Philosophy

• GRS PH 603: Plato I
  A careful study of one or several Platonic dialogues. Emphasizes both close reading of the text(s) and discussion of the deep philosophical issues raised by them. Frequent references to other Platonic dialogues as relevant. Knowledge of Greek is helpful but not required. Familiarity with Greek philosophy is helpful.
• GRS PH 605: Aristotle I
  A careful study of Aristotle's theoretical philosophy conducted through a close reading of selections from the Categories, Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Soul, and the Metaphysics.
• GRS PH 606: Aristotle II
  A close reading of Aristotle's writings on practical philosophy (i.e., the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics) and of his philosophy of art in the Poetics, focusing on the nature of human happiness and the good life, the question of the best form of political government, and the function of art for life.
• GRS PH 610: Continental Rationalism
  A critical study of major texts of seventeenth-century philosophy.
• GRS PH 611: British Empiricism
  A critical study of major texts of British Empiricists, with emphasis on Locke and Hume.
• GRS PH 612: Philosophy of the Enlightenment
  
• GRS PH 613: Kant
  A single text constitutes the basis for this course - Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Some of the great scholars of the past have devoted a lifetime to analyzing, explicating, and evaluating this work. We, alas, have only one semester. In this, the first of three Critiques, Kant introduced the idea of a critical self-examination of reason, and in the execution of this program he developed a unique new type of philosophy, called transcendental philosophy, which forever revolutionized philosophical throught. We shall examine the text carefully from beginning to end. Because Kant's thinking is enormously complex, intricate, and subtle, we shall make use of secondary sources and complement textual analysis by discussing helpful comments by some of today's finest Kant scholars.
• GRS PH 614: Hume
  A detailed analysis of the philosophy of David Hume, focusing on one or more of his works.
• GRS PH 615: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
  Study of the important themes in the philosophy of Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
• GRS PH 616: Hegel
  Critical study of Hegel's system as presented in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
• GRS PH 617: Hegel's Phenomenology
  A close reading of Hegel's 1806 Phenomenology.
• GRS PH 618: Marx and Marxism
  Philosophical foundation of Marxism and its development. Critical study of Marx's writings stressing questions of philosophy, political economy, science, and history. Emphasis on Marx's theory of relation of praxis to consciousness. Later (including contemporary) Marxists and critics.
• GRS PH 619: Nietzsche
  Examination of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." The interpretation focuses on the concept of "eternal recurrence of the same"- in the context of the development of Nietzsche's philosophy, from "The Birth of Tragedy" to "Will to Power" as well as in the context of continental philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• GRS PH 620: Contemporary Philosophy
  A survey of the main development in recent philosophy in both the analytical and continental traditions, emphasizing the interrelations of the two. Philosophers covered include Frege, Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, as well as Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre.
• GRS PH 621: Frege, Moore, and Russell
  An in-depth reading of several works by Russell.
• GRS PH 622: Analytic Philosophy
  A detailed examination of Wittgenstein later philosophy, focusing on his Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty and remarks on the philosophy of Psychology.
• GRS PH 624: Wittgenstein
  An intensive (line by line) study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
• GRS PH 626: Phenomenology
  Rigorous examination of the foundations of philosophical phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger.
• GRS PH 627: Heidegger and Existential Philosophy
  A study of the main topics of Heidegger's philosophy against the background of his interpretation of Husserl's phenomenology, Kant's transcendental philosophy, and ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on the concepts of being, time, and truth.
• GRS PH 630: American Philosophy
  Detailed analysis of William James and John Dewey and their theories of meaning, truth, consciousness, and experience. Consideration of these theories in connection with selected issues in Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Michael Oakeshott.

Back to full list of Courses