to, for, or with those who are distant from us? The principle focus of the course is to understand the controversy over "global justice" within contemporary liberal political theory, pitting liberal nationalists against cosmopolitans. We will read recent work by John Rawls, David Miller, Michael Walzer, Will Kymlicka, Thomas Pogge, Seyla Benhabib, Jurgen Habermas, Simon Caney, Kok-Chor Tan, Joshua Cohen, Allen Buchanan, Samuel Scheffler, Bhiku Parekh, Henry Shue, Jeremy Waldron, and others. Students will be expected to make regular written presentations to the seminar, and will submit a mid-term and final paper.
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy.

PHIL608E/COLI 574A/PLSC 679H Machiavelli, Arendt, & Democratic Theory/BAR ON
Both Machiavelli and Arendt re-envisioned democratic theory in an attempt to address the political crises of their time. Arendt's efforts benefited from her critical readings of Machiavelli who himself was a critical reader of earlier writers about democracy. Could a critical reading of Machiavelli and Arendt today be helpful for the kind of re-envisionings of democracy that are needed in light of today's political crisis?

JUST 280H/PHIL 111Q: The Secularization of Religion in American Judaic Thought/FRIEDMAN
Judaism has drawn on and been influenced by the democratic and pluralistic demands of American democratic culture. Inspired in part by the American Transcendentalists, immigrant Jewish philosophers began to re-think the definition and function of the supernatural in Judaism. From the work of Felix Adler, Morris Raphael Cohen, and Mordecai Kaplan (among many others) we are presented with many renditions of ŒJudaism without supernaturalism.¹ This course will explore the secularization of Judaism on the American scene. Ethical humanistic thought emerges in America, led by these Jewish thinkers. We will study the transition of certain strands of American Judaism from Œreligion¹ to Œethical culture.¹ Topics will include: belief, experience, definitions of God/divine, rival versions of secularism, naturalism/supernaturalism, and the relationship between ethics and metaphysics.

AFST 316/PHIL 317H AFRICAN WOMEN AND FEMINISM/NZEGWU
An interdisciplinary approach to issues of importance to African women. It draws extensively from a range of theoretical writings, literary and/or filmic works to study the political, social and economic roles of women. Paying close attention to culture, it examines the impact of colonialism, nationalism, dictatorship, and military rule on women’s autonomy, agency, and rights within and outside the family.

WOMN 317A /PHIL 340 Ethical Theory: Ethics and Feminist Theory/TESSMAN
This course focuses on the relationship between ethics and feminist theory. We will study both non-feminist and feminist ethical theory, and will consider the impact of feminist approaches to a variety of questions within ethical theory. Areas covered will include: ethical naturalism; moral luck; narrative approaches to ethics; moral emotions; dependency and the construction of the moral subject.

AFST 389F/PHIL 380Q, African Religion and Metaphysics/ Anthony Ephirim-Donkor
This course looks critically at the African view of the universe and the principles that help shape their understanding of the personality. Although the primacy of the metaphysical world is affirmed in Africa, it is the mundane which provides the context for moral and ethical concerns relative to metaphysics, however. Far from dualism, African conception of the universe, physical as well as spiritual, establishes the framework for a holistic view of person, universe, and religious and philosophical speculations. In this course, students would be exposed to the on-going debate about ethics, religion, philosophy, psychology, and politics by African academics and intellectuals, as they grapple with issues of race and society, politics, the supernatural, ancestors and deities, God, and the ultimate meaning of existence.

PERS 380S/PHIL 380S Sufism, Oriental Mysticism and the New Era of Spirituality/ MOHAMMADI
The course provides general topics and core readings in Sufism and oriental mysticism, including some items that form the historical and theoretical bases of oriental spirituality. This course is to explore one of the areas that it is not publicly well known in the U.S. compared to political Islam, Islamic jurisprudence, and Islamic philosophy. Hallaj, Ibn-e `Arabi, Rumi, Hafez, Ghazzali, Ruzbihan Baqli and Sohravardi are the main figures that we will discuss but the focus will be on Rumi and his heritage. The interaction of Islamic jurisprudence and Islamic philosophy on the one hand and Sufism on the other will be studied. The terms and concepts of Sufi discourse, its specific interpretation of Islamic texts, forms and methods used for observations, practices, disciplines and organizations, and dissemination of mystical ideas and ceremonies will be investigated. We will also chart the evolution of Sufism from personal spiritual practice and experience to the establishment of mystical brotherhoods that are one of the prominent forms of Islamic communities all around the world.
Textbooks: William Chittick, Sufism: A Short Introduction
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam
Michael Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism
Al-Ghazali, Al-Ghazali’s Path to Sufism
Rumi, Signs of the Unseen/Mathnavi/Divan-e Shams-e Tabriz
Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century
Ruzbihan Baqli, The Unveiling of Secrets
Nicholson, Reynold A. Studies in Islamic Mysticism

COLI 512B//PHIL 650K/PIC 606T/COLI 480Q THE LITERARY ABSOLUTE/ BRINKER-GABLER
A study of the emergence of Romantic philosophy and the modern concept of literature around 1800, and its connection with modern literary theory and some leading issues in current critical theory. The focus will be (1) on distinguishing Romantic philosophy from classical German idealism by Investigating Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, (2) on examining the Jena Romantics “fragmentary,” allegorical and reflexive model of literature (literature as the production of its own theory), (3) on a critique of the aesthetic and epistemological consequences of romantic thought, with special attention to irony.
The analysis of key works of the period will be combined with a study of Lacoue-Labarthe’s /Nancy’s and others more recent inquiries into the relations between this early conception of modern philosophy and literature and current literary-critical and theoretical practices. Included will be texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, F. Schlegel, Novalis, Hölderlin, Coleridge, Wordsworth.
FORMAT: Lectures, discussions and student’s presentations. One substantial final paper.

COLI 574VPHIL 640N Specters of Comparison/
Comparison, which posits a likeness between the dissimilar, is always profoundly haunted by the question of its ground and judgment. This seminar will examine the comparative logic of capitalist modernity in the works of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Nietzsche, Adorno and Horkheimer, Heidegger, Benjamin, and Foucault. We will ask the following questions: How is equivalence established between nonequivalent objects? How are actual social relations quantified and converted into abstract representations? How does language reflect and produce these operations? Or, to put it differently: What are the forms through which difference "haunts" us? We will pay special attention to figures of the double and the ghost in Hoffmann, Poe, and Freud. Other possible topics to be covered may include rationalization and the disenchantment of the world, the modern uncanny, metaphor as exchange, "mediauras," and colonial comparison.

PHIL 101M Introduction to Philosophy/KUCUKKIRCA
This course presents an introduction to the main philosophical questions through readings of certain major philosophical texts on ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and ontology. Its main aim is to open up questions with certain texts to get familiar with some writers, texts and certain concepts as useful tools to think philosophy. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 101P Introduction to Philosohpy/ENGIN
The aim of this course is to introduce some of the fundamental and recurrent concepts, questions and debates in Western philosophy within the context of their historicity. Students are expected to get acquainted with the basic terminology and some of the key issues in the field as well as to improve their analytical and critical thinking skills by actively engaging with the course material. Course follows a historical trajectory to be able to show the complex relations between philosophy and the historical and cultural milieu it has been situated and shaped in. The course does not necessarily focus on a certain field such as ethics or epistemology; however, it aims to show how inextricably interwoven these fields are in a given terrain of thought. We will try to read some of the seminal philosophical texts with both historical and urgently current questions, hoping to show that philosophical thinking is possible only in the moment of relation between the past and the present, between the philosophical and the “mundane” and often in the form of a question rather than the answer. Hence, we will try learning to ask decent questions not only to the philosophy texts of the past but also to our immediate surroundings with the help of everyday materials, practices and texts selected for discussion.

Philosophy, from early on its beginnings, was accused of being a perplexing, abstract and futile exercise of thought that asks many puzzling questions and gives few satisfactory answers. Perhaps, as Socrates argued, being perplexed in front of the unknown is a good start for the quest of truth and the truth dictates that the perfect society can exist if the rulers are philosophers, or the philosophers are rulers. Perhaps, asking the right question takes more than giving the right answer. Students are encouraged to engage with the subject by bringing in various issues and topics within the related context and asking questions to the text, to the history of philosophy and to the existing order of things, which we simply refer to as “reality”.

%30: %15 Attendance and Participation
%15 Homework (students are expected to briefly respond to a given question, or try to formulate one on a weekly basis)

PHIL 107 Introduction to Phenomenology and Existentialism/GUAY
This course is a survey of some work in 19th and 20th century European philosophy that has little in common except for an intense interest in the character of lived experience and an insistence that many philosophical issues depend for their resolution on addressing more fundamental matters concerning human existence. We shall focus our attention on works by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger; there will also be readings from Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, and Fanon. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 122C Elementary Logic/SCHMIDT
This course will introduce students to propositional and first-order predicate logic. Students will examine the structure of arguments, practice deductive and inductive reasoning, and learn to detect valid and invalid arguments. Symbolic logic will be emphasized with special attention to translation and the construction of proofs. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 140P Introduction to Ethics/MUELLER
This course is an introduction to ethical questions such as “How shall I live?”, “What should I do?”, “What is right or good?”, “What is freedom, or autonomy?”, “Is morality relative or culturally structured; simply a matter of convention?” etc. We will begin answering our questions with a variety of readings that capture the historical and contemporary approaches to ethics. We will further address several contemporary applied ethics problems. Besides being an interesting content oriented class, this course is also focused on developing critical reading, writing, and speaking skills. Appropriate for first year students.

To enroll in this course, you must also enroll in English 117A: Animal Representation. Enrollment for this course is available only through Steve Duarte in the Discovery Program in CIW library—or call (607)777-4709.

PHIL 142S Social and Political Philosophy/GURSOZLU
This course will be an introduction to the fundamental concepts, issues and approaches in social and political philosophy. We will reflect on the meaning of politics and how different approaches understand politics. Related to these, we will study the meaning of citizenship, political space, political authority, and legitimacy. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 148T Medical Ethics/FATIMA
This is an introductory "applied ethics" course. No prior course in philosophy is required. It does help to have an interest in a wide range of possible events that can occur in the delivery of health care. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 148U Medical Ethics/EVERS
This course will examine the application of ethical frameworks to contemporary issues and concerns in the fields of health care and medicine. Case studies will be drawn from such topics as accessibility to health care; reproductive rights and controls; abortion; euthanasia and assisted suicide; race, gender, and health; and clinical trials and experiments. No previous coursework in philosophy is required. This class is open to first year students.
Format: Lecture. Grades will be based on attendance and participation, assignments and quizzes, a midterm and final exam, and a course essay. Appropriate for first year students.
Books: TBA

PHIL 149/ENVI 149 Environmental Ethics/KNAPP
Nearly everyone agrees that the natural world is worth preserving. The agreement ends, however, when preserving the natural world conflicts with other things that seem worth doing. In such cases, we have conflicts of value, and trade-offs must be made: We must decide whether to trade habitat preservation in order to save an ancient culture; whether to trade wilderness for economic profits; whether to trade biodiversity for food for hungry people. Making these hard and controversial choices well requires our understanding not just that the natural world is valuable, but how it is valuable, and how its value compares to other things we value. The goal of this course is to give students the stimulus, the opportunity, and the resources to work towards developing their own understanding of the nature of the value of nature. Appropriate for first year students.

PHIL 202: Descartes Hume Kant/GUAY
This course is a survey of some highlights of early modern (17th and 18th century) philosophy, in which the principal topics of interest were the status of human cognitive faculties and the knowledge of nature. We shall examine Descartes’ attempt to ground scientific inquiry, Hume’s skeptical project, and Kant’s resolution of epistemological concerns into matters of human spontaneity in both its practical and theoretical aspects.

PHIL 345 Philosophy of Law/MOLINA
Philosophical problems emerging from law, such as natural law and its alternatives, punishment responsibility, tort and contract. Prerequisite: any one of the following: PHIL 140, 142, 146, 147, 148, 149, 340, 342 or 344.

PHIL 451/650H/COLI 480P/JUST 480K Continental Philosophy: Levinas and the Ethics of Phenomenology /FRIEDMAN
This reading intensive seminar will place the ethical thought of Emmanuel Levinas in the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology. We will begin with a reading of Husserl’s central (teachable) work, The Cartesian Meditations. Through a slow reading of the text, we will examine the central tools and ideas of his transcendental phenomenology: the natural attitude, reduction, transcendental reduction, and apperception. We will also examine the development of Levinas’ thought as he moves from Husserl to his own ethical phenomenology.

Much of Levinas’ philosophical study of time and subjectivity flows from the unanswered questions of Husserl’s “Fifth Meditation,” specifically the approach to and relationship with alter ego, another person. Levinas’ earliest works directly engage the core problems of Husserlian phenomenology, specifically internal time consciousness and the constitution of world-time through the encounter with the other. As we read through Levinas, we will explore how questions of transcendence, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and temporality give way to an ethical philosophy built on notions of alterity and responsibility. We will focus on Time and the Other, and Levinas’ two major works, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.

In the final section of the seminar, we will work through a selection of his essays and lectures in which he grounds his ethical phenomenology in classical Judaic texts and traditions. Additionally, we will compare Levinas’ work with that of another student of Husserl, Edith Stein.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 456M/488M Critiques of Technological Culture/WEISS
Can there be any doubt that advanced technology has benefited us immensely? Isn't such technology the very key to advancing human emancipation? But, looking at matters from the other side, is modern technology really an unmixed blessing? Has it become a fetish, dominating our life far beyond its obvious utility? Is it "value neutral," or are there biases within it that may have a sinister, counter-emancipatory side? This course will consider this entire nexus of issues.
Books to be determined at a later date.
Two papers totaling about 15 pages. One midterm exam.
PHIL 456M open only to PPL Majors who are 2nd semester seniors
PHIL 488M open to juniors and seniors and who have had two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 456P Social and Political Philosophy/HADJIKHANI
Philosophical problems involving the relationship between law and contemporary political theory; topics may include justice, rights, equality and democracy. May not be repeated. Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy, of which one is a course in social, ethical or legal philosophy.
Open only to PPL Majors who are 2nd semester seniors.

PHIL 457U Advanced Topics in Markets, Ethics, and Law/SCALET
Advanced treatment of topics covered in Phil 147, Markets, Ethics and Law. We will evaluate several books in this area, assess recent articles, and apply the social concepts of the Phil 147 course to contemporary events. Topics will range from property rights issues to corporate responsibility to the moral values relevant for assessing market activity.
Open only to PPL Majors who are 2nd semester seniors.
Prerequisites: Phil 147 and at least one other course in philosophy.

PHIL 457W/486G/605Q Moral Subjects and Moral Conditions/TESSMAN
Ethical theorists must offer accounts of the subjects (i.e. the people) about whom they are theorizing, as well as of the background conditions for their theory. What qualities should the moral subjects be assumed to have? What sort of background conditions should be assumed? Should the ethical theorist stipulate some idealized qualities for the moral subjects and background conditions? Or must ethical theory draw on descriptive accounts of actual people and actual life conditions? This course will present students with a variety of possible moral subjects and moral conditions (idealized and non-idealized, given through stipulation or through descriptive accounts taken from narrative or from empirical work). We will evaluate and (re)construct ethical theories in light of our reflections about the moral subjects and moral conditions.
PHIL 457W open only to PPL Majors who are 2nd semester seniors
PHIL 486G open to juniors and seniors who have taken two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 460R/550R Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit/WEISS
The entire course will be devoted to the close study of a single text, Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit, with particular attention to the facets of Hegel's "dialectical" theory of mind that not only undergird his radical approach to human emancipation, but also point in a radically anti-materialist direction, opening the way for serious consideration of psychic phenomena and other psycho-social realities denied by mechanical science.
Two papers totaling about 15 pages. One midterm exam
PHIL 460R open to juniors and seniors who have taken two courses in philosophy

PHIL 480T/666K/PIC 603A Consciousness, Science and Religion II/DIETRICH
Consciousness, Science, and Religion are quintessential human properties. Which is odd because they are in such conflict. Science and religion clash: they make different and substantial claims about the world. Though it tries, science cannot explain consciousness. And yet consciousness is necessary for both science and religion. In this course, we will examine this unhappy, tripartite partnership. This is part 2 of the course offered in Fall 2006. The Fall course concentrated on science and religion. Part 2 will concentrate on science and consciousness. We will read an important new philosophy book advocating a positive, rational dualism -- the view that consciousness is not a physical property of this universe.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy.

PHIL 488N/456N/AAAS 486G Democratic Theory/BAR ON
This course engages readings in democratic theory. It aims at understanding the normative weight or force of democracy as well as to explore what it may take for socio-political arrangements to be democratic not only at the nation-state level but globally.
PHIL488N/AAAS 486G open to juniors and seniors who have taken two courses in philosophy
PHIL 456N open to PPL Majors who are 2nd semester seniors

PHIL 490 Capstone in Philosophy: Consciousness and the Limits of Thought/DIETRICH
This capstone seminar will cover a sizable portion of the canon of western philosophy (and one Buddhist philosopher) from the standpoint of the limits of knowledge. Specifically, we will try to understand philosophy as the exploration of the very limits of knowledge, limits beyond which no cognitive agent, no matter how intelligent, can go. As the course progresses, we will come to see that perhaps these limits aren't really limits, but boundaries beyond which we can, and do, go. We will discuss the role differing points of view have on such limit/boundaries. We will inquire whether the plight of all humans, not just philosophers, is to be encased in points of view. Perhaps everything is just a point of view, including the view that there are only points of view.
Prerequisites: Two courses in philosophy. It is recommended that one of them be Phil 121 or logic (or their equivalent).

PHIL 505 20th Century Ethics/KNAPP
This course will be a graduate-level introduction to 20th-century normative ethics. In the first half of the course we will survey some issues concerning features that are commonly thought to determine the moral status of acts. This will involve us in discussions of the nature and significance of well-being, equality, the constraint against harming, and several other factors. In the second half of the course we will survey some of the most prominent foundational theories in normative ethics theories that try to say precisely which features of actions are morally relevant and why. Here we will discuss consequentialism, virtue theory, and several forms of deontology. The goal of the course will be to gain a critical understanding of some of the central positions and arguments that shape contemporary philosophic work on the question of how one ought to live.

PHIL 621B Aristotle’s Metaphysics in Context/PREUS
Detailed study of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in relation to the metaphysical theories of his predecessors, to some of the other books in the Aristotelian Corpus, and to subsequent metaphysical theories, especially among Aristotle’s commentators, ancient, medieval, and modern.
Text: Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tr. Joe Sachs, Green Lion Press, 1999

PPL 487A/COLI 480S/ENG 380Z Literature and the Law / BOSNICK
Life follows art. This is a course in the philosophy o flaw as reflected in the literature of the era. The reading and their historical context parallel the development of western jurisprudence. Justice is the Law tempered by Mercy. Anything less is vengeance, which has no place in the law. Punishment must be a faith in the power of redemption, not a strategy for revenge.
BOOKS: Sophocles, Antigone; Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice; Miller, The Crucible; Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Chayevsky, The Tenth Man; Levitt, The Andersonville Trial; Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment; Trollope, The Warden; Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird; Butterfield, All God’s Children. Additional readings as assigned.
Weekly quizzes on readings; two papers, six to ten pages and some short 2-3 page-writing assignments.

JUST 384J/PHIL 460J Martin Buber/FRIEDMAN This reading intensive seminar will explore the philosophical and theological writings of Martin Buber. Buber is often categorized as an important modern Jewish thinker, and more often overlooked as a serious philosopher. This course will attempt to read Buber back into the canon of Western philosophy, by placing him in conversation with his philosophical predecessors and contemporaries. Though we will focus on Buber’s relationship with Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, Gabriel Marcel, and Joseph Soloveitchik will also be discussed. Topics will include the basics of philosophy of religion: the conception of God, revelation, moral philosophy.

COLI 481/ PHIL 480P Method & Masterpieces Tutorial/GADDIS-ROSE The Comparative Literature capstone seminar in spring 06 will focus on the theory of poetry but also on the practice of reading poetry. We will discuss theoretical texts that address the question of what poetry is and that have proved influential historically. At the same time, in order to develop the skills of reading poetry, we will devote sustained attention to a selection of Modern poems from the Americas. Requirements: Term paper 50%; outline 10%; Oral presentation 20%; Attendance and class participation 20%. Tentative reading list: Hosek and Parker, Lyric Poetry Marjorie Perloff, Wittgenstein’s Ladder Susan Stewart, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses Selections from: Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry; Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry; From the Other Side of the Century; Other Shores/Outras Praias.

CHIN 462/PHIL 480U Confucius’ Analects/CHEN
This is an advanced course of Chinese language and culture. Students will read passages from the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius, or Kongzi (551-479 BCE), in its original text and the accompanying exegeses in modern Chinese, with focuses on these passages’ linguistic, literary, and philosophical aspects. Thus, this course combines Chinese language and philosophy as well as classical and modern Chinese. Prerequisite: three years of Chinese language or equivalent.

PIC 645M/PHIL 647M Tumultuous Place, Fate, and Belonging/ALLEN
Recent innovative narratives of African and Asian diasporic panoramas of memory, history, and psychic emotion, shift and reshape understandings of cultural, racial, and colonial relationalities.
Impelled by trans-disciplinary, interactive discussions, the course will focus on distinctive narratives, yet in process, of tumultuous place, fate, and belonging at the beginning of the 21st century. Questions of trans-literacies, of foreignness, of diaspora with no margins, and of the narrator as medium, will be considered in conjunction with experimentation in listening, trans-generational interpretation, and imagination.

Our points of departure include the mixed genre poetic writing Dionne Brand, Inventory, Padcha Tuntha-obas, Trespasses and composite¬_diplomacy, Harold Sonny Ladoo and Dionne Brand, No Pain Like This Body, Yunte Huang, CRIBS, Paul D. Miller’s sonic essay, Rhythm
Science, selections from Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception:Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Kimsooja’s visual work and invisible projects, To Breathe/Respirare, Okwui Enwezor, Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, and film
and video by Mansour Sora Wade, The Price of Forgiveness, Altaf-tyrewala, No God in Sight, Ming-liang Tsai, What Time is it There?, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Syndromes and a Century.

CLAS 480B/PHIL 480Y Myth and Meaning: Meeting with the Other/STAFF
This course will engage with contemporary critical theorists as well as with specific myths of Greek antiquity so as to open a dialogue between modernity and antiquity centered around the questions of myth, meaning, and otherness. We will pursue the (sometimes divine) other via mythic and religio-philosophical thinkers. George Bataille claimed that we live inthe “absence” of myth. If this is so, what meaning do we attribute to myth; what myths are valid in our understanding of meaning? Focusing on encountering the other: Odysseus’ encounter with the god Dionysus disguised as a stranger; the terror the mortal Semele encountered when Zeus revealed his true divinity to her; Orpheus’ descent into the underworld, for example. Do we, as moderns, even recognize when such an encounter with the wonderful, the mythical, the transcendental, occurs? We will also look to Jacques Derrida on alterity; Emanuel Levinas’ absolute other, Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussion of the current topos of God, so as to grapple with an understanding of in what sense the concepts of God, the gods, and otherness are meaningful phenomena in contemporary times.

PIC 550U/PHIL 460Q/655B/COLI 574D Derrida’s Voices/ROSS
A course reading Jacques Derrida, including selected works spanning his career, for example, Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Margins of Philosophy, Dissemination, Specters of Marx, The Politics of Friendship, The Work of Mourning, etc., including his readings of philosophers such as Plato, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, etc. and readings of his works by others, with an attempt to evoke an understanding and an affirmative way of life inspired by--in his own words--the processes of differance, trace, iterability, ex-appropriation, and so on; the problematics of the work of mourning, idealization, simulacrum, mimesis, iterability, the double injunction, the "double bind," and so forth.

PIC 659A/PHIL 480V/659D/ COLI 574N/ENVI 481A
Nature Ecology Humanity Economy/ROSS
An exploration of nature and the earth in ecological terms, responding to issues arising in the critique of metaphysics and scientific and technological rationality, especially feminist and poststructuralist writings, in environmental and ecological writings, and in contemporary aesthetics and art. Nature in general, the earth (universe, world, environment, being); the nature of things, what makes them what they are (essence, substance, intrinsic qualities, relationality). Nature as intelligible, rational, open to scientific investigation. Nature as animate: abundant, teeming, growing, touching, embracing, caressing; frightful, dangerous, risky, threatening; full of wonder, peace, radiance, and glory. Nature as expressive: squawking, hissing, buzzing, howling, ringing, gurgling, screaming, screeching, shrieking; calling, signing, pointing, questioning, answering, writing, tracing, coding, marking, touching, inscribing, imprinting; full of cacophony, sound and fury. Nature as essence, form, substance, space, and time; nature as formlessness, interruption, disruption, overwhelming. Nature as wildness, wilderness, beyond humanity; nature as human settlement, dwelling, city, place. The nature of human beings, animals, plants, and things, what makes them what they are. The nature of things, always growing, changing, relational, on the move.

A major feature of the course is to approach nature in all these aspects through the prisms of aesthetics and art, poiêsis, technê, and mimêsis, through issues of representation, presentation, expression, image, simulation, and imagination. What if art and aesthetics were not separate from and inferior to the sciences in relation to nature? What would that reveal of nature? What would that say of science? In return, what might a truly ecological science--even ecological nonsciences--say of nature, art, and humanity? What of other, different ecologies?

From the Greek oikos, ecology (and economy) as humanity in relation, intimate and excessive, concerned with household management, economy, property; nature, relationality, habitation, space, time; science, philosophy; aesthetics, gardening, art, literature; rationality, enchantment.

Half the course is devoted to writings that historically have defined humanity and nature in the Western philosophical tradition, the rest to alternative visions of the earth and humanity: dwelling, living, knowing, caring, cherishing, building, writing, thinking, imagining; including ecology, ecological aesthetics and fiction, ecological philosophy, landscape gardening, and place.

Students are responsible for 15-minute presentations initiating small group discussions, raising questions rather than supporting theses. At least one such presentation is required at each discussion. Students are also responsible for 30-minute presentations at a class miniconference at the end of the semester.

Each presentation is to employ and present images from the following sensory or expressive modalities and media: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama, dance, film, photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds, aromas, textures; etc. etc.

COLI 480H/PHIL 480W Capital /HAVER
The wager of this course is that a reading of volume 1 of Marx’s CAPITAL is, in spite of everything and more than ever, indispensable in the present situation. Our goal in this course is to orient ourselves in Marx’s mature thought, to think something of what might be at stake in his concept of political economy, and thus to consider what of Marx’s thought remains pertinent in our time of actually existing fascism.
Course requirements:
Seminar. Principally for undergraduates. Substantive paper required at end of term.
Books: Karl Marx, CAPITAL, vol. 1.

COLI 574R/PHIL 550S Grundrisse/HAVER
What is at stake in Marx’s concept of political economy? What are the logical and existential coordinates of the concept? Our hypothesis is this: that if the texts of Marx have any pertinence to the current situation, it is because the concept of political economy as articulated in the GRUNDRISSE opens upon an other experience of aesthesis, an other relation of poiesis to praxis, an other experience of the common, an other, communist, ontology. We pursue these issues in a close reading of the GRUNDRISSE.
Seminar. Substantive paper required at end of term.
Books: Karl Marx, GRUNDRISSE

PHIL 101M “H” Introduction to Philosophy/KUCUKKIRCA
This course presents an introduction to the main philosophical questions through readings of certain major philosophical texts on ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and ontology. Its main aim is to open up questions with certain texts to get familiar with some writers, texts and certain concepts as useful tools to think philosophy.

PHIL 101N “H” Introduction to Philosophy /GUAY
An exploration of a significant range of the main areas of philosophy, e.g., the nature of reality, knowledge, mind, society, life, values.

PHIL 101P“H” Introduction to Philosophy /ENGIN
This course aims to introduce students to the basic concepts and questions in Western philosophy by the help of a selection of preliminary philosophical texts. The students are expected to gain basic philosophical and critical thinking skills and get acquainted with the terms, notions and problems in philosophy. Course follows a historical trajectory to be able to show the complex relations between philosophy and the historical and cultural milieu it has been situated and shaped in. The course does not necessarily focus on a certain field such as ethics or epistemology; however, it aims to show how inextricably interwoven these fields are in a given terrain of thought. We will try to read some of the seminal philosophical texts with both historical and urgently current questions, hoping to show that philosophical thinking is possible only in the moment of relation between the past and the present, between the philosophical and the “mundane” and often in the form of a question rather than the answer. Hence, we will try learning to ask decent questions not only to the philosophy texts of the past but also to our immediate surroundings with the help of everyday materials, practices and texts selected for discussion. Books:
1 Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)ISBN: 0375757996
2 Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (1964) (Paperback)ISBN: 00606376333 Nietzsche. The Portable Nietzsche (Viking Portable Library) (Paperback) ISBN: 01401506254 Plato: Five Dialogues (Paperback) Hackett Publishing Company; 2nd edition
ISBN: 0872206335
5 Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Ed. (Paperback) Hackett Pub Co Inc; 4th edition (June, 1999) ISBN: 08722042006 Hegel: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Paperback) : Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (December 6, 2001)
ISBN: 019280197X7 Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Paperback) Hackett Publishing Company (September, 1996)
ISBN: 0872202291

PHIL 105/AAAS 105 “H” Intro. to Asian Philosophy/GOODMAN
Covers the basic concepts and teachings of several Asian traditions, including Hinduism, Confucianism and Daoism, with a focus on Buddhism. Readings to include scriptural texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Dao De Jing, and selections from the Pali Canon, as well as the works of Asian philosophers, such as Vasubandhu, Mencius, Zhuang Zi, Shantideva and Candrakirti. Examines such issues as the existence of God, the nature of truth, and the difference between right and wrong.

PHIL 121 “M” Methods of Reasoning/DIETRICH
We will study rationality and argumentation as it is employed in science, law and public policy, marketing, and daily life. The nature of deductive and inductive reasoning, hypothesis formulation, and scientific explanation will be covered in this course. Statistical reasoning and models of evidence will be covered as well. There is also a strong emphasis on learning scientific facts and of understanding the nature of scientific inquiry and the philosophy of science.

PHIL 122C “M” Elementary Logic/SCHMIDT
This course will introduce students to propositional and first-order predicate logic. Students will examine the structure of arguments, practice deductive and inductive reasoning, and learn to detect valid and invalid arguments. Symbolic logic will be emphasized with special attention to translation and the construction of proofs.

Phil 140N “N” Introduction to Ethics / EVERS
This course will be an introduction to ethics through a variety of readings representing significant historical and contemporary ethical positions. Readings will initially be drawn from Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, among others, to gain insight into the major traditions of ethical thought. From here, we will investigate excerpts from Nietzsche, a major critic of ethics and morals. This will serve as our transition to contemporary thinkers and readings from Onora O'Neill, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, and others. Finally, we will examine specific applications of modern ethical positions to contemporary moral and political problems.

PHIL 142R “H” Social and Political Philosophy /FATIMA
This course is designed to introduce the major theories in political and social philosophy and their practical application to relevant contemporary strands of critical thought (such feminism, critical race theory, international politics, etc.).

PHIL 146 “H” Law & Justice/ARTHUR
The bulk of the course will center around three theories that currently enjoy wide support among philosophers: libertarianism, utilitarianism, and justice as fairness. Our reading and discussions of the theories will include general questions like the nature and justification of individual rights, freedom, and economic justice along with more particular topics such as baby selling, freedom of speech, drugs, smoking, abortion, patriotism, and civil disobedience. We will also discuss important criticisms of each of the theories. The course will also discuss race and gender, asking what a just society would look like from that perspective. Readings include the work of contemporary philosophers, a sampling of some major historical figures including Hobbes,