Philosophy

How does one’s social positionality affect one’s status as a knower? Who is heard? Who is believed? This seven-week course is focused on questions of justice and power in relation to knowledge. We will engage with recent work in social epistemology—philosophical theories of belief and knowledge—with an emphasis on feminist epistemologies, anti-racist epistemologies, and

Feminism imagines a world free of gender-based oppression and injustice. But what exactly does such freedom involve? In this course, we’ll investigate the interplay between gender, feminist theory, and philosophical views about freedom. Some prompting questions include: Is individual freedom enough? What does ubiquitous pornography mean for sexual freedom? How does politics

This class examines a variety of answers to the ancient question: How do I live a good life? We’ll engage with thinkers from diverse traditions across time and space as we clarify our own understanding of what makes life worth living and as we articulate a more developed conception of the good life. Readings will include texts from Greek and Roman

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) describes his own work in metaphysics by analogy with Copernicus’s revolution in astronomy. He constructs a system of thought that attempts to move beyond the empiricism of Hume and the rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff. His method – critique – and his theory – transcendental idealism – have profoundly influenced all subsequent philosophy. In three

This course invites students to research and write a paper on a philosophical topic of their own choosing. Students will be required to clearly state the philosophical problem they want to research, construct a detailed bibliography, and write a paper that explains the problem, engages with the philosophical literature, and advances an argument.

This class invites students to analyze and assess a number of philosophical puzzles, paradoxes, and thought experiments including experience machines, the trolley problem, zombies, and the original position. You will read and discuss the original source and some of the critical literature.

What is the difference between belief and knowledge? What is it to have a mind? Is theism rational? Are our actions free? These are some of the questions this first course in philosophy asks. Our investigation will center on the 17th-19th c., a watershed period in Western Europe marked by major political, scientific, religious, and intellectual revolutions. This course has

It is 416 BCE. A group of Athenian men are gathered together for a party, a celebration, a symposium. Among the company are the tragic playwright Agathon, Agathon’s lover Pausanias, the beautiful but doomed Phaedrus, the comic playwright Aristophanes, the doctor Eryximachus, and the (also perhaps doomed) philosopher Socrates. Diotima, a priestess from Mantinea, puts in a

In this introductory course you will read a wide range of political philosophers and theorists who rethink and reimagine society. Beginning with Marx we will explore radical social visions from thinkers such as Rosa Luxumburg, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Fanon, Steve Biko, Michel Foucault, John Rawls, Chantel Mouffe, and Kimberle Crenshaw, among others. This course is

“I, at least, am not a Marxist” Karl Marx

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mathematics underwent a vast expansion, into new, exciting, and increasingly counter-intuitive realms. The subject risked mystification and mutual incomprehensibility between experts in different sub-fields. In the first part of the twentieth century, a group of French mathematicians, under the pseudonym Bourbaki, undertook an

The tragic protagonist is a person pushed to the breaking point- dealing with disaster, fate, suffering, unspeakable loss, and often the consequences of their own bad decisions. Greek tragedy shows human beings struggling in a world that often seems brutal, senseless, and beyond their control, where contingency is a hard fact of life. As such, tragedy raises significant

Theoretical Ethics aims to uncover the sources of moral knowledge and the foundations of moral obligation. You will engage in a detailed reading of two classical moral theories and study contemporary interpretations and applications of these theories. You will be expected to contribute substantially to class discussion, write two essays and present a draft of your final