Spring 2023 Class Schedule

spring 2023 Course Descriptions

PHIL 109-20: First-year Seminar: Philosophy through Race

This first year seminar introduces students to philosophical issues and foundational questions in philosophy through an examination of a very fundamental part of our world—namely, race. And so students will be introduced to different philosophical questions in seven traditional areas in philosophy—namely: 1) knowledge and certainty; 2) being and reality; 3) language and meaning; 4) aesthetics; 5) morality; 6) politics; and 7) God and religion. However, we will engage each area through an analysis of race.

PHIL 210-3: History of Philosophy-Early Modern

The transition from the Medieval to the Modern era in philosophy began, roughly, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and ended, again roughly, in the late 18th century. New methods of acquiring knowledge, along with a radically different conception of the world, permanently transformed the philosophical enterprise and the broader culture. In this course we will examine the views of some of the most important modern philosophers—especially Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bayle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—on the nature of God, causation, substance, mind, knowledge, and the material world. Additional readings will be drawn from Elizabeth, Galileo, Sor Juana, Masham, Boyle, Shepherd, Du Châtelet, and Cordova.

PHIL 221: Gender, Politics, and Philosophy

This class introduces students to a variety of philosophical problems concerning gender and politics. Together, we'll read classic and contemporary texts that examine questions such as: what is gender -- and how, if it all, does it relate to or differ from sex? What does it really mean to be a woman or a man -- and are these categories we'r e born into or categories that we become or inhabit through living in a particular way under specific conditions? Human history all the way up to the present seems to be rife with asymmetrical relations of power that relegate those marked out as women to a subordinate position -- what explains this? What would it mean to over turn this state of affairs -- and which strategies are most likely to accomplish this task? And to what extent is it possible to grapple with all of the above questions -- questions of gender, sex and sexuality -- without also, at the very same time, thinking about how they relate to questions of class and race? Readings will include selections from Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Sandra Bartky, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Judith Butler, Talia Bettcher, and others.

PHIL 255: Theory of Knowledge

In this class we will investigate several philosophical questions that arise as we think about knowledge. We will consider questions concerning the values that arise in connection with knowledge and other products of inquiry, we will help students recognize and reflect on evaluative questions that arise when we assess claims to knowledge, we will become aware of the standards we bring to bear in such assessments, and we will appreciate how these standards may be misused, abused, or exploited under certain social conditions.

PHIL 262: Ethical Problems/Public Issues

This course is a study of ethical problems arising in public policy, as well as philosophical approaches to addressing these problems. In this course we will think within, and critically examine, contemporary philosophical theories of morality such as utilitarianism, contractualism, virtue ethics, and care ethics. We will examine these moral theories through the lens of disputed moral issues such as punishment, immigration, racial integration, climate change, and freedom of speech, paying special attention to these issues as they figure in the contemporary social and political landscape of the United States. We will explore historical and contemporary structures of inequality in the US, particularly related to race, gender, and class, and we will critically reflect on our own positions within these structures.

PHIL 270: Climate Change & Sustainability: Ethical Dimensions

This course is an introduction to some central concepts and problems in philosophical environmental ethics, with an emphasis on issues related to anthropogenic climate change. In the first part of the course, we will explore the problem of “moral standing:” the problem of who or what is deserving of ultimate moral consideration. For example, do sentient non-human animals like pigs or polar bears have moral standing? What about non-sentient life, such as plants or fungus? Might whole ecosystems or even nature as such have moral standards? We will examine recent arguments on these questions and their implications for moral theory. In the second part of the course, we will turn directly to the issue of global climate change. We will explore the standard economic analysis of climate change as a collective action problem and the philosophical presuppositions of that analysis. We will consider the question of the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate mitigation globally, and we will discuss the ethics of geoengineering. We will close by considering the issue of “anthropocentrism” in ethics, asking whether and why anthropocentrism might be a problem for moral theory.

PHIL 273-3: Brady Program: The Good Society

This course is the third in the sequence of Brady seminars. We will explore central questions in political philosophy including, but not limited to, the following. What are the ends of political community? When is the exercise of power legitimate, and when is it illegitimate? Do political communities safeguard against selfish motives, or express our natural goodness? Is there such a thing as human nature? What values can hold a community together? Can capitalist societies be good societies? How should we respond to racial and gender oppression? We will explore these questions by engaging with classical and contemporary political theory. Readings may include Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Marx, Fanon, and MacKinnon.

PHIL 324: Studies in African American Philosophy Through the Works of Charles W. Mills

African American Philosophy can be understood as philosophical engagement with African American experiences. And since African Americans (and thus their experiences) are a Western people, African American Philosophy is often theorized as, even if contentiously, engaged with Western philosophical traditions methodologies. African American Philosophy thereby tends to apply Western traditions and methodologies to issues such as slavery, integration/self-segregation, assimilation/separatism, reparations, collective identity and efficacy, intersectionality, etc., and concepts such as respect, alienation, oppression, citizenship, forgiveness, art, progress, etc. as they are either conceptualized or reimagined through African American experiences. This course introduces students to African American Philosophy, but centers the work of one of the great pioneers of African American Philosophy—namely, Charles W. Mills. And so students will engage many issues and concepts within African American Philosophy by looking deeply—though not exclusively—into Mills’ philosophy.

PHIL 328: Classics of Analytic Philosophy

This course will trace the major preoccupations of of analytic philosophy from its beginnings in the late 19th century. We will read selections from figures including Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, and others.

PHIL 350: Advanced Logic

This course will explore foundational results in metalogic: the mathematical theory of logics. In particular, we will look at (and prove, in detail) the foundational results relating the languages of first-order logic and interpretations of those languages. These results are: Gödel's completeness theorem, the compactness theorem, and the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems. We will also explore some philosophical questions concerning corollaries of these theorems, including Putnam's model-theoretic arguments against realism, Benacerraf's arguments that numbers cannot be objects, the existence of non-standard models of arithmetic, and the consistency of infinitesimal quantities.

PHIL 364: Business Ethics

Do corporations have moral obligations that extend beyond mere compliance with law? Or is business ethics a contradiction in terms, as some have argued? In this course, we will attempt to answer these questions. We will survey the major contemporary theories of business ethics, and we will apply these frameworks to issues such as climate change and worker's rights. Readings will be drawn from economics and organizational theory as well as philosophy.

PHIL 410: Special Topics in Philosophy: Fanon, Now: Race, Gender, Coloniality

A revolutionary, thinker, psychiatrist, and physician, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) produced a diverse and groundbreaking life work from Martinique to Algeria that has shaped generations of activists and scholars, and continues to do so.  

This graduate seminar will examine early and late major writings of Fanon, and a selection of scholarship on and influenced by Fanon in the fields of critical race theory, feminist theory, and decolonial thought, such as Gordon, Karera, Maldonado-Torres, Zambrana, Mbembe, Al-Saji, Snorton, and Wynter, among others. The range and nature of responses to Fanon’s work since his time speaks to the continued problem of colonialism, anti-Blackness, and the racialized gender system, as well as the changes in paradigms and discourse surrounding these issues. The course encourages seminar participants to think critically with and about Fanon’s work, to incorporate Fanon into their research and explore the renewed significance of Fanon’s work today.  

Prospective participants should write Professor We and Professor Deutscher jointly. The course prerequisites are:  least one course (or equivalent) in Black/Critical Race Theory or decolonial thought, and one course (or equivalent)  in gender and sexuality studies.

PHIL 468: Seminar in Epistemology

In this course we’ll examine various ways that analytic philosophers over the last century have connected claims about the nature of language to claims about politics. Likely included will be a consideration of the verificationism of the Logical Positivists, and of the semantic externalism of late-20th century US philosophers like Kripke, Putnam, and Burge. We’ll also critically examine more contemporary trends and debates in social/political philosophy of language, likely including applications of speech act theory, the at-issue/not-at-issue distinction, the ideal/non-ideal distinction as applied to the philosophy of language, and the idea of an ``ameliorative” approach to linguistic analysis.

PHIL 488: Professional Skills

This course will guide graduate students through preparation for the academic job market, as well as introducing them to alt-ac career possibilities and resources.