Courses

• CAS PH 310: History of Modern Philosophy
  An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy from Descartes to Kant, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge. Readings include Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Berkley, Hume, and Kant.
• CAS PH 340: Metaphysics and Epistemology
  This course is about metaphysics (the study of what there is, and how it all relates) and epistemology (the study of knowledge, and how we can know things about the world) and their intersection. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Critical Thinking.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Critical Thinking
• CAS PH 350: History of Ethics
  Are there fundamental principles for determining the right way to act ethically? How do different eras answer this question? What is the significance of these differences? This course addresses these questions by examining classical ethical texts from different historical traditions. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Critical Thinking
• CAS PH 360: Symbolic Logic
  A survey of the concepts and principles of symbolic logic: valid and invalid arguments, logical relations of statements and their basis in structural features of statements, analysis of the logical structure of complex statements of ordinary discourse, and the use of a symbolic language to display logical structure and to facilitate methods for assessing the logical structure of arguments. The course is an introduction to first-order quantificational logic, a key tool underlying work in foundations of mathematics, philosophy of language and mind, philosophy of science and parts of syntax. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings, Quantitative Reasoning I, Critical Thinking.
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  • Philosophical Inquiry and Life's Meanings
  • Quantitative Reasoning I
  • Critical Thinking
• CAS PH 401: Senior Independent Work
  Individual tutorial instruction and directed research at distinction level.
• CAS PH 402: Senior Independent Work
  Individual tutorial instruction and directed research at distinction level.
• CAS PH 406: 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.
• CAS PH 408: History of Medieval Philosophy
  Topic for Fall 2015: Mysticism and Philosophy: Jewish and Islamic Perspectives. Thematic introduction to mysticism and philosophy, with a focus on dynamics of religious experience. Readings from medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy; Sufi mysticism and philosophy; Kabbalah, Biblical interpretation, Sufi poetry, Hebrew poetry from the Golden Age of Muslim Spain.
• CAS PH 412: Philosophy of the Enlightenment
  A critical examination of that family of philosophical and political movements that called itself "the Enlightenment." Students analyze key texts by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Jefferson, Madison, Kant, and Hegel. Also offered as CAS PO 592 and CAS HI 514.
• CAS PH 413: Kant
  A study of Kant's critical philosophy, focusing on one or more of his works.
• CAS PH 415: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
  Study of the important themes in the philosophy of Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.
• CAS PH 418: 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. Also offered as CAS PO 498.
• CAS PH 422: Analytic Philosophy
  A survey of the basic works of twentieth-century analytical philosophy.
• CAS PH 424: Wittgenstein
  An intensive (line by line) study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
• CAS PH 426: Phenomenology
  Rigorous examination of foundations of philosophical phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger.
• CAS PH 427: 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.
• CAS PH 436: Gender, Race, and Science
  Examines issues in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and philosophy of science. Is "race" a genuine scientific category or a social construct? How have views about gender and race changed? Why are there still so few women and minority scientists?
• CAS PH 440: Metaphysics
  A survey of basic questions in contemporary metaphysics that may include reality, time, change, free will, personal identity, and causation.
• CAS PH 443: Philosophy of Mind
  The topic is sentience, embodiment, and the brain. The aim is to develop a "neurophenomenological" approach to consciousness and embodied experience in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind.
• CAS PH 445: The Philosophy of Love
  What is love? What different forms does it take (e.g. parental love, romantic love)? Is love non- rational or are there reasons of love? We aim to answer these and other philosophical questions by focusing on contemporary philosophical writings on love.

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