Spring 2006
Notes
PHL 291, section 001, is the course Special Topics: African Political Philosophy with Lewis Gordon. PHL 291, section 002, is a completely different course, Special Topics: Philosophy of Sport with Joan Grassbaugh. Students wishing to take both courses should consult the Undergraduate Director, Paul Crowe.
Senior Seminar (capstone requirement for the major)
In the Fall there will be two sections of Senior Seminar.
W298 (001) Senior Seminar R 2:40-5:30 Wolfsdorf
W298 (002) Senior Seminar M 2:40-5:30 Taylor
200/400 Level Courses
233 Problems in Aesthetics: Pragmatist Aesthetics and Asian Religions TR 1:10-2:30 Stroud
Aesthetics and religion have often been conceived of as separate areas of activity. The American pragmatist tradition, however, has frequently linked the two areas and drawn upon the aesthetic elements in religious experience as well as the religious quality of moving aesthetic activities. This course will explore this disciplinary nexus between aesthetics and religion by using the guiding paradigm of pragmatist aesthetics as explored by traditional and contemporary pragmatists. Of particular interest will be pragmatism’s affinities with and relation to Asian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Zen/Ch’an Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. The course begins with some background on the study of aesthetics, as well as on some major themes in Asian religious/philosophical traditions. We then progress to John Dewey’s major works on aesthetics and religion, followed by examining the relationships posited among pragmatism, aesthetics, and Asian religious/philosophical traditions by contemporary writers such as Crispin Sartwell and Richard Shusterman. The course concludes by looking at the recent film, The Thin Red Line, as an artifact that can let us apply what we have learned about pragmatist aesthetics and Asian thought, as well as an experiential test of the worth of such theory.
291 (002) Special Topics: Philosophy of Sport M 2:40-5:30 Grassbaugh
This interdisciplinary course examines the philosophical and social dimensions of sport. This course treats the major issues internal to the philosophy of sport, including definitional issues of sport and the body, values in sport, sport as self-knowledge, and sport as moral education. Addressing social and ethical issues particular to sport, such as performance-enhancing and cheating, sport and violence, racial and gender equity, this course pays special attention to femininity, masculinity, and sexuality in sport.
2/468 Indian Philosophy R 2:40-5:30 Mohanty
2/429 Philos. in Literature W 2:40-5:30 Dyke
This course has evolved into an exploration of the conceptual tools and cultural sophistication required to read Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse intelligently. From another point of view, the course is the continuation of a critique of “the enlightenment project,” “modernity,” European imperialism, or whatever you want to call it, that began in the late nineteenth century and runs along as one of the persistent threads in 20th century thought. From yet another point of view the course is a look at ourselves as others, something Virginia Woolf was exquisitely familiar with. The most important literature in the course is what you yourself produce, so we ought to talk about it first before going on to the lesser works, but what you produce depends on those lesser works, so we’ll identify them: Borges, Labyrinths; Calvino, The Baron in the Trees; Camus, The Fall; Conrad, Nostromo; Gide, Lafcadio’s Adventures; Hasek, The Good Soldier Schweik; Pirandello, One, No One, A Hundred Thousand; Woolf, To the Lighthouse
2/426 Classics Moral Philos. TR 1:10-2:30 Vision
As the title indicates, we will survey a number of classical contributions to moral philosophy, including selections from Aristotle, Hobbes, Butler, Hume, Kant, Mill, Sidgwick, and Moore. In our examination of these works, and others, we will encounter a number of topics such as the nature of the good life and human functioning, the role of happiness or pleasure in morality, the fit (or misfit) between human nature and moral demands, the character of moral motivation, the nature of duty and obligation, the question of the objectivity of moral properties, the respective roles and importance of groups and individuals in morality, and the place of morality in the whole of a life.
2/451 Philos. of Language W 2:40-5:30 Thau
In War and Peace, aside from telling a good story, Tolstoy also explicitly critiques a certain kind of historical explanation -- viz., one that attempts to causally explain historical events by appealing to the intentions and actions of the leaders of governments and other social institutions. The critique of such historical explanations is explicit in the text -- indeed, as the novel progresses, more and more of the text is devoted to essays explicitly making the case against these kinds of historical explanations. However, what's less explicit in the text is that Tolstoy's critique of historical explanation is part of a wider critique on the explanatory power of language in general. In this course, we will try to tease out what Tolstoy's view of language and linguistic communication is by reading War and Peace. Concurrently with War and Peace, we'll also look at some later texts of Tolstoy's (e.g., "Kreutzer Sonata") and some critics of Tolstoy (Isaiah Berlin and the much harsher critic George Orwell).
2/473 Greek Philos. M 2:40- 5:30 Wolfsdorf
This course will involve a close reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
291 (001)/491 Special Topics: African Political Philosophy W 6:00-8:30 Gordon
This course is a seminar discussion of several influential theoretical work whose focus is the political situation of Africa from the 1950s through to the present. Such topics as the logic and process of decolonization to the formation of a liberating consciousness and the concerns of stratification and philosophical anthropology will emerge through discussions of books by such authors as Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkruhmah, Julius Nyerere, Almicar Cabral, K. Anthony Appiah, Samir Amin, Lansana Kaita, Nkiru Nzegwu, Kwame Gyekye, Steven Biko, P. Mbogo More, Noel Manganyi, John and Jean Comaroff, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Elias Bongmba, and Mahmoud Mamdani.
Graduate Seminars
0626 Sem. 19th C Philo T 2:40-5:30 Mohanty
A reading of Hegel’s Phenomenlogy of Spirit.
0701 Sem. in Aesthetics T 2:40-5:30 Margolis
It would not be unfair to say that contemporary work in the philosophy of art has followed, by some decades, the bolder debates pursued in analytic philosophies of mind and philosophies of science regarding the conceptual adequacy of various thin and thick forms of reductive materialism vis-à-vis the salient data of cultural life (languages, selves, history, artworks). We shall examine a sample of views informed by this concern (pro and con), ranging over such topics as the ontology of artworks and our perception and understanding of them; literary and pictorial representation; fictionality; intentionality; interpretation; the relationship between moral and aesthetic considerations. We shall attempt some assessments of a fair number of the most active discussants in the field.
0631 Sem. in Contemp. Continental Philos. R 2:40-5:30 Gjesdal
What is a self? How does the self know itself? What is the relation between knowledge of oneself and knowledge about the world? By looking at texts by and on Descartes, Hegel, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard this seminar offers a survey of some classical positions within the philosophical discussion of selfhood and subjectivity. We shall also see how the notion of selfhood, in Hegel, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, is intrinsically linked to a critical reading of Cartesian philosophy and look at how the discussion of selfhood gets linked up with a discussion of modernity at large. Besides reading the original texts by Descartes, Hegel, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, we shall be discussing more contemporary interpretations of their work, both from within an Anglophone and a European context (Hintikka, Williams, Rorty, Taylor, Cavell, Hyppolite, Bataille, and others). Finally, towards the end of the semester, we will be turning to Beckett and his reflections the relationship between selfhood and literature.