DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Winter 2026 Class Schedule

Courses are subject to change. Check Caesar for the most up-to-date list of the current quarter.

Winter 2026 course descriptions

PHIL 101-8-20: First-Year Writing Seminar: Plato on Love and Philosophy

In this class, we will read Plato’s two masterpieces on erotic love: the Symposium and the Phaedrus. We will explore Plato’s treatment of the role of eros in human life, and consider the connection he draws between this phenomenon and the practice of philosophy. Our engagement with these texts will form the foundation for a series of structured writing assignments aimed at developing and refining your academic writing skills.

PHIL 101-8-21: First-Year Writing Seminar: Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

In this course, we will consider the problem of disagreements about taste or beauty: On the one hand, we all claim the right to have our own tastes and opinions regarding art and beauty. On the other hand, we tend to want others to share our opinions, and we are sometimes seriously hurt or offended when they don’t. How can we make sense of our disagreements about what counts as beautiful while also accounting for the immense force of shared aesthetic experiences? Along the way to answer such questions, we will practice the skills that go into good academic writing: analyzing the arguments of others, accurately describing them, and critically engaging with them; constructing clearly articulated arguments of one’s own and anticipating objections; and, if possible, doing all of this with as much grace in one’s prose as possible. We will begin by considering a range of classical accounts of beauty and aesthetic disagreement: Plato on the love of beauty, Abhinavagupta on beauty and self-transcendence, Charles Batteux on objectivity in aesthetic judgments, and Hume on the role of “judges” in disputes about taste. We will also examine the idea that evolution has somehow primed us to appreciate certain kinds of beauty. From there, we will explore modern and contemporary authors who have argued for the importance, both personal and political, of having a developed individual taste. Finally, we will employ the knowledge we have gained to a wide range of concrete aesthetic phenomena, from contemporary sexual politics to relative merits of “high” and “low” art.

PHIL 101-8-22: First-Year Writing Seminar: Ethics and Authenticity

This course reflects on the connections and tensions between the demands of ethics and that of authenticity. Broadly, ethics is the systematic study of how one should live and why one should live that way. The first half of this course introduces students to prominent moral theories advanced in classic texts in the Western tradition such as Plato and Kant. The second half of the course asks, what is the connection between living well and living authentically? What kinds of tensions arise between the demands of ethical life and concerns around authenticity and alienation? Can and should we resolve them? Readings from contemporary scholars include Susan Wolff, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Audre Lorde, and Cheshire Calhoun. 

PHIL 220 Intro to Critical Theory

In this class, we will focus on the foundations of critical theory in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber, paying particular attention to the methods they deploy in the treatment of moral and religious phenomena. Lectures will primarily involve a close analysis and discussion of the readings.

PHIL 224 Philosophy, Race, and Racism

This course provides a broad overview of philosophical discussions about race and racism. In the course, we will engage theoretical questions such as: What do we mean when we say “race”?; Is there a concept of race that undergirds users’ many different conceptions of race?; Do races exist, and what are races if they do exist?; What is racism?; and What is implicit bias? We will also engage practical questions such as: Is it moral to believe that humans are divided into races?; What ought we to do with race and race-talk given overriding moral concerns?; What makes being racist immoral; Is racism permanent?; and Are implicit racial biases morally condemnable?

PHIL 225 Minds and Machines

This course will take up a number of philosophical questions about generative artificial intelligence. Are generative AI models agents? Do they pose unique existential risks to humans? What does the surge in AI-generated content mean for art, social media, and politics? We will explore these questions through readings from philosophers, computer scientists, and others in the cognitive and social sciences.

PHIL 253 Intro to the Philosophy of Language

This is an introduction to the philosophy of language taught through academic texts from philosophy and the cognitive sciences as well as selections of short fiction. Some questions we will ask include: What is meaning? Can we ever really communicate with one another and, if so, how? How do we acquire a language? How do the languages that we learn shape our minds and the ways that we live? Do non-human animals use language? And how does figurative language work?

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.

The sorts of question we will address include: Are we free to believe as we like?  And even if we are, under what conditions, if any, should we deviate from what the evidence supports? To what extent should we think for ourselves, and when if at all should we rely on experts?  What (if anything) is wrong with information bubbles?  What is the responsible way to consume news?  How do we determine when our beliefs are rational, and what can be done when we detect irrationality (in ourselves or others)?  What should we do when we disagree?  What is the nature of trust (and when should we trust)?  

PHIL 260 Intro to Moral Philosophy

Moral philosophy is the study of how we should live. What kind of life is best for human beings? What is happiness? What is it to have a good character? What is it for an action to be morally right or wrong? We will investigate these and related questions by reading and reflecting on a variety of historical and contemporary texts. 

PHIL 262 Ethical Problems and Public Issues

Liberalism, democracy, capitalism: together, these three represent the default institutional framework for developed societies. Today, however, this framework is increasingly under threat, from both the left and the right. In this course, we will examine the philosophical justifications for these institutions, as well as prominent critiques of them, from across the political spectrum. We will examine these through the lens of prominent philosophical theories of morality such as utilitarianism, contractualism, and virtue ethics.

PHIL 273-3 Brady: The Good Life

An introduction to political philosophy through the lens of democracy and the rule of law. What is democracy? Who are the people and what does it mean for the people to rule? What is law? What does it mean for the law to rule? Can both the people and the law rule? We will learn how to think about these questions by learning to think with philosophers who have already done so.

PHIL 275 Climate Change and Sustainability: Ethical Dimensions

An examination of moral and political challenges related to climate change and sustainability, as well as philosophical approaches to addressing these challenges. Topics to be addressed include: the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate change mitigation and adaptation; the feasibility and desirability of perpetual economic growth; the moral status of nature and non-human animals; the demands of climate justice; and the ethics of geoengineering.

PHIL 325 Philosophy of Mind

In this course we will be exploring several of the core topics philosophers have addressed in connection with the nature of mind and it place in nature.  These include the nature of consciousness, the mind-body problem, the nature of thought and other psychological states, and the nature of the self. 

PHIL 355 Scientific Method in the Social Sciences

Science is often considered a value-free enterprise. Scientists work in labs following the scientific method and provide society with relevant scientific facts. Policymakers then decide, based on their values, how to act on these facts. Rarely is the story so clean.

Social scientists often study social phenomena that must be defined according to some set of social values. Well-being is something that is good for you, divorce is bad for you. Economists use models that make unrealistic assumptions about human behavior, yet still predict market outcomes. Climate scientists must decide how to communicate the predictions of their models to policy makers and the public.

In this course, we will evaluate methods such as economic models of decision-making, indicators and indexes, integrated assessment models of the Earth’s climate, causal analysis of social data, and machine learning models. In each case, we will assess to what extent these methods help us provide knowledge about our social world.

PHIL 361 Philosophy of Punishment and Incarceration

The United States is currently home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its incarcerated population. With roughly 2 million people under the control of the American criminal legal system, the United States has more total people who are incarcerated than any other country in the world. Moreover, the United States has one of the most punitive approaches to criminal justice, imposing lengthy prison sentences, forcing people who are incarcerated to spend years—sometimes even decades—in solitary confinement, and providing very few educational, vocational, and recreational programs in prisons.

Punishment and incarceration also disproportionately impact people of color. Black Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. While Black and Hispanic Americans make up about 32% of the US population, they constitute 56% of the incarcerated population.

This course will use a philosophical lens to examine the causes and consequences of this crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, along with possible solutions to it, with a particular emphasis on the theories of punishment grounding our criminal legal system and, thus, our prisons. The course will have a seminar-style format. Enrollment will include both Northwestern students from the Evanston campus and students in the Northwestern Prison Education Program.

Students will be required to take a drug test.

PHIL 364 Business and Professional 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 372-1 Civic Reflections I

PHIL 373-2 Brady: The Civically Engaged Life

PHIL 390 Special Topics: Indigenous Philosophy

This course, designed for both students in NAIS and in Philosophy, will present some of the central themes in Indigenous Philosophy, with a central focus on Native American thought. Topics will include Indigenous perspectives on identity, knowledge, reality and humans' place within it, ethics, justice, and our obligations to the natural world. Readings will include both historical and contemporary perspectives.

PHIL 401-2 1st year Proseminar

Continuation of first-year proseminar: early professionalization workshops and intensive writing.

PHIL 402-2 2nd year Proseminar

PHIL 410-3 Special Topics: Feminist Philosophy of Science

Feminism and philosophy of science have been entangled since at least the 1980s, when prominent feminist scholars turned a critical eye on traditional concepts of objectivity and scientific method. The relation between feminism and science is complex as women have traditionally been excluded from scientific institutions and activities or relegated to subordinate roles. The range of feminist responses to science engages fundamental philosophical questions: How does the ideal of knowledge relate to actual human practices? Is objective scientific knowledge possible? How do judgments about the plausibility of a theory interact with our practices of evidence collection? Does including the public in scientific research produce better knowledge?

We will cover three major feminist views on scientific knowledge: feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernism. Then we will focus our analysis on contemporary debates concerning sex, fertility, and gendered and raced bodies in biology and medicine.

PHIL 414: Hegel's Philosophy of Right

This course will involve a close reading of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820). The Philosophy of Right is both the most accessible entry points into Hegel’s mature thought and one of the greatest works in the history of European political philosophy. We will focus on the basic argumentative structure of the work, paying particular attention to Hegel’s unprecedented synthesis of normative and historical claims.

PHIL 423: Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy: W.E.B. Du Bois

This seminar explores the contributions of one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century—namely, W.E.B. Du Bois. While Du Bois is often celebrated as a sociologist and historian, this course foregrounds his philosophical thinking—particularly his reflections on race, identity, democracy, justice, and historical consciousness. Through close readings and analyses of key works within Du Bois’ corpus, as well as engagement with contemporary philosophical interpretations, we examine well-known concepts such as “double consciousness,” “the veil,” and “the talented tenth” in relation to ethics and moral philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophies of race, social science, and education. The course also considers Du Bois’ relevance to Africana philosophy specifically, critical race theory, and decolonialism.