Course Offerings

The course provides tools for the analysis of reasoning and the construction and evaluation of arguments. Examples from newspaper articles and theoretical discussions of science and social policy will be discussed.

Analysis and critical evaluation of key socio-political concepts: the state, civil society, power and authority, individual freedom, property, human rights, justice, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, authoritarianism versus totalitarianism. Ideas of theorists like Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, Rawls and others will be discussed.

An introductory study of a fundamental tool of rational thought: deductive logic. The basic concepts, principles, and techniques of formal logic are studied: valid and invalid arguments, the logical structure of statements and arguments, use of a symbolic language to represent arguments and symbolic techniques to facilitate their analysis and assessment.

Analysis and critical evaluation of the concepts of law, rights, and related categories and problems: commands, social rules, moral rules, primary and secondary rules, sovereignty, international law, war, punishment, social justice, property. Texts of classical and contemporary authors will be closely read and analyzed in class.

A survey of issues related to our aesthetic appreciation of works of visual art, music and other objects (the environment, architecture, etc.). Traditional and contemporary aesthetic theories will be discussed.

An examination of one or more themes in existentialist thought. Topics to be investigated will include authenticity, anxiety, being and meaning.

This course explores issues related to the ethics of war and peace. In includes discussions of just war, ‘the duty to protect’ innocent third parties, the moral claims of combatants and non-combatants, terrorism, civil war, revolution, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, the ethics of post-war reconstruction and reconciliation (including the notion of political forgiveness), the concept of self-defence, the idea of ‘total war,’ the ethics of civil disobedience (violent and non-violent), arms races, and more. These and other issues will be explored against the background of more theoretical topics such as the limits of legitimate political authority, the problem of evil, and the problem of individual responsibility in collectives.

An introduction to modern philosophy, which will discuss its beginnings in the Renaissance and its development in the 17th and 18th centuries. Discussion will focus on thinkers such as Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, Rousseau and Kant. The rise of science, modernity, the Enlightenment, empiricism, rationalism and idealism will be possible topics for discussion.

A survey of modern philosophy from Kant to Nietzsche. The Enlightenment, the Romantic Movement, idealism, positivism, utilitarianism, traditionalism and liberalism will be possible topics of discussion.

A survey of themes in 20th century philosophy, including such movements as pragmatism, logical empiricism, ordinary language philosophy, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, deconstruction, and the bridging of the so called analytical/continental divide.

This course explores core questions about the nature and compatibility of freedom, determinism, and responsibility. We will examine competing accounts of compatibilism and incompatibilism, and explore such questions as whether or not freedom and responsibility require alternative possibilities. Our ultimate aim will be to clarify what is necessary for free will and responsibility.

This course will examine Søren Kierkegaard’s moral psychology as presented in his “psychological works” – The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death.  We will discuss the notion of anxiety in relation to innocence, freedom, guilt and the fall (Christian and romantic versions of the fall) in order to present Kierkegaard’s picture of the development of consciousness.  Following this we will examine his account of selfhood and ethics.  Kierkegaard sees the self as a synthesis of various elements (the infinite and finite, the temporal and eternal, freedom and necessity).  The question of whether a self is chosen or received will be explored.  We will also look at the development of the self through Kierkegaard’s famous ‘stages’ of existence.

Traditionally, personal identity as a metaphysical issue has focused on the question, what is the criteria for a person’s persistence over time? The question became extremely pressing once philosophers rejected the notion of a single persisting and indivisible soul, and instead viewed us as reducible to complexes of changing physical and/or psychological elements. Reductionist attempts to answer the question have favoured a psychological criterion of identity, though some have proposed a physical criterion. One of the more radical strands of psychological reductionism involves the assertion that, given the malleability of the psychological relations over time that make up personal identity (relations that can weaken and even divide into separate streams), identity ought not to matter to us. The first part of this course examines reductionist accounts of personal identity from their origins in early modern philosophy through to the 20th century. The second part of the course considers recent supplements and alternatives to the traditional debate. Some of these emphasise practical over metaphysical identity, and introduce normative considerations about personal relations. Some have called for an increased attention to our role as agents. Others have emphasised narrative self-constitution, which involves in part determining for oneself who one really is. Yet another approach focuses on the phenomenology of the self, claiming that our sense of self is of a fleeting thing, barely present for more than a moment at a time. And a significant new entry into the field argues that personal identity theory has been misguided from the outset: instead of asking about persistence over time we must determine what kind of thing we are, the answer being we are biological entities or animals; had we settled this point first, it is suggested, many of the traditional disputes and wilder speculations within personal identity theory may never have gained ground.

This course explores the apparently significant event of personal death, or the death of one's self, primarily from a metaphysical point of view. Much of the philosophical debate revolves around the Epicurean questions of for whom, if anyone, is death bad, given that the subject no longer exists at the time of her death; a related question concerns why we tend to dread our post-mortem non-existence but are indifferent to our pre-natal non-existence. Other topics for exploration include: the desirability of immortality; the rationality of fear of death; how the nature of time shapes and may explain our views about the badness of death; well-being in the face of mortality and the contribution of death to the value of life; and whether our personal survival matters as much to us as the survival of humankind.

Some philosophers argue that none of us can truly be responsible for our actions, since free will is an illusion. But many other philosophers and most ordinary folk do believe that persons can be responsible for their actions. Which actions? Surely not all of them—if you are stronger than I, grab my arm and use it to punch out the Dean, surely I am not responsible for having knocked out the Dean. If you put arsenic in the sugar bowl and I offer it up, unknowingly, to a guest who wants to sweeten her iced tea, surely I am not responsible for poisoning my guest, even if I am causally linked to her poisoning.

In this class, “Responsibility and Ignorance,” we will think about cases like this last one—the case where I, acting in ignorance, unknowingly poison my guest. When are persons responsible, or are they ever responsible, when they act in ignorance of some relevant fact? What about cases of moral (as opposed to factual) ignorance? Suppose that I think killing an innocent at the behest of my mob boss is showing loyalty and so morally laudable, not morally wrong. Can I be morally responsible for my own moral ignorance, and for acts that stem from such moral ignorance? Under what conditions, and why or why not? We will read mostly contemporary philosophers on this topic, that of the epistemic conditions on responsible action.

This course explores claims made for cultural recognition and their normative status. Topics examined may include: the role of cultural membership and its relationship to individuals; claims for cultural recognition and their connection to concepts such as equality and justice; historical injustice and reparation; colonization and imperialism; liberalism and cultural diversity; individual rights and collective rights; toleration and its limits; human rights and global diversity; women and multiculturalism; and secularism, public reason, and cultural diversity.

Hailed by philosophers as 'the mother of us all,' Simone de Beauvoir is undoubtedly the most famous female philosopher in Western history. Although her reputation as Jean-Paul Sartre's partner often eclipses her own work, she is a brilliant existentialist, ethicist, political thinker, phenomenologist, and feminist philosopher in her own right. This course will study some of de Beauvoir’s key philosophical works in the area of values. It will also engage with contemporary assessments of her philosophical thinking. Topics to be covered may include: existentialist ethics, committed politics and literature, ambiguity, the body, gender, old age.

Theories of personal autonomy focus on specifying the conditions some action, desire, decision, motivation, or life must meet in order to count as truly an agent’s own.  While some feminists have been critical of the value of theorizing about autonomy given its roots in an ideal of a detached, atomistic, contracting self, others recognize its value for analyzing the ways in which various forms of oppression affect the extent to which one is able to govern one’s own life.  The broad term, relational autonomy, covers work on theories of personal autonomy that take seriously the ways in which the self is embedded in and constituted by relations of various kinds; these relations include personal, political, social, historical, institutional, epistemological, metaphysical, physical, and legal relations.  In this course, we will engage the debates about how best to articulate and defend a theory of relational autonomy.

In the MA Research Seminar, students share their work in progress while developing their major research papers. Discussion of student projects and research questions in the early stages enables more rapid development of research skills, as students learn from the critique of their own and their peers’ work. The research seminar affords students the opportunity to get started in earnest on their MRP in the winter term so that substantial progress is made before spring. The distinctive theme of our program means there are common threads, concepts and problems amongst student projects even in disparate subfields. Students gain valuable insight and ideas from hearing other student work, and acquire valuable skills in learning to constructively interrogate and critique each others’ work. Getting started on what might otherwise be an intimidating project is collaborative.