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| hope college > academic departments > philosophy |
Current Philosophy CoursesSearch via KnowHope Plus. SPRING 2008 Course DescriptionsPHIL 195-01A
No one can question the fact that sport has an enormous economic and social impact on contemporary culture; and like every complex social activity, sport raises ethical questions. Is winning all that matters? How should opposing players treat one another on and off the field? Should we ban sports that seem to be excessively violent? Is intercollegiate athletics harmful to university education? Is the fact that every professional baseball player earns more than nearly every professional teacher morally justifiable? Of what value is sport, anyway? This course will introduce students to the central ethical questions in and around sports, especially at the collegiate and professional levels. These questions can be divided into roughly two kinds: (i) questions about ethics in sport (e.g., the nature of sportsmanship and fair play, violence in sport, and performance enhancement drugs); and (ii) questions about the ethics of sport (e.g., the value of sports in society and the impact of sports on moral education). After a brief introduction, the first half of the course will be spent on ethics in sport and the second half on the ethics of sport. PHIL 200-01A (Note: Meets first half of semester) PHIL 200-01B (Note: Meets last half of semester) This half-semester course will satisfy the department logic requirement for majors and minors. It also may be of some use to those who plan to take standardized tests such as the LSAT. We will look at some basic ideas in informal logic, with an eye to how those principles are applied in our everyday language. We will consider what it means to say of an argument that it is valid, or sound, or fallacious. Toward the end of the course, we will also consider some philosophical quandaries that have persisted throughout much of our history and consider how logic might aid us in solving them. These may include arguments for and against free will and determinism, arguments for and against ethical relativism and/or ethical egoism, and others. We will also learn some very basic steps in propositional logic and how to apply them to our real-world reasoning. PHIL 230-01 This course is an introduction to Western philosophy
as seen particularly in the works of the ancient Greeks. We will focus
most of our attention
on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We will look at some Socratic dialogues,
including those having to do with Socrates’ trial and death. Plato
will take the mantle from his master at that point, and give us some
interesting views about the soul and its immortality, as well as the
just city and the just soul. Aristotle breaks with his friend Plato and
develops his own system. Much of later philosophy is unimaginable apart
from the legacies of Plato and Aristotle, including the Christian thinkers
Augustine and Aquinas, whose writings we will examine at the end of the
semester. Issues that they will raise include how humans’ free
will allows them to sin, what it means to have free will, whether it
can be proven that God exists, and how our souls might be related to
our bodies. PHIL 232-02 This is a course in the history of philosophy, focusing on the most important topics and figures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1600-1800). According to myth, our story begins with the Continental Rationalists (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza), followed by the British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). These opposing view points were (supposedly) reconciled in the work of Immanuel Kant. While we’ll survey the whole period, we’ll spend more time with five philosophers in particular: Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Reid. Our discussion will focus on three main issues: (i) the limits of human knowledge, (ii) the foundations of morality, and (iii) the justification for political authority. Additional issues we’ll consider include arguments for the existence of God, the metaphysics of perception, the possibility of miracles, and free will/determinism. Note: This course counts toward fulfillment of Cultural Heritage requirements.
PHIL 325-01 In no other area of philosophy do we explore more directly the question “Who am I?” than in the philosophy of mind. My mind is my “true self,” we might say, but what is the mind? This question has perplexed philosophers for centuries, and in this course we will look at some of the classical answers that thinkers of earlier times have offered, but we will focus our attention mainly on contemporary work. The question, “What is the mind?” encompasses or leads to a great many more: what is the relation between our minds and our bodies (and, in particular, between our minds and our brains)? Do the extraordinary features of the mind, such as consciousness, show that minds are unlike the rest of the natural world? Or is the mind no different in kind from other things we encounter in the world? -- Is it, say, just a type of computer? Does the mind make its decisions freely or are our “choices” imposed on us by our genes and our environment? By asking and trying to answer questions like these we should be able to come to a better understanding of what it is to be a creature with a mind, and why such creatures are both perplexing and remarkable. PHIL 342-01 (Note: This course is cross-listed with POL 342)
PHIL 344-01 (Note: Cross-listed with Religion 344)
PHIL 380-01 Existential thought demands that you consider the person you are and
hope to become with more depth than perhaps any other school of thought.
Its concerns are, in some sense, shared by theists and atheists, and
cut across divides of race and gender. Yet it also asks us to take what
sets us apart as individuals, one from another, very seriously. Some
of these features have to do with our choices. Some do not, but they
do not fail to contribute to our identity for all that. In this course
we will begin by looking at Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche,
two nineteenth-century thinkers who are often said to be fathers of existentialism.
We will then turn to Martin Heidegger, whose work is so foundational
that it gave rise to at least two different ways of conceiving of future
philosophy. We will look at some of the early Heidegger, and then explore
the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, and Gabriel
Marcel, among others. Here we will have a chance to ask how concerns
about race and gender contribute to our identity. IDS 171-41 This question is one of the fundamental concerns of the Western tradition,
and it continues to be one of the basic concerns of life today. In this
course, we will explore some of the key ideas, persons, arguments, events,
literary works, cultures, that have contributed to the making of “the
West,” and which still influence our lives and our culture today.
We will concentrate on three great cities and ways of life: 5th century
Athens, the Roman republic and empire, and late medieval Florence. We
will also consider the emergence of Christianity in the West, and how
the West involves a combining of the classical thinking of Greece and
Rome with the rise of Christianity. We will read works of literature
(Homer, Virgil, Dante), works of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine,
Aquinas), and works of history (Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy).
We’ll consider the role of Arab culture in preserving the classical
tradition of the West and contributing to its development. Throughout
all of our investigations, we will be focusing on what it might mean
to be human and have some freedom, and what might be involved in trying
to live well. IDS 172-42
IDS 177-01 This course is an introduction to the history and ideas of western
culture from ancient times to the beginning of modernity. The course
is interdisciplinary in nature, which means that we will look at western
culture through two different disciplines of the humanities – history
and philosophy. The unifying theme of the course is the construction
of the self, society, and the sacred throughout western history. How
does one become a self? How should we live together in society? How do
we understand and relate to that which is sacred? What is the relationship
between self, society and the sacred? These are the questions that motivated
the development of western culture, and these are the questions we will
be asking and trying to answer in this course. From 5th century B.C.
Greece to 1st century A.D. Rome to the rise of Christianity and Islam
in Medieval Europe and lands east, we will be encountering some of the
greatest texts and the central contexts of our cultural heritage. We
will also be exploring our own sense of self, society, and the sacred,
for only by understanding who we have been can we understand who we are
now. IDS 470-01 This course will examine various questions related to how good one’s life has to be in order to be worth living. Throughout history we have labeled certain individuals “heroes” and others “saints.” We hold them as examples of lives well lived. Should we all, then, be saints or heroes? Would it be acceptable to be less than that, to be ordinary? In exploring these questions, we will look at examples from novels, short stories, and biographies. IDS 495-10 How do we become the person we are meant to be? How do we become our selves? How do we live, in the words of Parker Palmer, "the life that wants to live in me?" This seminar will reflect on what it means to become a self and the process of becoming a self. We begin with the assumption that each one of us is lead or called to be a unique self. But what is meant by a "calling"? And called by whom? In this seminar we will consider the traditional Christian view that each of us is called by God, through an inner leading, to become our true self, a unique image of God, expressed through a life of service in the world. We will also consider alternative views on selfhood and how to live a meaningful life. And we will consider how we might hear this call, this inner leading, by becoming better listeners to ourselves and others. Self and other, inner and outer, spiritual and secular – these are some of the tensions that arise in the journey toward selfhood. We will reflect on how these tensions manifest in our lives, and how we might be able to harmonize them into one undivided life. By the end of the seminar we should have a better sense not only of the person we are, but the person we are called to be.
May 5 - 29, 2008Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Wyoming“Community, Spirituality and Nature: Exploring the Place of Humans in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone” Instructors: Credits: Program: Cost: $1,490 (not including tuition) For further information, contact Professor Jim Allis, Philosophy Department, Lubbers 216, 395-7550 or allis@hope.edu.
FALL 2008 Course Descriptions
PHIL 201-01 The study of the structure of reasoning. This course will introduce students to techniques for recognizing, formalizing, and evaluating the logical structures of arguments. Students will be taught symbolic languages, how to translate English arguments into those languages, and proof and testing procedures using the languages. This course will, along with introducing students to the rudiments of logic, explain how logic is employed in the articulation and solution of problems in various subdisciplines of philosophy. (Not recommended as an introduction to philosophy but, given its usefulness as a basis for many other courses, it should be taken early by philosophy majors and minors.) PHIL 230-01
This course is an introduction to Western philosophy as seen particularly in the works of the ancient Greeks. We will focus most of our attention on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We will look at some Socratic dialogues, including those having to do with Socrates’ trial and death. Plato will take the mantle from his master at that point, and give us some interesting views about the soul and its immortality, as well as the just city and the just soul. Aristotle breaks with his friend Plato and develops his own system. Much of later philosophy is unimaginable apart from the legacies of Plato and Aristotle, including the Christian thinkers Augustine and Aquinas, whose writings we will examine at the end of the semester. Issues that they will raise include how humans’ free will allows them to sin, what it means to have free will, whether it can be proven that God exists, and how our souls might be related to our bodies.
PHIL 232-01 Note: This course counts toward partial fulfillment of Cultural Heritage requirements. PHIL 232-02 Note: This course counts toward partial fulfillment of Cultural Heritage requirements. An introduction to the developments in European philosophy from Descartes to Kant. Authors to be studied include Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and Kant. Issues to be explored include knowledge and skepticism, appearance and reality, the existence of God, and the nature of the human mind. PHIL 295-01 This course is an introduction to the philosophical traditions of India and Tibet. We will be concerned primarily with the classical texts of these traditions—the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita, the Hindu and Buddhist Sutras—as well the systems of thought they produced. Since, in most cases, these are considered sacred texts, philosophy and religion are not easily distinguished in Indian and Tibetan thought. So many of the ideas we will consider will have spiritual as well as philosophical significance. Issues to be explored include the nature of the divine, ultimate reality, the self, happiness, ethics, the just society, knowledge, and spiritual liberation. We will also consider more recent representatives of these traditions, such as Mahatma Gandhi in India and the contemporary political and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama. Comparisons to Western philosophical and religious conceptions will be made where appropriate.
Cross-listed with WS 350-01. All students should register under WS 350-01. Doing something about an issue or problem requires an understanding, called theory, and a methodology to bring about change. Women’s Studies is based in women’s movements, in women’s lives and actions, and in feminist analysis around the globe. This course looks at feminist visions for justice and invites students to examine their own theories and methods of actions in light of current issues in women’s studies, including: globalization, anti-racist and anti-heterosexist critical theory, generational shifts in second and third wave feminisms, and other contemporary issues.
The theory of the liberal democratic state in the 20th century will be studied. Attention will be given to such central concepts as capitalism, socialism, communism, freedom, equality, and justice. Readings are from Lenin, Mussolini, Hayek, Rawls, Nozick, Habermas, against the background of Locke and Marx.
PHIL 375-01 The war on terror in the past several years has raised numerous questions about the nature and role of law and government in American society and other Western nations. Controversies have arisen about such matters as the right of habeas corpus for captured terrorist subjects, the interception of phone calls and other electronic communications of U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency, demands by the FBI under the Patriot Act (section 215) for records of library borrowings, monitoring of the constitutionally protected speech of radical imans, torture or quasi-torture of terrorist suspects. All of these cases raise fundamental questions about the workings of law in a constitutional democracy and about the deep tensions in a political order that is committed to protecting individual liberties and national and personal security. In this course, against the backdrop of these pressing concerns of the past few years, we will investigate questions about the origins and nature of law. How is law different from a divine command, a moral principle, or a social convention? How does law gain the obligatory force that it seems to have? Law has very considerable power--where does that power come from, and what justifies such uses of power? What, if any, is the relation between law and morality? We will examine what is meant by the "rule of law." Why might the rule of law be so crucial for the protection of individual freedoms, as well as for public safety and security? How is the rule of law to function in times of emergency, such as terrorist threat or natural disaster? Why does the establishment of the rule of law seem so crucial for the development of just political structures and for increased economic opportunity? We will ask: What is the purpose of law? Is the purpose of law to bring about a certain level of morality in the community of citizens, or is the purpose of law to leave individuals as free as possible to pursue their own visions of a good life, even if those visions conflict with the visions of others? May the law be used "paternalistically" to protect people from themselves (e.g., seat belt laws, Social Security, mandatory health insurance), or is the law to be more limited in its application to people's lives? Is the primary purpose of law the establishment and protection of public order and safety, or is it the protection of individual freedoms, and how do we address the tension between these two demands? We will consider, insofar as the United States is a constitutional democracy, the role of the Constitution. What does the Constitution say and not say? What does it mean when the Constitution says it is "the supreme law of the land"? How might we begin to try to interpret the Constitution? How might the Constitution work, or not work, under pressures arising through terrorist threats? How do one's views about the Constitution and the nature of law influence the way one considers the suitability of prospective Supreme Court nominees? Through an examination of various cases and various political and philosophical
readings, as well as drawing on our own experiences (negative and positive)
with the law, we will explore such questions and concerns about law and
government, and try to figure out what we ourselves might think about
such matters. How do you understand the workings of law in your country
and in other countries? What do you see as the possibilities and limitations
of law for trying to create more just social and political orders? How
does your understanding of law affect the way you wish to try to go about
living your life?
PHIL 450-01 Maurice Merleau-Ponty once alleged that “theology recognizes the
contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being,
that is, to remove it.” Although our readings will be drawn primarily
from this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the point of the course is ultimately
to help students to evaluate Merleau-Ponty’s claim in an informed
way. In doing this, we will ask these questions: IDS 171-02 In the middle of a Presidential election, in challenging economic circumstances,
in the midst of complex social difficulties and needs, we often hear
conversations across the land expressing concerns about "leadership." Bookshelves
in various stores are filled with books proclaiming to reveal the secrets
and challenges of leadership. But what is leadership? Where does leadership
come from? What might be some of the central dimensions of leadership?
How might one begin to learn or develop leadership capacities? Such questions
arise at the national and international levels; they also arise in the
midst of our ordinary, daily lives in our families, our dorms, our churches
and schools, our sports teams, our jobs, our volunteer activities, our
social organizations. Questions about our freedom and our power, our
hopes and our fears, and the need for leadership permeate our lives.
IDS 171-04
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