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| hope college > academic departments > philosophy |
Current Philosophy CoursesSearch via KnowHope Plus. FALL 2009 Course Descriptions
PHIL 195-01A INTRO TO PHIL: The Body PHIL 195-01B INTRO TO PHIL: The Body Our bodies are wonderful, mysterious gifts, and yet frequently we have very mixed feelings about our bodies. Our bodies can be a source of delight, and they can be a source of frustration and shame. We exist in an academic world which seems, at times, to elevate the importance of the mind over the importance of the body, and we sometimes give up various bodily needs such as food, sleep, and exercise in order to complete the work dedicated to the life of the mind. We try to develop ourselves intellectually, and at the same time, we wonder about the size and shape of our body and if we are beautiful enough, handsome enough, physically strong enough. Our bodies enable us to pursue various possibilities for physical and artistic exploration and expression, and at the same time our bodies are subject to very real vulnerabilities and limitations. The poet Jane Kenyon writes of “the long struggle to be at home in the body, this difficult friendship.” In this introductory philosophy class, we are going to explore what might be involved in being embodied. Philosophers such as Plato and Descartes have tended to make strong distinctions between body and mind, and to argue that what each of us is essentially is our mind. The body has very little to do with who we are. Is this a helpful way to think of ourselves in our messy humanity, or does such a view ignore crucial ways in which our bodies influence our sense of who we are and how we relate to the world? Do we have a body, or are we our bodies? We will also explore various questions that arise from our being embodied. We tend to associate desires and passions with our bodies: How do we handle our desires for food, sleep, sex? How do we live with passions such as anger, jealousy, and lust? What roles do eating, bathing, and clothing play in our lives? We are not just embodied beings; we are also sexual beings, male and female: how might our embodied sexuality influence our lives? What images and expectations might we have about a “good” and “desirable” and “beautiful” body? We rely on our bodies in crucial ways in athletic competitions and artistic endeavors such as dance or drama: what do such human endeavors suggest to us about our embodied nature and how we might try to live? Being embodied means that we are subject to tiredness, weakness, sickness, pain, aging, and eventually death: what might these realities of suffering suggest about meaning and purpose in life? In general, how might we try to live our lives in this “difficult friendship,” given the possibilities and limitations that come from having or being a body? This course can count toward partial fulfillment of the Cultural Heritage requirement. PHIL 201-01 LOGIC Most of us have a sense of what logic is. We sometimes say things like, "it's only logical," or, "it's a matter of logic." Too often these remarks should probably be punctuated with exclamation points, since frequently they are used in heated debates concerning issues about which people feel passionately. Well, in logic, we care much less about what your view is and much more about how you arrived at it. Some arguments for such views are better than others. In this course, we will learn what makes a bad argument, and how to make a good one. We will finish the course with logical analyses of some famous arguments in philosophy, like arguments for and against God's existence. PHIL 230-01 Note: This course counts toward fulfillment of Cultural Heritage requirements. This course is an introduction to Western philosophy from its beginning
in ancient Greece to Europe during the Middle Ages. Philosophy is the “love
of wisdom” or the quest for meaning. Philosophy addresses what
might be called the “big questions” of human existence: Who
am I and what is real? What is the source of my existence and the existence
of the world? What is my purpose and how ought I live in order to achieve
it? How can we achieve happiness as individuals and as a society? What
is happiness and what is a just society? What is the best way to answer
these questions in order to acquire knowledge? Can we acquire knowledge?
What is knowledge? In this course we will look at the ways in which the
greatest thinkers in our early cultural history -- Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Epicurus, Plotinus, Augustine and Aquinas
-- have attempted to answer these questions and to frame a meaningful
view of human existence and the world we inhabit.
This course is an introduction to Western philosophy during the Middle Ages, a period that has been referred to as “the Age of Faith.” In this course we will trace the interplay of religion and philosophy, faith and reason in the development of Christian philosophy in such figures as Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm, Abelard, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Such Jewish and Islamic philosophers as Maimonides, Avicenna, Averroes, and Algazali will also be discussed. In addition to the relationship between faith and reason, other topics to be discussed include the nature and existence of God, the problem of evil, the immortality of the soul, the nature of knowledge, the nature of happiness and virtue, and the inner journey of the soul to God.
PHIL 232-01 MODERN PHILOSOPHY Note: This course counts toward fulfillment of Cultural Heritage requirements. This course is an introduction to western philosophy as seen particularly
in the works of the "modern" philosophers. The texts are not
easy, but the questions they are asking are as deep and as important
as they come. Here are some: We'll even ask: • If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Readings will be from Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and others. 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 extra-ordinary 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 450-01 One of the issues we will look at is reference: so we all agree that the word 'dog' refers to dogs, but how does it? There is disagreement about this: about what it is that certain organisms (dogs) have that qualifies them to count as what we're talking about when we use the word 'dog'. This course will examine how different kinds of terms hook up to things in the world. We will look at names, like 'New York City', descriptions, like 'The inventor of bifocals', and predicates, like 'red'. We will also be taking a special look at terms for substances and kinds, like 'gold' and 'dog'. More generally, we will look at whether we somehow form the way the world is by articulating the world with our language and conception of it, or whether the world comes pre-articulated and all we do is match our words and concepts to it. In this connection, we might look at forms of necessity or apparent necessity, like physical necessity (you are on the ground because or apparently because in some sense it is necessary for you to be — you could not fly if you chose) or the necessity that squares are not round: questions that might typically arise would be whether the necessity is real (does the world really have to be thus and so?) and if so whether we have anything to do with making the necessity real. PHIL 490 (written permission of professor required) Prerequisite: Departmental approval of a student proposed project prior to enrollment in the course. Such a project might be an internship; but in any case it would include a significant piece of philosophic writing. A student intending to enroll in PHIL 490 should plan ahead to study with the professor whose expertise and interests most clearly correspond to the student’s interests and intentions.
In Greece, the fifth century B.C. begins with a war (the Persian Wars), which Athens was instrumental in winning, and it ends with a war (the Peloponnesian War), which Athens lost. Throughout this time, Athens develops a flourishing, contentious democracy which contributes to a period of great innovation and turmoil. We see experimentation in self-government, military innovations, new and extraordinary approaches in art and architecture, significant advances in mathematics and science. In this atmosphere of freedom and power, there emerged the literary forms known as tragedy and comedy. In this class, while looking at the history of 5th century Greece and the rise of Athenian democracy, we will explore the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes, and the comedies of Aristophanes. We will investigate how these dramatic forms are used to consider such basic human concerns as freedom, its possibilities and its limits, what in our lives we control and what we don't control, the nature of human responsibility, the relations between gods and humans, the relations between men and women, the uses and abuses of power, the promises and dangers of sex and love, the struggles to realize justice, conflicts between duties to family and duties to city, what makes for a happy life. And throughout the course, we will ask, what, if any, connections might exist between the struggles of the Greeks 2500 years ago and our efforts to live today in 2009. Cross-listed with CLAS 295-01. IDS 171-05
In this course, we will be keeping our eyes on ethical questions, particularly those pertaining to sex and gender, power, and still more broadly, how to live well. The readings for this course are in large part classics, texts that have through the ages been regarded as masterpieces and transcend their own times, and that have something important to say to people of various times and cultures. We will be looking at literature, philosophy, and history as well as some theology and art; we will be covering these disciplines as they apply to classical Greece and Rome, and then as they apply into the middle ages and the Renaissance, where there is special emphasis on Florence. Because the course proceeds chronologically, we can see in a powerful way how later authors build on earlier ones. Something that particularly excites me about the course is the way it illustrates how Christianity, which became the dominant religion in the West, was born in a classical world and how Christians came to incorporate classical learning and culture from ancient Greece and Rome.
While the French Revolution was one of the major events of modern history, the buildup to it and the fallout from it are of equal interest, and we will examine all three in this course. This section of IDS 172 is a “three-discipline” interdisciplinary course: it will focus on European history, literature, and philosophy from the early seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. Special attention will be paid to the intellectual movement known as “the Enlightenment,” to the Revolution itself and the Napoleonic period that ensued, and to the Romantic movement that sprang up alongside the Revolution and continued beyond it. We will read works by such authors as Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, and Hegel; we will study figures like Napoleon and events like the Reign of Terror; and we will see how musical works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert reflect the tendencies of the period to which they belong. Finally, the connections of the main themes of this course to other cultural and historical developments, such as the Scientific Revolution, the American Revolution, and the rise of nationalism, will also be explored. Fall 2009Requirements for the major: (1) PHIL 200 - Informal Logic or PHIL 201 - Logic Total of at least 24 credits in Philosophy (which can include 2 cr courses). Requirements for the minor: (1) PHIL 200 - Informal Logic or COM 160 or PHIL 201 - Logic
COURSE CATEGORY LISTList II Knowledge & Reality PHIL 241 - Phil of India & Tibet PHIL 230 - Ancient Philosophy 2-credit class PHIL 195 - Intro to Philosophy Note: Only one (1) cross-listed course (4 credits) offered
by another department may count towards the major and minor.
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