This course provides a theoretical and practical consideration of the concept of “identity,” and how we might understand diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities in the contemporary United States. We will critique various classic philosophies alongside contemporary works that challenge our cultural presuppositions. The emphasis will be on the idea of selfhood within a democratic framework of constructive relations.

Who am I? What makes me me? Who gets to say who I am? How do personal qualities, relations with others, and social categories like race, gender, gender identity, ethnicity and class come together to form my personal and social identity? How does who I am inform what I know and don’t know? Does who I am give me specific responsibilities? If so, what are they? This course invites you to explore multiple dimensions of who you are using philosophical ideas and tools.

An introduction to philosophical questioning through a study of perennial issues in philosophy. Questions that might be treated: truth, freedom and responsibility, God, love, being, knowledge, death. Topics in this course may be treated in the context of introductory philosophical texts, past and present, or through a methodological approach to philosophical problems.

An introduction to philosophical questioning through a study of what it means to be human. Questions that might be treated: body and soul; immortality; meaning of person and personality; determinism and freedom; reason and imagination; emotion and will; individuality and group; relationship to others and to God; language; labor; temporality.

An introduction to philosophical questioning through a study of the human in society. Questions that might be treated: the meaning of society; individual and society; society and law; economy and society; work as social phenomenon; society and freedom; world of culture and society; violence and nonviolence; philosophy of power; philosophy of conflict in community; political philosophy.

From the beginnings of human thought, imaginative literature—poetry, stories, plays and novels—has been a means for humans to reflect on profound questions: How should we live our lives? Can life put us in touch with higher truths, or is this world all there is? Is imagination the opposite of truth or a means of discovering it? How well do we know ourselves? Do we have a moral duty to other persons? Can I be responsible for suffering that I have not caused myself? We will read a number of novels, plays, and short stories ranging from classic literature to contemporary fiction, seeking to discover how imaginative writing is related to serious philosophical thought. Readings for the first half of the course focus on issues of truth, and in the second half, issues of justice.

From the beginnings of human thought, imaginative literature—poetry, stories, plays and novels—has been a means for humans to reflect on profound questions: How should we live our lives? Can life put us in touch with higher truths, or is this world all there is? Is imagination the opposite of truth or a means of discovering it? Is insisting on truth always a good thing, or can it be destructive to human well-being? How well do and can we know ourselves? Readings may include stories, novels and plays, as well as other literature. (Offered AB mods.)

From the beginnings of human thought, imaginative literature—poetry, stories, plays and novels—has been a means for humans to reflect on profound questions: How should we live our lives? Do we have a moral duty to other persons? Can I be responsible for suffering that I have not caused myself? Do the rules of justice and morality change in situations of distress such as war or natural disasters? Or does this duress give us insight into what should be norms of just human interaction in “normal life”? Readings may include stories, novels and plays, as well as other literature. (Offered CD mods.)

This course explores philosophical questions surrounding race and ethnicity and gender and how the boundaries around these identities are enforced and resisted. We examine the historical evolution of racial and gender concepts up to the present day. This deeper philosophical understanding will be used to discuss contemporary topics like disparities in health, immigration policies, and barriers to political participation.

How does one gain authentic insight into one's own true nature, into the true nature of the world we inhabit, and the relation between the two? This course will explore these questions by studying early sutras from the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the Taoist classic known as the Tao Te Ching, Mahayana Buddhist teachings, Zen Buddhism, the Rule of Benedict and, finally, a wonderful book conceived, and written on the campus of St. John’s University – Benedict’s Dharma, which explores the wisdom and practical insights shared by the Buddhist and Benedictine traditions. Class participants will learn that there are striking affinities in the contemplative goals and practices endorsed by Benedictines and Buddhists. Students will also discover remarkable similarities in the Buddhist and Benedictine diagnoses of the challenges and difficulties faced by practitioners of a contemplative way. Course requirements will include regular journaling, contemplative practice (meditation, Qigong, and prayer), and reflective essays.

Supervised reading or research at the lower-division level. Permission of department chair required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

This course is an introduction to formal symbolic logic. It focuses on the development of a symbolic language to capture the structure of natural-language arguments, in order to evaluate the validity of those arguments. Topics include truth functions, truth tables, natural deduction, and how logic relates to arguments in regular life.

Reading and discussion of philosophic works, moderated by a member of the Philosophy Department. Interested faculty and staff in other areas are welcome to participate as well. Each section of this course is typically devoted to a single work, but occasionally a group of smaller works by a single author may be selected. S/U grading only. May be repeated for credit.

Introduction to philosophical thought about morality. Topics include major ethical theories (e.g. virtue ethics, consequentialism, deontology, care ethics), as well as big concepts such as rights and responsibilities, values and obligations, good and evil, right and wrong.

This course investigates a variety of ethical issues that arise from consideration of the relation between humans and the non-human natural world (i.e., the environment, animals, land, ecosystems, wilderness areas). This course will introduce students to the basic concepts of environmental ethics, to specific ethical issues associated with environmental policy, and to philosophical theorizing about the environment.

An examination of ethical questions raised by health-care practice and recent advances in medical technology. Both ethical theory and ethical decision-making will be addressed. Possible topics include: confidentiality, informed consent, genetic engineering, reproductive technology and death and dying issues.

This course will examine ethical and social issues associated with contemporary American business. Responsibilities of businesses to employees, consumers and the society at large will be considered. Questions of individual moral responsibility and questions of social justice and public policy will be addressed. Students will examine these issues from the point of view of a variety of stakeholders: business management, employees, investors, consumers, and citizens. Prerequisite: students are strongly encouraged to have taken at least one previous course in management, accounting, philosophy, or economics.

Existentialism, a 20th century philosophy with roots in the 19th century and various developments in post-modern thought, rejects all foundational givens except the raw fact of existence. This means that it rejects ethical traditions grounded in religion, in reason, in “virtues,” in particular theories of human nature, and in cultural tradition. Nevertheless, existentialist thinkers have often emerged as powerful ethical thinkers, precisely because they refuse to embrace any traditional foundations for ethics and thus keep ethical questions open for debate. We will examine existentialism’s radical critique of traditional philosophical foundations using readings from such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Beauvoir. As we proceed, we will explore the ethical implications of these existential currents of thought by reflecting on short pieces of literature and narratives illustrative of ethical dilemmas of modern and contemporary life.

Raphael’s famous fresco The School of Athens accurately depicts the world of Ancient Philosophy studied in this course. The painting features a multitude of ancient philosophers and writers, mathematicians and scientists, thinkers and students, almost all of them involved in conversation, argumentation, writing or meditation in a beautiful public space. The foundation and focal point of the painting is the two central figures of Plato and Aristotle, who will also serve as the foundation and focal points for this course, which aims to help students become knowledgeable participants in the conversations about truth, reality, virtue and the good that shaped the beginnings of Western philosophy and continue to shape philosophical discourse today.

Philosophy on the European continent followed no one pattern in the 19th century. G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche make this century one of the most varied in the history of philosophy. This course will focus on one or more thinkers to explore European thought of that epoch. This course can be repeated for credit, with the approval of the department chair, when content varies.

Though American thinkers have been heavily influenced by European philosophers, an indigenous philosophy began to develop in North America in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. Philosophers that may be discussed include Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, William James, John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. This course can be repeated for credit, with the approval of the department chair, when content varies.

An introduction to the Classical Chinese tradition of philosophy. Students will study in particular the two Confucian Classics, the Analects and the Mencius (Mengzi), and the two Taoist Classics, the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) - texts that have shaped the culture and civilization not just of China, but of Korea and Japan as well. A question guiding discussion throughout the semester is whether these ancient teachings might still offer insight and guidance to contemporary students. We attend especially closely to this question in the final weeks of the semester by reading commentary on these classical texts written by contemporary English language scholars.

Philosophies of Existence explored a new dimension of thought in the 20th Century. Humans are beings concerned about their being, about where it comes from and where it’s going and what it means. We exist as being-in-the-world, for in our being we are concerned with other entities and beings that shape this world. Our being is existence or “standing-out into the world,” both shaping and being shaped by it. Existence points to care, which shapes our concern for our being all the way to anxiety-in-the-face-of-death. We’ll explore this way of thinking though an in-depth reading of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, a watershed work for contemporary Continental philosophy.

This course looks at the way that the search for security and the claim to possession of absolute truth can lead to violence. The way of thinking involved in technology easily structures the world so that whatever does not fit into that framework is discounted and ignored and treated violently, as the philosopher Martin Heidegger shows. How does such an attitude lead to violence? Finally, the course will look at the nonviolent ethical response which the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas demands from the person who hears the call of the poor and the oppressed when they cry out against their oppression and poverty. Alternate years.

This course will consider some of the central conceptual and normative issues in the area of jurisprudence. Concepts such as legal responsibility, negligence, causality, cruel and unusual punishment, etc., will be considered. Frameworks for legal decision-making will be developed and applied.

What am I? This question will be explored through the study of the three periods marked by a change in scientific paradigms; the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in the nineteenth century, and the rise of cognitive science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We’ll read philosophers, scientists, historians, and novelists, as well as explore pieces by performance and visual artists. By the end of the course, you should have a basic understanding of different metaphysical views about human nature from the claim that humans are fundamentally autonomous and independent to the view that human nature derives from the unique social bonds we form. We will have studied various accounts of the relationship between the mind and body, especially dualism and materialism, and how these theories are shaped by various philosophical and scientific commitments. You will have a deeper understanding of the changing relationships humans have with the natural world and with each other. In studying these topics, you will learn to recognize in past debates a reflection of contemporary struggles over human nature and our place in the natural world and vice versa.

Philosophy of Mind explores a number of issues of interest to contemporary philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists. It is designed with a particular interdisciplinary aim: to examine how the empirical work of scientists informs the theories of contemporary philosophers. The course is designed around three topics: the relationship between the mind and the body; issues of personal identity and the self; and the nature of our concepts and mental representations. As we discuss these topics, we will be examining the ways these metaphysical questions are intertwined with questions of gender and race.

Western philosophy has not traditionally depended upon literature and stories for philosophical insights. Philosophers like Plato have used literary forms, but most western philosophers (including Plato) have not seen literature as a special source for ethical wisdom. More recently, some philosophers have suggested that literature may indeed have special powers when it comes to thinking about the most basic ethical questions, “How should I live?” and “What sort of person should I be?” In this course we shall examine the general philosophical case for whether literature might have any such powers. We shall also put this general question to the specific test by appealing to some great literature to see what ethical wisdom the stories might have to offer.

Who can deny that human lives and character are fragile? Even a quick glance at victims of rape, genocide, war, oppression, betrayal, and tragic loss suggests that ultimately we are all vulnerable. Yet, down through human history various lines of thought have suggested that this need not be so. For instance, various Eastern religions have held out the promise of relief from suffering through enlightenment. The Judeo-Christian tradition has often pointed to faith and divine grace as a balm for suffering and a shield against the same. Some Roman and Greek schools of thought have aimed at forms of detachment and serenity that could render human beings invulnerable. Using sources from psychology, memoir, philosophy, fiction and film, we shall consider some ways in which human lives and character can be compromised and disintegrated. We shall also consider strategies designed to render us less vulnerable or even invulnerable. And finally, we shall consider whether such strategies hold out any promise and whether they might carry their own price for beings like us.

Aristotle’s ideas regarding friendship, virtue, community, and the roles each play in human flourishing have been remarkably enduring. Contemporary scholars in philosophy and psychology are still mining his major works for insights into how to live a fulfilling and happy life. But Aristotle also argued that some people are natural born slaves and that women are naturally inferior to men, ideas that had real-world effects. In this era in which many figures and institutions are being “cancelled”, it’s important to consider: How do we make sense of this complex intellectual inheritance by one of the founding figures of western thought? In this course we will explore how Aristotle’s ideas have moved across time and disciplines. After situating Aristotle’s Ethics within the context of his politics and biology, we will examine contemporary perspectives on Aristotle in virtue theory, empirical psychology, and feminist/ race theory. We’ll grapple with understanding both the promise and potential of Aristotle’s views for living well in our contemporary situation and the more unsavory aspects of his philosophy.

The aim of this class is to explore the concept of life in ancient Greek philosophy and its relevance today. In the first part we will explore the first systematic account of the concept of life which is Aristotle’s. To do this we will examine Aristotle’s understanding of nature as having its own ends, his understanding of life as genus and as species, his account of the logic of life and his distinction between forms of life [vegetative (plants), sensitive (animals), rational (humans)]. In the second part we will see that the concept of life plays a crucial role in the formation of the ancient Greek philosophy of ethics, politics and culture, and that this philosophy of life is both an influence and an alternative to modern and contemporary philosophies of ethics, politics and culture.

Supervised reading or research at the upper-division level. Permission of department chair and completion and/or concurrent registration of 12 credits within the department required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

This course will introduce students to competing feminist conceptions of justice that envision a world free of systems of privilege, power, and oppression and in which the dignity and value of all persons is upheld. We will also examine feminist critiques of justice theory which argue that feminist conceptions of justice must be supplemented by alternate moral frames (e.g. care ethics, embodied feminism, an explicit grappling with intersectionality) if we are to secure the flourishing of self and human and nonhuman others.

This course examines the relation between moral and political values and goods. Consideration of such questions as whether politics can be neutral among competing conceptions of morality, the nature, justification, and limits of political authority and whether politicians should be held to different moral standards from the rest of us.

Modern Philosophy is not “modern” in the everyday sense, but studies the 17th and 18th century shift in European thought away from the influence that classical thinkers had come to have, especially as their works were reinterpreted and incorporated into the religious dominion that Judeo-Christian and Islamic paradigms exercised over philosophical thought. This shift involved a radical re-appraisal of the human subject as thinker and knower. Even those thinkers skeptical of the human capacity to grasp absolute truths upheld the authority of human reason to understand its own limits and to assert itself as the ultimate judge of where and how “truth” could be claimed—though they disagreed significantly on these limits. These philosophers asserted an independence and autonomy for human reason that paved the way for later declarations of political freedoms. Thinkers studied include Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant.

Epistemology, or the study of knowledge, is the philosophical discipline which studies the nature of knowledge and how it is acquired. This course will focus on feminist epistemology and the ways in which gender influences our conceptions of knowledge, knowers, and our practices of knowledge acquisition and justification, with a special emphasis on the sciences. Central to the topics of the course will be an examination of epistemic questions around racial and gender oppression.

Required for philosophy majors for graduation with the philosophy major. Topics vary, but the course is an integrative philosophical experience centered around public philosophy and calling for research, writing, and presentations.

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