Please proceed to MyBUStudent for the most up-to-date information, class locations, and to register for classes. For more detailed descriptions and access to previously offered courses, please proceed to the Academic Bulletin. Course offerings from previous semesters can be found on the sidebar.
Please note that Philosophy offers lecture/discussion style courses, which means that in order to complete your enrollment in this style of course and be eligible to receive credit, you must register for the lecture section AND a discussion section that corresponds by letter. For example, if you register for CAS PH 100 A1, you must also register for CAS PH 100 A2, A3, A4, or A5.
Please also note that GRS (Graduate School of Arts & Sciences) courses are available for students enrolled in graduate programs only, and undergraduate students may only register for GRS courses with special circumstances and approval from the instructor.
CAS – College of Arts & Sciences
CAS PH 100 A1: Introduction to Philosophy
Professor Walter Hopp
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM
Introduces the nature of philosophical activity through careful study of major philosophical topics. Topics may include the nature of reality, knowledge, God’s existence, and the significance of human life.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 100 B1: Introduction to Philosophy
Professor Nicholas Westberg
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
Introduces the nature of philosophical activity through careful study of major philosophical topics. Topics may include the nature of reality, knowledge, God’s existence, and the significance of human life.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 110 A1: Great Philosophers
Professor Ben Crowe
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
An introduction to philosophy through reading three great thinkers in the history of philosophy. We will examine principal writings of Aristotle, Xunzi, and Karl Marx, along with supplementary texts covering debates with opposing thinkers. Students are required to register for and attend lectures as well as discussion sections.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 150 1: Introduction to Ethics
Professor Victor Kumar
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
This course focuses on a set of interrelated questions about morality: What is morality? How should I live? What does morality require of us in our daily lives, if it requires anything at all? Is morality universal? Or, is it relative or subjective? What is the relationship between morality and religion? Answering such questions will help us to understand what the most important features of morality are. We will look both at traditional moral theories that attempt to specify what morality requires of us (Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Contractarianism and Virtue Ethics), and at the application of these theories to many specific moral issues.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 150 B1: Introduction to Ethics
Professor Daniel Star
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
This course focuses on a set of interrelated questions about morality: What is morality? How should I live? What does morality require of us in our daily lives, if it requires anything at all? Is morality universal? Or, is it relative or subjective? What is the relationship between morality and religion? Answering such questions will help us to understand what the most important features of morality are. We will look both at traditional moral theories that attempt to specify what morality requires of us (Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Contractarianism and Virtue Ethics), and at the application of these theories to many specific moral issues.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 155 A1: Politics & Philosophy
Professor Darien Pollock
Tuesday, Thursday 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM
What is justice? What are the foundations of property rights, liberty, and equality? Are anarchism and utopianism defensible? This course is an introduction to major themes and questions in political philosophy. It includes a study of classical and modern texts, as well as contemporary political issues.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 159 A1: Philosophy and Film
Professor Sam Hesni
Tuesday, Thursday 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM
This class provides an introduction philosophical and aesthetic issues connected with film.
BU Hub: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 160 A1: Reasoning & Argumentation
Professor Alisa Bokulich
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Knowing how to think, reason, and argue well is essential for success in all disciplines and in everyday life. The aim of this course is to strengthen and develop your critical thinking skills; you will learn how to make good arguments and how to critically evaluate the arguments of others. This course will emphasize both real everyday examples, such as those drawn from newspaper articles, and examples drawn from the scientific literature. Course will include a systematic study of the principles of inductive, deductive and informal reasoning, calculated to enhance students’ actual reasoning and argumentation skills.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 245 A1: The Quest for God and the Good
Professor Diana Lobel
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM
An interactive seminar, investigating the meaning and purpose of human life, the significance of God or an Absolute, the role of contemplation and action in the spiritual quest, relationships between philosophy and religious thought, East and West. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy.
Prerequisites: WR 120 or equivalent.
BU Hub: Writing-Intensive Course, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
CAS PH 248 A1: Existentialism
Professor Dan Dahlstrom
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM
This course examines approaches to central existentialist themes such as anxiety, truth, decision, authenticity, freedom, possibility, and “bad faith.” The first part of the course reviews the historical context of late modern European philosophy and the views of nineteenth century thinkers (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche) whose work set the stage for existentialist thinking in the twentieth century. The second part of the course focuses on writings of those thinkers (Heidegger, Sartre) most responsible for the development of existentialism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 251 A1: Medical Ethics
Professor Rachell Powell
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
This course will survey ethical issues that arise in connection with medicine and emerging biotechnologies. It will examine topics such as the right to healthcare, research on human subjects, euthanasia, abortion, cloning, genetic selection, disabilities, and the biomedical enhancement of human capacities. Students can expect to gain not only training in the concepts and methods of moral philosophy and the logic of argumentation, but also the resources needed for assessing ethically difficult questions that healthcare professionals routinely face.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 253 A1: Social Philosophy
Professor Darien Pollock
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
Through a reading of some selected texts we will examine modern and contemporary theories of society, concerning its nature and the direction of its evolution. The philosophical and sociological discussions are framed in terms of the complicated relationship between individuals and society, and between civil society and the sovereign power.
Prerequisites: At least sophomore standing or any 100-level philosophy course.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 266 A1: Mind, Brain, and Self
Professor Derek Anderson
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM
This course is devoted to exploring the relationships among consciousness, the mind, and the brain, the nature of the self or person, and other related topics. This course will also examine whether and to what extent these issues can be addressed by contemporary natural science.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Writing-Intensive Course, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 270 A1: Philosophy of Science
Professor Tian Cao
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
Uses scientific examples from the study of physics, biology, and mind. Focuses on the aims of science, the nature of scientific understanding, the structure and interpretation of scientific theories, and the development of science. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
Prerequisites: one philosophy course or sophomore standing.
CAS PH 272 A1: Science, Technology, and Values
Professor Daniel Munro
Thursday, Friday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
Examination of some of the important ways in which science, technology, society, and human values are interconnected. Includes case studies of the social and ethical challenges posed by computer, military, and biological technology. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
CAS PH 300 A1: History of Ancient Philosophy
Professor Cinzia Arruzza
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM
A survey of ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the fundamental nature of reality, how we know anything about it, wisdom, virtue, and human happiness.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing. First Year Writing Seminar (e.g. WR 100 or WR 120).
BU Hub: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Legacy.
CAS PH 300 B1: History of Ancient Philosophy
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 PM – 10:45 PM
A survey of ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the fundamental nature of reality, how we know anything about it, wisdom, virtue, and human happiness.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing. First Year Writing Seminar (e.g. WR 100 or WR 120).
BU Hub: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Legacy.
CAS PH 300 C1: History of Ancient Philosophy
Professor Allen Speight
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
A survey of ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Plato and Aristotle. Topics will include: the fundamental nature of reality, how we know anything about it, wisdom, virtue, and human happiness.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing. First Year Writing Seminar (e.g. WR 100 or WR 120).
BU Hub: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Legacy.
CAS PH 310 A1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Aaron Garrett
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy from Descartes to Kant, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge. Readings include Descartes, Spinoza, Cavendish, Hume, and Kant.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
CAS PH 310 B1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Ben Crowe
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
A survey of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European philosophy, focusing on epistemology, metaphysics, and natural philosophy. We will read selections from the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
CAS PH 310 C1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Dan Dahlstrom
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM
An examination of key philosophical debates and traditions in seventeenth through nineteenth century Western European thinking, with an emphasis on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical themes, based upon close reading of works by Descartes and Cavendish, Hume and Kant, Marx and Nietzsche.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
CAS PH 310 D1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Nicholas Westberg
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy from Descartes to Kant, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge. Readings include Descartes, Spinoza, Cavendish, Hume, and Kant.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
CAS PH 340 A1: Metaphysics and Epistemology
Professor Nicolas Westberg
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:05 AM – 9:55 AM
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.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 160; or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 360 A1: Symbolic Logic
Professor Derek Anderson
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
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. We cover the analysis of reasoning with truth-functions (“and”, “or”, “not”, “if … then”) and with quantifiers (“all”, “some”), attending to formal languages and axiomatic systems for logical deduction. Throughout, we aim to clearly and systematically display both the theory underlying the norms of valid reasoning and their applications to particular problems of argumentation. 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 and semantics. It is largely mathematical and formal in character, but lectures situate these structures within the context of questions raised in contemporary philosophy of language and mind
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Quantitative Reasoning I, and Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 401: Senior Independent Work
Prerequisites: senior standing, consent of instructor and department, and approval of Honors Committee.
CAS PH 405 A1: Aristotle I
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Thursday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
What do we know from perception? How should we understand the forms of practical and theoretical knowledge we humans can develop, and how are they different from the forms of knowledge available to other animals? How do we learn to be good—what sort of knowledge, and what else does this require? This class is a survey of Aristotle’s attempt to answer these and related questions.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 300
CAS PH 415 A1: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
Professor Ben Crowe
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
A survey of nineteenth-century European philosophy, focused on G.W.F. Hegel and the critical reception of his work by Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Marx.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 and one other philosophy course.
CAS PH 418 A1: Marx and Marxism
Professor Tian Cao
Thursday 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
In this introductory course, Marxism will be treated mainly as a conceptual framework for understanding history and society (including economy, politics and culture), and also as a critique of capitalism and a program of transforming the capitalist society for human emancipation, with an analysis of both its philosophical and ethical presuppositions and its conceptions of a post-capitalist society. The evolution of its theoretical bases, through its three stages (classical Marxism of Marx and Engels; the Soviet orthodoxy and its critics; and contemporary Marxisms) will be critically examined, and its practical (political, economic and cultural) impacts on the historical course since its inception briefly outlined.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 419 A1: Nietzsche
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Wednesday 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
An intensive study of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought. Topics to be addressed may include Nietzsche’s claim that modern morality is dangerous; that the death of God brings with it the possibility of the “last man”; that modern culture exhibits or leads to nihilism; that we have lost “higher values”; that all organisms manifest a “will to power”; that the will to truth is an expression of the ascetic ideal; that we need a “revaluation of all values”; that we must affirm the eternal recurrence of our lives; and that we have a superficial understanding of the nature of happiness. Readings will include a combination of primary and secondary sources.
Prerequisites: Two philosophy courses, or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
CAS PH 420 A1: Contemporary Philosophy
Professor Victor Kumar
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
This course responds to the current moment in American political culture by exploring why we’re so polarized and how knowledge and ignorance are shaped by social organization and psychology. We’ll begin by studying theories of misinformation, echo chambers, tribalism, and populism (including Trumpism) before entering into debates about politically contentious topics such as trans rights, immigration, and policing.
CAS PH 421 A1: Frege, Moore, Russell
Professor Peter Hylton
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
CAS PH 436 A1: Gender, Race, and Science
Professor Sam Hesni
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
How do race and gender intersect when it comes to social identity, marginalization, privilege, and scientific engagement? We will start to address these questions by engaging with questions about the metaphysics and epistemology of race and gender. What is a racial category? What is gender? How do racism and sexism affect people from different ethnic, racial, and gender backgrounds differently? How does being gendered or racialized influence what we know and how we are treated as knowers? What is it like and what does it mean to ‘pass’ as one gender or racial and identify as another? Finally, we will address applied issues in science and ethics.
Prerequisites: Two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 443 A1: Philosophy of Mind
Professor Michelle Montague
Wednesday 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
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.
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy or consent of instructor.
CAS PH 445 A1: Philosophy of Love
Professor Daniel Star
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
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.
Prerequisites: two philosophy courses, or consent of instructor
CAS PH 446 A1: Philosophy of Religion
Michael Zank
Monday, 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
Critical investigation of the limits of human knowledge and the theoretical and practical demands for meaning attached to notions of God, providence, immortality, and other metaphysical conditions of human thriving, from Plato to modern philosophies of religion. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking
CAS PH 451 A1: Contemporary Ethical Theory
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Monday 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Topic: Commitment and Meaning in Life
Many of the things that give our lives meaning and significance involve long-term, challenging, costly activities. You might want to succeed in a career, sustain close friendships, achieve an athletic goal, learn a new language, write a book. These things take time and effort: you won’t accomplish them if you give up the moment things get tough. But many of them are optional. You decide to pick one career rather than another. You chose to learn French instead of German. You decided to spend your free hours mastering chess instead of reading great Victorian novels. There’s nothing wrong with those choices—they make sense. They’re rational. But they’re also optional: you could have done something else, and, if you had, that would have made sense. And many of the activities you’ve chosen remain optional, even when chosen. In this course, we will examine these rationally optional, meaningful commitments. What is a commitment? How do we maintain commitments when faced with uncertainty about their status? Can it be rational or praiseworthy to maintain commitments even when we in some sense lack reason for doing so? How are commitments related to meaning and significance? We’ll look at recent work on grit (persevering in the face of indications of potential failure); faith (believing a proposition or being committed to something in a way that is in certain ways impervious to counterevidence); hope (focusing on certain aspects at the expense of others); devotion (actively insulating a commitment from dialectical considerations); and the shape of a life (how certain commitments configure life as a whole). Readings will include work by Harry Frankfurt, Cheshire Calhoun, Michael Bratman, Sarah Paul, Jennifer Morton, Ruth Chang, Lara Buchak, Andrew Chignell, Antti Kauppinen, Josiah Royce, and others.
CAS PH 454 A1: Liberty and Justice/Community, Liberty, and Morality
Professor Derek Anderson
Friday 11:15 AM – 2:00 PM
This course will study the relationship between liberalism and fascism, framed in light of the Foucauldian concept of “politics as war by other means.” What is power and how is it related to politics? What is fascism and when does a state count as becoming fascist? Liberalism vs. neoliberalism; ideal theory vs. non-ideal theory; freedom, rights, equality, democracy—what are they and what does it take to ensure they exist in the future?
CAS PH 461 A1: Mathematical Logic
Professor Akihiro Kanamori
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
The investigation of logical reasoning with mathematical methods. The syntax and semantics of sentential logic and quantificational logic. The unifying Godel Completeness Theorem, and models of theories. A look at the Godel Incompleteness Theorem and its ramifications
Prerequisites: CAS MA 293 or consent of instructor
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
CAS PH 465 A1: Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences
Professor Daniel Munro
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
The course begins with in-depth study of leading scientific work on the evolution of cognition and culture. Next, we draw on this work as we think about social conflict and social change, especially in the context of American political culture.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 & CAS PH 360 and one other philosophy course; or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Scientific Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
CAS PH 472 A1: Philosophy of Biology
Professor Rachell Powell
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Conceptual problems in biology; unity or pluralism of science; hierarchy theory; biological explanation; evolutionary theory, teleology and causality, statistical explanation; the species problem; mind and the brain; and language in animals and humans.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
CAS PH 476 A1: Philosophy of the Earth Sciences
Professor Alisa Bokulich
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
Examines philosophical and methodological issues arising in the geosciences, from reconstructing events in deep time, proxy data, and the catastrophism-uniformitarianism debate, to analog and computer simulation modeling, and the Anthropocene debate, drawing examples from geology, archaeology, paleontology, and climate science.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
CAS PH 489 A1: Henry James and New Media
Professor Juliet Floyd
Tuesday 3:30 PM – 6:15 PM
James’s writing exposed the moral and aesthetic dimensions of social status, wealth, and romance. Exploring James’s works and film adaptations of them, as well as contemporaneous philosophy, we address how they anticipate the social media of our time. Students complete a video, graphic novel, or other form of “new media” for a final project.
BU Hub: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation
CAS PH 491 A1-G1: Directed Study
CAS PH 495 A1: Philosophy and Mysticism: Jewish and Islamic Perspectives
Professor Diana Lobel
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
A thematic introduction to mysticism and philosophy, with a focus on the dynamics of religious experience. Readings will be drawn from medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy; Sufi mysticism and philosophy; Kabbalah, Sufi poetry, Hebrew poetry from the Golden Age of Muslim Spain.
Prerequisites: First-Year Writing Seminar; and one course from among the following: Philosophy, Religion, Core Curriculum CC 101 and/or CC 102
GRS – GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES
GRS PH 525 A1: Judith Butler
Professor Petrus Liu
Thursday 3:30 PM – 6:15 PM
An intensive study of Judith Butler’s philosophical thought and social theory from the 1990s to the present, with an emphasis on the continuities and discontinuities between Butler’s early work on gender performativity and more recent writings on racial justice, war, and violence.
Prerequisites: two previous XL, WS, or PH courses; or consent of instructor.
Graduate prerequisites: graduate standing.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, The Individual in Community, and Critical Thinking.
GRS PH 605 A1: Aristotle I
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Thursday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
A careful study of the philosophy of Aristotle conducted primarily through a close reading of several of his major works.
GRS PH 615 A1: Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
Professor Ben Crowe
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
We will ask: To what extent is a practical agent free or autonomous? We examine answers to these questions by figures such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 and one other philosophy course.
GRS PH 618 A1: Marx and Marxism
Professor Tian Cao
Thursday 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
In this introductory course, Marxism will be treated mainly as a conceptual framework for understanding history and society (including economy, politics and culture), and also as a critique of capitalism and a program of transforming the capitalist society for human emancipation, with an analysis of both its philosophical and ethical presuppositions and its conceptions of a post-capitalist society. The evolution of its theoretical bases, through its three stages (classical Marxism of Marx and Engels; the Soviet orthodoxy and its critics; and contemporary Marxisms) will be critically examined, and its practical (political, economic and cultural) impacts on the historical course since its inception briefly outlined.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
GRS PH 619 A1: Nietzsche
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Wednesday 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
An intensive study of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought. Topics to be addressed may include Nietzsche’s claim that modern morality is dangerous; that the death of God brings with it the possibility of the “last man”; that modern culture exhibits or leads to nihilism; that we have lost “higher values”; that all organisms manifest a “will to power”; that the will to truth is an expression of the ascetic ideal; that we need a “revaluation of all values”; that we must affirm the eternal recurrence of our lives; and that we have a superficial understanding of the nature of happiness. Readings will include a combination of primary and secondary sources.
Prerequisites: Two philosophy courses, or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings.
GRS PH 620 A1: Contemporary Philosophy
Professor Victor Kumar
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
This course responds to the current moment in American political culture by exploring why we’re so polarized and how knowledge and ignorance are shaped by social organization and psychology. We’ll begin by studying theories of misinformation, echo chambers, tribalism, and populism (including Trumpism) before entering into debates about politically contentious topics such as trans rights, immigration, and policing.
GRS PH 621 A1: Frege, Moore, Russell
Professor Peter Hylton
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
GRS PH 633 A1: Symbolic Logic
Professor Derek Anderson
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
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. We cover the analysis of reasoning with truth-functions (“and”, “or”, “not”, “if … then”) and with quantifiers (“all”, “some”), attending to formal languages and axiomatic systems for logical deduction. Throughout, we aim to clearly and systematically display both the theory underlying the norms of valid reasoning and their applications to particular problems of argumentation. 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 and semantics. It is largely mathematical and formal in character, but lectures situate these structures within the context of questions raised in contemporary philosophy of language and mind
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Quantitative Reasoning I, and Critical Thinking.
GRS PH 636 A1: Gender, Race, and Science
Professor Sam Hesni
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
How do race and gender intersect when it comes to social identity, marginalization, privilege, and scientific engagement? We will start to address these questions by engaging with questions about the metaphysics and epistemology of race and gender. What is a racial category? What is gender? How do racism and sexism affect people from different ethnic, racial, and gender backgrounds differently? How does being gendered or racialized influence what we know and how we are treated as knowers? What is it like and what does it mean to ‘pass’ as one gender or racial and identify as another? Finally, we will address applied issues in science and ethics.
BU Hub: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
GRS PH 643 A1: Philosophy of Mind
Professor Michelle Montague
Wednesday 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
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.
Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy or consent of instructor.
GRS PH 645 A1: Philosophy of Love
Professor Daniel Star
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
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.
Prerequisites: two philosophy courses, or consent of instructor
GRS PH 646 A1: Philosophy of Religion
Michael Zank
Monday, 6:30 PM – 9:15 PM
Critical investigation of the limits of human knowledge and the theoretical and practical demands for meaning attached to notions of God, providence, immortality, and other metaphysical conditions of human thriving, from Plato to modern philosophies of religion. This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking
GRS PH 651 A1: Contemporary Ethical Theory
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Monday 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Topic: Commitment and Meaning in Life
Many of the things that give our lives meaning and significance involve long-term, challenging, costly activities. You might want to succeed in a career, sustain close friendships, achieve an athletic goal, learn a new language, write a book. These things take time and effort: you won’t accomplish them if you give up the moment things get tough. But many of them are optional. You decide to pick one career rather than another. You chose to learn French instead of German. You decided to spend your free hours mastering chess instead of reading great Victorian novels. There’s nothing wrong with those choices—they make sense. They’re rational. But they’re also optional: you could have done something else, and, if you had, that would have made sense. And many of the activities you’ve chosen remain optional, even when chosen. In this course, we will examine these rationally optional, meaningful commitments. What is a commitment? How do we maintain commitments when faced with uncertainty about their status? Can it be rational or praiseworthy to maintain commitments even when we in some sense lack reason for doing so? How are commitments related to meaning and significance? We’ll look at recent work on grit (persevering in the face of indications of potential failure); faith (believing a proposition or being committed to something in a way that is in certain ways impervious to counterevidence); hope (focusing on certain aspects at the expense of others); devotion (actively insulating a commitment from dialectical considerations); and the shape of a life (how certain commitments configure life as a whole). Readings will include work by Harry Frankfurt, Cheshire Calhoun, Michael Bratman, Sarah Paul, Jennifer Morton, Ruth Chang, Lara Buchak, Andrew Chignell, Antti Kauppinen, Josiah Royce, and others.
GRS PH 654 A1: Liberty and Justice/Community, Liberty, and Morality
Professor Derek Anderson
Friday 11:15 AM – 2:00 PM
This course will study the relationship between liberalism and fascism, framed in light of the Foucauldian concept of “politics as war by other means.” What is power and how is it related to politics? What is fascism and when does a state count as becoming fascist? Liberalism vs. neoliberalism; ideal theory vs. non-ideal theory; freedom, rights, equality, democracy—what are they and what does it take to ensure they exist in the future?
GRS PH 665 A1: Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences
Professor Daniel Munro
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
The course begins with in-depth study of leading scientific work on the evolution of cognition and culture. Next, we draw on this work as we think about social conflict and social change, especially in the context of American political culture.
Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 & CAS PH 360 and one other philosophy course; or consent of instructor.
BU Hub: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Scientific Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
GRS PH 672 A1: Philosophy of Biology
Professor Rachell Powell
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Conceptual problems in biology; unity or pluralism of science; hierarchy theory; biological explanation; evolutionary theory, teleology and causality, statistical explanation; the species problem; mind and the brain; and language in animals and humans.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
GRS PH 676 A1: Philosophy of the Earth Sciences
Professor Alisa Bokulich
Tuesday, Thursday 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
Examines philosophical and methodological issues arising in the geosciences, from reconstructing events in deep time, proxy data, and the catastrophism-uniformitarianism debate, to analog and computer simulation modeling, and the Anthropocene debate, drawing examples from geology, archaeology, paleontology, and climate science.
Prerequisites: two previous PH courses, or consent of instructor.
GRS PH 689 A1: Henry James and New Media
Professor Juliet Floyd
Tuesday 3:30 PM – 6:15 PM
James’s writing exposed the moral and aesthetic dimensions of social status, wealth, and romance. Exploring James’s works and film adaptations of them, as well as contemporaneous philosophy, we address how they anticipate the social media of our time. Students complete a video, graphic novel, or other form of “new media” for a final project.
BU Hub: Digital/Multimedia Expression, Aesthetic Exploration, Creativity/Innovation
GRS PH 870 A1: Seminar: Philosophy of Science
Professor Miguel Ohnesorge
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
GRS PH 990 A1: Dissertation Workshop
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Intended for Philosophy PhD students working toward a dissertation prospectus or dissertation. Students present their research and discuss each other’s research projects.
GRS PH 993 A1: Philosophy Proseminar 1
Professor Victor Kumar
Tuesday 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
A workshop seminar offering advanced graduate students the opportunity to present and discuss work-in- progress (dissertation chapters, papers for job applications, journal submissions). A serious commitment to regular and continuing attendance is expected.