Facilitating the revolutionary transition from a mythological to a rational world view, ancient philosophers were the first to ask important questions about the nature of reality and the way in which human beings experience the world. Many of these questions are still being asked today. After surveying the metaphysical and epistemological musings of the pre-Socratic philosophers, students hear Socrates defend himself before an Athenian court against charges of religious heterodoxy and corrupting the minds of the young; watch while Plato constructs an ideal society based on reason; and consider with Aristotle the most rational approach to the good life. While discussing these primary texts, students also address other topics including the nature of reality; the sources and limitations of human knowledge; the nature of the True, the Good and the Beautiful; social contracts; the nature of government; piety, justice and virtue. Read more

Existentialism, as a school of thought, concerns itself with the question of meaning in one’s individual existence. Existentialism traces its roots to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and as an intellectual movement, it picked up momentum during and after World War II through the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. By studying the literature of individual existentialist thinkers, this course seeks to identify the main philosophical concepts of existentialism and to explore how these concepts have influenced contemporary sensibilities. Readings include works by Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Kafka. Read more

Some of the earliest and most important questions to engage philosophers dealt with the moral nature of human behavior. What is the basis of moral judgment? What makes right actions right and wrong ones wrong? Does diversity among different cultures permit any absolute moral values and behavioral norms, or are they necessarily relative and particularistic? Using a collection of readings from both ancient and modern philosophers, as well as various secondary sources, this course familiarizes students with the terms of this discussion and introduces them to a number of ethical theories including ethical relativism, divine command theory, ethical egoism, utilitarianism, and Kantian ethics. Read more

To make explicit our implicit principles of reasoning, this course introduces modern deductive and inductive logic, including propositional and predicate logic and techniques of formal proof. Students examine principles of logic and evidence, the foundations of our systems of knowledge. They come to understand the distinctions between validity and truth; between the actual, the logically possible and the logically necessary; and between inductive versus deductive logic. Finally, students learn some of the traditional informal fallacies of relevance, ambiguity and insufficient evidence. Read more

This course investigates the nature of philosophy by examining traditional philosophical problems: the ultimate nature of reality (metaphysics), the limits of human knowledge (epistemology), and the nature of the True, the Good and the Beautiful (axiology). The course seeks to develop within students critical and inquisitive minds that understand philosophy not as a purely academic venture, but as practical and indeed necessary for the development of meaningful and authentic lives. Read more

Students in this class examine a variety of moral issues and dilemmas and, by studying ethical theories and logical thinking, learn to approach and solve these dilemmas rationally. Rather than telling students what to believe, teachers provide students with a system for examining their own values and behavior as well as the behavior of others. Group discussions are a vital component of the class. Students complete a term paper investigating two sides of a public moral issue before arriving at a reasoned conclusion. The course concludes with a debate on a topic of the class’ choosing. Read more

An American intellectual movement rooted in Unitarianism, Neo-Platonism, German Idealism and English Romanticism, New England Transcendentalism is said to have accomplished in philosophy and religion what the American Revolution accomplished in politics. Offering liberation from the comfortable but restrictive orthodoxies of the 19th century, transcendentalism invited human beings to a new understanding of the value of the individual, the individual’s place in society and the individual’s connection to nature and nature’s God. Using the addresses, essays, pamphlets and polemics of some of the most celebrated members of the transcendentalist movement, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller, students develop an appreciation for this distinctively American intellectual movement and for the various philosophical and religious ideas that define it. Read more

This course offers a philosophical investigation of the problems of knowledge and mind: What do we know? What can we know? To what extent is our knowledge determined and/or limited by the constitution of our mind or brain? The course begins (as did modern epistemology) with the radical skeptic’s arguments that we can never be justified in our claims to know an external world. Some of the following topics are considered: the nature of scientific method, the problem of induction, the nature and justification of causal claims, principles of justification assumed in inferen¬ces from sense experience to reports about physical objects, philosophical theories of perception, the nature of consciousness, the mind-body problem and the impact of modern neurological research. Readings include Descartes, Kant, Russell, Putnam, Dennett and Chisholm.
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