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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
PHIL 144 - 20th-Century Philosophy FDR: HU Credits: 3 An examination of philosophical issues in recent Western thought, from logical atomism to deconstructionism: Husserl, Russell, Heidegger, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Quine, and others. Sessions.
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3.00 Credits
An introductory course focusing on classical (Zhou period) Confucian and Taoist philosophers. No background in Chinese studies is presupposed. Sessions.
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3.00 Credits
Topic for Fall 2010:
PHIL 180: FS: The Concept of Honor (3). First-year seminar. What is honor? It lies at the heart of Washington and Lee’s values, yet its hold on the wider American society is tenuous, and its meaning is unclear to many, not least to students struggling to comprehend a revered honor system. This course seeks to explore the concept of personal honor in historical, literary, and philosophical texts. We examine some key moments in this concept’s development from ancient Greece to our own times, exploring a variety of philosophical perplexities along the way. We read literary texts such as the Iliad, Gawain and the Green Knight, and To Kill a Mockingbird, some biography (Robert E. Lee) and autobiography (Frederick Douglass), and a philosophical manuscript entitled “Honor for Us”, and view a variety of films (such as The Good Shepherd, Troy, The Last Samurai, Glory)–each of which casts different light on honor. We also explore honor’s reach in our contemporary society, from the military to sports, from politics to religion. At the end of the course, we focus on Washington and Lee’s own honor system, in order to clarify and deepen our own sense of local personal honor. Students participate in seminar discussion on the texts and films and the issues they raise. The course’s central philosophical question is this: how can honor, born and reared in hierarchical, patriarchal, warrior societies, live or even thrive in a more egalitarian and peaceful home, such as Washington and Lee in the 21st century? (HU) Sessions
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3.00 Credits
A consideration of selected issues in philosophy. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.
Topic for Winter 2011:
PHIL 195: Personal Identity (3). “Who am I?” This question, so centrally important to any individual, is the main topic of this seminar. We trace the question of selfhood, agency, and personal identity through the history of Western philosophy, contemporary analytic philosophy, post-modern theory, and feminist thought. We discuss what it means to be a person, how identity is constituted, and how well I can know myself. Among other questions, we explore: am I the same person I was in the past, and if I lose my memory, am I still ‘me’? Am I just a body, or an ‘immaterial self,’ or am I nothing? Do I ‘own’ my mental states, my body? Where am I, can I be replicated or wake up in another body’s skin? Am I my brain, my body, or am I no more and no less than the story I tell about myself? Through an in-depth discussion of personal identity, students study questions of metaphysics, knowledge acquisition, and ethical and/or political theory. (HU) Verhage.
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3.00 Credits
A survey of central topics in the field, including some or all of the following: reference, meaning, truth, analyticity, speech acts, pragmatics, verificationism, indeterminacy, innateness, metaphor, and development of language in the species and in the individual. Gregory.
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3.00 Credits
Prerequisite: PHIL 106 or permission of the instructor. An examination of alternative formal logics and issues in the philosophy of logic. Topics include formal ways of modeling possibility, actuality, and necessity; obligation and permissibility; pastness, presentness, and futurity; and others. They also include informal considerations of topics like conditionals, counterfactuals, intuitionism, and others. Goldberg.
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3.00 Credits
A consideration of the basic issues in philosophy of art. Selected viewings and readings from contemporary sources. Staff.
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3.00 Credits
Who makes history, individual human beings, social or economic classes, or broad and deep circumstances, such as climate, disease, currency exchange rates, or the collective psyche? How are explanations of historical events different from explanations in physics, biology, psychology, or economics? How is our understanding of historical events influenced by ethical, aesthetic, or ideological considerations? Is history just one thing happening after another, or is there a discernable pattern or meaning in it? What role do theories play in our understanding of history? What do historians and artists have in common? What does history tell us about ourselves? Readings include works by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Arendt, and contemporary authors. Lambert.
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3.00 Credits
An exploration of selected issues, such as mystical and numinous experiences and doctrines, theistic arguments, faith and reason, religion and morality, and science and religion. Sessions.
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3.00 Credits
An exploration of the different range of opportunities available to various social groups, including racial, ethnic and sexual minorities, women, and the poor. Topics include how to define fair equality of opportunity; the social mechanisms that play a role in expanding and limiting opportunity; legal and group-initiated strategies aimed at effecting fair equality of opportunity and the theoretical foundations of these strategies; as well as an analysis of the concepts of equality, merit and citizenship, and their value to individuals and society. Bell.
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