Upcoming Graduate Courses

Philosophy Graduate Courses: Fall 2024

Graduate Seminar (PHIL 6000)

Slot 10 with Seamus O'Neill

This seminar is primarily designed to introduce Master’s and Doctoral students to the process of writing an M.A. thesis or doctoral dissertation, and to prepare them to produce and disseminate scholarly research in philosophy. This is not a lecture course, but rather, it is a ‘workshop’: students and the instructor will work as a team to 1) help each other workshop their ideas, 3) plan and structure their research projects, 3) read through texts in their particular areas of research, 4) report on their findings and progress, 5) edit and peer-edit their writing, and 6) learn important skills and methods to conduct graduate and professional research in philosophy. The seminar is student-run, with facilitation from the instructor. Students will also be introduced to various professional topics, which will help to prepare them for further graduate work and/or the academic job market. Time will also be spent discussing and practicing concrete time-management and productivity strategies to help you spend more of your time doing the things that are important to you in your life.

Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6045)  

Slot 72 with Shannon Hoff

Phenomenology and Freedom

20th-century existentialism is probably most well-known for its idea that one must assume, authentically, one’s freedom in order to fully realize or actualize that freedom, and in order to become a genuinely moral agent, and that bad faith, self-deception, or mystification stand in the way of becoming fully free and ethical. One might think, if this is the case, that the critical work to be done is inward and individual: to divest oneself of illusions. But phenomenological existentialists also challenge the idea of an isolatable individual, and the correlative suppositions that reasoning is an inward, merely mental, and individual phenomenon, and that being free and moral is a matter of being strong enough to turn to face the anxiety-provoking truth of one’s own freedom. Informed by the phenomenological idea that the self is not an inward “ghost in the machine” but a being-in-the-world and a social being, thinkers like Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty grapple, in different ways, with how to understand the bodily, social, material, and historical conditions of both our illusions and our freedom, and with the ensuing social and ethical implications. In our work this semester we will explore their different and complementary considerations of the social conditions of freedom and unfreedom, as well as the ethical and political implications that follow. Readings will be taken from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason, from Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, and from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, and will open for our consideration concepts such as facticity, transcendence, the practico-inert, seriality, vulnerability, sexuality, language, intersubjectivity, and the antinomies of action.

Seminar in Epistemology (PHIL 6015)  

Slot 14 with Jay Foster

Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6052)  

Slot 13 with Sean McGrath

The Later Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion

In 1841 Schelling emerged from early retirement and unveiled his much-anticipated alternative
to Hegel’s system: a complex interpretation of the history of religion, from ancient polytheism to
what Schelling proposes as the future of religion and the coming unity of humankind. We will
track the main moves in Schelling’s late philosophy of religion, from his arguments for realism,
through his reconstruction of Greek philosophy, to his now legendary interpretations of the
Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Beginning late September, Wednesdays
will be dedicated to graduate-student-led seminar. Recommend prerequisite: Schelling’s 1809,
Freedom Essay. If students have not read it, they should ideally read it before the seminar begins.
1. (begins 4 Sept) Introduction to the late Schelling
2. (begins 9 Sept) The Denkmal, Part 1, Fakhouri translation (1813)
3. (16 Sept) On the Deities of Samothrace (1815), Bilda, Wirth, and Krell translation
4. (23 Sept) The Grounding of the Positive Philosophy, Lecture 5 (On the Difference Between
Positive and Negative Philosophy)
5. (30 Sept) The Grounding of the Positive, Lecture 7 (Metaphysical Empiricism)
6. (7 Oct) The Grounding of the Positive, Lecture 8 (The Grounding of the Positive
Philosophy)
7. (14 Oct) The Historical-Critical Introduction, Lectures 1, 2, and 3
8. (21 Oct) The Historical-Critical Introduction, Lectures 5 and 6
9. (28 Oct) The Historical-Critical Introduction, Lectures 7 and 8
10. (4 Nov) The Monotheism Treatise, Fakhouri translation, Lectures 1, 2, and 3
11. (11 Nov) The Monotheism Treatise, Fakhouri translation, Lectures 4, 5, and 6
12. (18 Nov) Philosophy of Revelation, Birth of God, Ottmann translation, Lectures XI-XIII
13. (25 Nov) Philosophy of Revelation, Trinity, Ottmann translation, Lectures XV, XVI, XVII
14. (2 December / last class) Philosophy of Revelation, Christology, Ottmann translation,
Lectures XXIII, XXIV, XXV

Seminar in Special Topics (PHIL 6062)  

Slot 18 with Nicole Whalen

Economic Justice and the Environment

This course critically examines contemporary theories of justice from an ecological perspective. We will begin by reading work in ecological economics, a heterodox approach to economics that theorizes the economy as a subsystem of a finite ecosystem and supports the idea of a steady-state economy. We will then consider the extent to which liberal and socialist theories of justice conflict with the aims of ecological economics and environmental sustainability. The primary concern being that proponents of distributive justice tend to support economic growth, viewing it as a means to increase the well-being of the least advantaged members of society. We will also look at how egalitarian distributive justice schemes come into conflict with local and indigenous “attachment” claims to land and natural resources. In the final section of the course, we will consider approaches that seek to chart a new way forward for thinking about economic justice, including theories on the commons and degrowth.