PHILOSOPHY

Courses

The History of Philosophy, II: Aquinas through Kant

PHIL UN2101 is not a prerequisite for this course. Exposition and analysis of central philosophical problems as discussed by innovative thinkers from Aquinas through Kant. Authors include figures like Descartes, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Spinoza, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Émilie du Châtelet, and Kant.

Existentialism

A survey of major themes of Existentialist philosophy in Europe from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century, this class will focus on Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre and their influences on philosophical conceptions of the human being and the form of its freedom, and the consequences of anxiety, nihilism, and despair in the face of death.

Intro to Symbolic Logic

Runs from July 3- August 11

Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable.

Metaphysics

This course will survey topics in contemporary metaphysics. We will focus on material objects, time, modality, causation, properties, and natural kinds. We will begin by considering what objects there are in general (ontology) and what to say about certain puzzling entities (such as holes). Then we will turn to debates about material objects and puzzles about composite objects and the notion of parthood. Next is the issue of how material objects persist over time and survive change in their parts. We shall consider two important views on persistence. We then turn to two issues related to persistence: personal identity over time, and puzzles about time travel. This will lead us into the next part of the course on modality and causation, which concerns the notions of possibility, necessity, laws of nature, and causation. We will consider different views about "possible worlds". We will then consider the nature of laws and causation and then turn to the problem of free will. We will look at debates in the metaphysics of properties between realists and nominalists about properties. Then we'll consider causal powers, dispositions, and natural kinds. The section will conclude with problems about the metaphysics of socially constructed kinds such as race or gender.

Ethics

Runs from July 3- August 11

Prerequisites: One philosophy course

This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.

Social and Political Philosophy

Six major concepts of political philosophy including authority, rights, equality, justice, liberty and democracy are examined in three different ways. First the conceptual issues are analyzed through contemporary essays on these topics by authors like Peters, Hart, Williams, Berlin, Rawls and Schumpeter. Second the classical sources on these topics are discussed through readings from Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Marx, Plato, Mill and Rousseau. Third some attention is paid to relevant contexts of application of these concepts in political society, including such political movements as anarchism, international human rights, conservative, liberal, and Marxist economic policies as well as competing models of democracy.

Epistemology

What can we know? What is knowledge? How is it different from belief? Are there irrational beliefs? Are false beliefs a mark of irrationality? These are just some of the topics that we will explore as we read various classical works in epistemology.