These courses were offered in the Spring of 2022. Course descriptions are subject to change based on the instructor and their approach to the course’s content. For a general description of what each course approaches, please refer to the Academic Bulletin.
CAS – COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
PH 100 A1: Introduction to Philosophy
Professor Benjamin Crowe
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20PM
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. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Critical Thinking and Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meaning.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 100 B1: Introduction to Philosophy
Professor Walter Hopp
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 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. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS. Effective Fall 2018, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Critical Thinking and Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meaning.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 110 A1: Great Philosophers
Professor Benjamin Crowe
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM
An introduction to philosophy through a reading of great figures in western thought. The list may include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Russell. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
PH 150 A1: Introduction to Ethics
Professor Samia Hesni
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
Many of us want to lead meaningful lives. But what is it for a life to be meaningful? What makes some lives better or more meaningful than others? Can life as a whole have some significance or meaning? Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 150 B1: Introduction to Ethics
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
We judge that some lives are better than others, that some actions are right and others wrong, that some pursuits are valuable and others disvaluable. But what is the basis for these claims? What makes a life good, an action right, a pursuit valuable? And, most generally: what is it to lead a good life? We will address these questions by examining some of the most profound and influential texts in the philosophical tradition. Readings will be drawn from Plato, Aristotle, Xunzi, Buddhist texts, Epictetus, Epicurus, Bentham, Mill, Hobbes, Kant, Marx, and Nietzsche.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings; Ethical Reasoning; Critical Thinking.
PH 150 C1: Introduction to Ethics
Professor Daniel Star
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:05 AM – 9:55 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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 155 A1: Politics and Philosophy
TBA
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:25 PM – 2:15 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. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 159 A1: Philosophy and Film
Professor Aaron Garrett
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
This class provides an introduction to philosophical and aesthetic issues connected with film. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
PH 160 A1: Reason & Argumentation
Professor Derek Anderson
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
A systematic study of the principles of both deductive and informal reasoning, calculated to enhance students’ actual reasoning skills, with an emphasis on reasoning and argumentation in ordinary discourse. We will emphasize argumentation and criticism in ordinary life and also present formal models of reasoning designed to elicit underlying patterns and structures of reasoning and argumentation that are widely applicable. Simultaneous training in skills of argument analysis, argument pattern recognition, argument construction, and argument interpretation and creation.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
PH 160 B1: Reason & Argumentation
TBA
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM
A systematic study of the principles of both deductive and informal reasoning, calculated to enhance students’ actual reasoning skills, with an emphasis on reasoning and argumentation in ordinary discourse. We will emphasize argumentation and criticism in ordinary life and also present formal models of reasoning designed to elicit underlying patterns and structures of reasoning and argumentation that are widely applicable. Simultaneous training in skills of argument analysis, argument pattern recognition, argument construction, and argument interpretation and creation.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
PH 247 A1: Introduction to Chinese Philosophy
Professor Benjamin Crowe
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
Is human nature fundamentally good or fundamentally bad? How can we best achieve an enduring social order? What is the shape of a life well lived? This class examines such questions in the context of the classical period in Chinese philosophy, focusing on (1) Kongzi (Confucius), (2) Mozi, (3) Mengzi (Mencius), (4) Zhuangzi, and (5) Xunzi. A primary goal of the course is to expose students to the richness, vitality, and plurality of the philosophical scene in ancient China. Topics discussed include moral virtue, music, education, and the ethics of war.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Critical Thinking.
PH 248 A1: Existentialism
Professor Walter Hopp
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
This course examines how existentialist thinkers grappled with some of the most problematic aspects of the human condition.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 251 A1: Medical Ethics
TBA
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
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. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 251 B1: Medical Ethics
TBA
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1:25 PM – 2:15 PM
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. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, Critical Thinking.
PH 253 A1: Social Philosophy
Professor Tian Yu Cao
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
PH 266 A1: Mind, Brain, and Self
Professor Derek Anderson
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
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 areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Writing-Intensive Course, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: First Year Writing Seminar (e.g. WR 100 or WR 120.)
PH 272 A1: Science, Technology, and Values
Professor Bokulich
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 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.
PH 300 A1: History of Ancient Philosophy
Professor Allen Speight
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:10 AM – 11:00 AM
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.
BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship, and Intercultural Literacy.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing; first-year writing seminar (WR 100 or WR 120.)
PH 300 B1: History of Ancient Philosophy
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 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.
BU Hub areas: Writing-Intensive Course, Ethical Reasoning, Global Citizenship, and Intercultural Literacy.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: One philosophy course or sophomore standing; first-year writing seminar (WR 100 or WR 120.)
PH 310 A1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Charles Griswold
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12:20 PM – 1:10 PM
This course offers an examination of several topics in seventeenth‐ and eighteenth-century philosophy, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge (including our knowledge of the existence of the external world and of God), the relation of mind to body, the nature of personal identity, the problem of free will, and the theological problem of evil. The relation between science, religion, and philosophy will also draw our attention. Readings will likely include selections from Astell, Bacon, Berkeley, Descartes, Elisabeth, Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Masham, Pascal, and Shepherd, among others. Time permitting, we will also read some contemporary articles that pick up on themes that we have discussed.
Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy. There are no prerequisites for this course. You may take it even if you have not taken PH 300 (History of Ancient Philosophy). The professor does not anticipate scheduling a final examination for this course.
PH 310 B1: History of Modern Philosophy
Professor Sally Sedgwick
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
An examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth‐century philosophy from Descartes to Kant, with emphasis on the nature and extent of knowledge, the relation of mind to body, the nature of personal identity, the problem of free will, and the problem of evil. Readings from René Descartes, Princess Elizabeth, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Benedict Spinoza, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.
This course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Research and Information Literacy.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one philosophy course or sophomore standing.
PH 340 A1: Metaphysics & Epistemology
Professor Michaela McSweeney
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS PH 160 or consent of instructor.
PH 360 A1: Symbolic Logic
Professor Peter Hylton
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 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. 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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Quantitative Reasoning I, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: one philosophy course or sophomore standing.
PH 403 A1: Plato I
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
A close reading of Plato’s Meno. Topics will include: the nature and value of knowledge, virtue, and learning, and the relationships between them.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy or consent of instructor.
PH 418 A1: Marx & Marxism
Professor Tian Yu Cao
Friday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
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.
BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: two courses in philosophy or consent of instructor.
PH 424 A1: Wittgenstein
Professor Juliet Floyd
Tuesday, 3:30 PM – 6:15 PM
An intensive study of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and his Philosophical Investigations (1953) with contemporary philosophical problems in mind and attention to Wittgenstein’s overall development. Our focus will be Wittgenstein’s talk of “forms of life” in relation to problems about the notions of truth, meaning, philosophical method, necessity, representation, and the notions of perception and experience. Themes covered will include the nature of concept-possession, normativity, rule-following, occasion sensitivity, literary dimensions of these texts, and their place in 20th-century philosophy. We will read a good bit of Cavell, Diamond, and Travis.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 and two other philosophy courses, or consent of instructor.
PH 436 Gender, Race, and Science
Professor Victor Kumar
Monday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
An upper-level exploration of topics in the philosophy of gender and philosophy of race, informed by historical and scientific inquiry. Explores philosophical questions about the nature of race and racism, sex and sexism.
BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
Prerequisite: sophomore standing.
PH 446 A1: Philosophy of Religion
Professor Michael Zank
Monday, 3:35 PM – 6:20 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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS PH 300 and CAS PH 310.
PH 454 A1: Community, Liberty, and Morality
Professor Charles Griswold
Monday, Wednesday 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Does a free community require shared values? Must those values, and hence political liberty, in turn be sustained by a communal religious outlook—and if so, which one? If diverse religious views are permitted in a free society, how is a regime of mutual toleration to be established and how is religious liberty to be defined and defended? Is the cause of civic virtue and liberty better served by a sort of free market of religious and moral views or by state-enforced commitments and values? How can rival religious and secular claims about the foundations of political authority be reconciled in a free community? What are some of the arguments for and against freedom of speech and inquiry? This seminar will focus on questions concerning the complex relation between value, civic unity, religion, and liberty. In effect, we will reflect on the meaning of “E pluribus unum” in the context of a free and cohesive society. The question as to what we might hope for—and, therefore, the topic of utopian thinking—will also be discussed. Readings will be drawn from a variety of classical and contemporary thinkers, and will also include discussion of some recent Supreme Court cases.
This seminar emphasizes class discussion and participation, and is limited to an enrollment of 15 (undergraduate students only). The Link may list as a short title for this course “Liberty and Religion.” The professor does not anticipate scheduling a final examination for this course.
Effective Spring 2021, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Ethical Reasoning, and Critical Thinking.
PH 459 A1: Political & Legal Philosophy
Professor Samia Hesni
Wednesday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Examination of the individual’s responsibilities under law, specifically of the idea that there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, including unjust law, and the contrasting idea of civil disobedience– the possibility of morally justified resistance to law. Also offered as CAS PO 499.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
PH 460 A1: Epistemology
Professor Daniel Star
Friday, 11:15 AM – 2:00 PM
An examination of some of the central questions concerning the nature, scope, sources, and structure of knowledge.
Undergraduate Prerequisite: CAS PH 310.
PH 462 A1: Foundations of Mathematics
Professor Akihiro Kanamori
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Axiomatic set theory as a foundation for, and field of, mathematics: Axiom of Choice, the Continuum Hypothesis, and consistency results. Also offered as CAS MA 532.
Undergraduate Prerequisite: CAS PH 461 or consent of instructor.
PH 465 A1: Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Professor Victor Kumar
Wednesdays, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
We’ll read important scientific work in evolutionary theory, psychology, etc. about human cognition. We’ll then explore its philosophical implications. For example, we’ll use research in cognitive science to think about whether humans are irremediably tribal and sectarian. Scientific Inquiry I and Social Inquiry I are both prerequisites for this course.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Scientific Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS PH 310 and CAS PH 360; and one other philosophy course; or consent of instructor.
PH 488 A1: Topics in Aesthetics
Professor Allen Speight
Wednesday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
What is aesthetics? How do we make judgments about works of art? This seminar is intended to be a general introduction to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, stretching from the development of aesthetic ideas (the beautiful, the sublime, the ideal) to contemporary claims about the “end” of aesthetics. Topics to be considered include: taste and aesthetic sense; the relation among artistic genres; philosophical engagement with and appropriation of specific works of art; the limits of aesthetics and the notion of the “end” of art; and the relation between aesthetics and ethics/politics.
Undergraduate Prerequisites: sophomore standing.
PH 489 A1: Henry James & New Media
Professor Juliet Floyd
Monday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Of all the major literary figures of his late Victorian-early Modernist era, Henry James has had perhaps the most robust afterlife in the 20th and 21st centuries, influencing the methods of writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Dashiell Hammett, Philip Roth, and James Baldwin; providing standard fictional principles and theory for writing programs (both creative and compositional); his novels adapted by leading filmmakers, and his life the subject of numerous fictions featuring him as author protagonist (by Colm Toibin, Alan Hollinghurst, Cynthia Ozick, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others). The guiding claim of this course, team-taught by Professor of Philosophy, Juliet Floyd and Professor of English, Susan Mizruchi, is that James’s remarkable longevity, his status as ‘Our Contemporary,’ is a product of his formal, intellectual, and philosophical devotion to innovation, which runs through all of his writings.
The professional author par excellence who produced a voluminous body of literary works in nearly every genre—short stories, novellas, novels, plays, biographies, travelogues, memoirs, writing notebooks, and letters—there was no writer of his time more committed to his craft and to extending its boundaries, and no writer who experimented more deliberately with what the novel could reveal about the depths of human psychology, gender and sexuality, social life and economy, philosophical meaning and the power of language.
James’s writing developed radically new idioms, “new media” for the presentation of “experience.” His reflections on “perception” deepened and counterbalanced the introspective psychology of his brother William James. His philosophical and psychological meditations expanded the American tradition extending from Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne which viewed “experience” as not mere appearance, but as real, part of Nature itself. “Experience” here is about discovering what really matters. James pressed this self-conscious transcendentalist move toward ordinary reality and its phenomenology forward into the social “media” of his day, inventively demonstrating how criticism of criticism reflects insight into the invention of self, social relations and experiential capacities.
This course asks how might the “new media” for representing social pressures and relations James developed in his novels, be re-expressed and represented in new media today – including not only social media but dating apps, the representation of courtship in popular ‘reality’ shows, and tv series which have come to replace the function of the novel in providing viewers with opportunities for moral reflection, reconciliation with reality, and discussion of present-day dilemmas.
Through close study of major works by James, alongside popular and influential contemporaneous works (by Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Freud, and others) and James film adaptations (by Michael Winner, Campion, Merchant-Ivory, etc.) this course will draw on his insights to illuminate the social media and popular culture of our time, probing his complex texts to understand social issues connected with romance, economic drives, and pandemic responses that are part of contemporary reality.
Course readings will include: The Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl; The Bostonians; The Beast in the Jungle; In The Cage. Students will learn how to incorporate James’s inventiveness into their own thinking, building to a capstone project that will involve creating a video, graphic novel, or another form of new media.
PH 493 A1: Meaning, Memory, and History
TBA
Thursday, 12:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Explores central issues in the philosophy of history, from Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche to Collingwood, Popper, and Danto. Topics include: is history a science? If so, what kind? How does it differ from tradition and memory? Does it have a meaning?
GRS – Graduate School of the Arts & Sciences
PH 603 A1: Plato 1
Professor Marc Gasser-Wingate
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
A close reading of Plato’s Meno. Topics will include: the nature and value of knowledge, virtue, and learning, and the relationships between them.
PH 618 A1: Marx & Marxism
Professor Tian Yu Cao
Friday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
The 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.
BU Hub areas: Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
PH 624 A1: Wittgenstein
Professor Juliet Floyd
Tuesday, 3:30 PM – 6:15 PM
An intensive study of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and his Philosophical Investigations (1953) with contemporary philosophical problems in mind and attention to Wittgenstein’s overall development. Our focus will be Wittgenstein’s talk of “forms of life” in relation to problems about the notions of truth, meaning, philosophical method, necessity, representation, and the notions of perception and experience. Themes covered will include the nature of concept-possession, normativity, rule-following, occasion sensitivity, literary dimensions of these texts, and their place in 20th-century philosophy. We will read a good bit of Cavell, Diamond, and Travis.
PH 626 A1: Phenomenology
TBA
Tuesday, Thursday 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
Rigorous examination of foundations of philosophical phenomenology in Husserl and others.
BU Hub areas: Oral and/or Signed Communication, Writing-Intensive Course, Philosophical Inquiry, and Life’s Meanings.
Prerequisite: first-year writing seminar (either WR100 or WR120)
PH 633 A1: Logic
Professor Peter Hylton
Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
Study of methods characteristic of modern deductive logic including use of truth tables, Boolean normal forms, models, and indirect and conditional proofs within the theory of truth-functions and quantifiers.
PH 634 A1: The Color Line, Resistance & Reparations
Professor David Lyons
Wednesday, 10:40 AM – 12:40 PM
This seminar examines the oppressive role of race and ethnicity in American society from the early colonial period to the present, resistance to that oppression, and the moral case for both resistance and reparations. Each seminar session will begin with a presentation by a seminar member, a schedule for which will be developed after the first seminar meeting. Readings will be mainly historical but will also include relevant cases and legislation; all readings will be available online or on the seminar’s Blackboard website. Grades will be based primarily on the term paper, on an approved topic, which is written after comments have been received on a polished draft; class participation will also be considered, as well as the weekly log that seminar members are required to maintain, noting issues raised by the readings.
OBJECTIVES: Students will be expected to become familiar with the history of racial and ethnic stratification in the United States as well as resistance to it, enabled to pursue that history on their own, and capable of appraising relevant scholarship and public policies. The CR/NC/H grading option is available.
LAW ENROLLMENT LIMIT: 15 students.
NOTE: This class does not satisfy the upper-class writing requirement. ** A student who fails to attend the initial meeting of a seminar (designated by an (S) in the title), or to obtain permission to be absent from either the instructor or the Registrar, may be administratively dropped from the seminar. Students who are on a wait list for a seminar are required to attend the first seminar meeting to be considered for enrollment.
Graduate Prerequisites: GRS Students are required to register for GRS PH 635 when registering for GRS PH 634 in order to receive full credit.
PH 636 A1: Gender, Race, and Science
Professor Victor Kumar
Monday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
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?
PH 646 A1: Philosophy of Religion
Professor Michael Zank
Monday, 3:35 PM – 6:20 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.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Social Inquiry I, Critical Thinking.
PH 659 A1: Political & Legal Philosophy
Professor Samia Hesni
Wednesdays, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Examination of the individual’s responsibilities under law, specifically of the idea that there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, including unjust law, and the contrasting idea of civil disobedience– the possibility of morally justified resistance to law.
PH 660 A1: Epistemology
Professor Daniel Star
Friday, 11:15 AM – 2:00 PM
An examination of some of the central questions concerning the nature, scope, sources, and structure of knowledge.
PH 662 A1: Foundations of Mathematics
Professor Akihiro Kanamori
Tuesday, Thursday 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Axiomatic set theory as a foundation for, and field of, mathematics: Axiom of Choice, the Continuum Hypothesis, and consistency results.
Graduate Prerequisites: GRS PH 661 or consent of instructor.
PH 665 A1: Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Professor Victor Kumar
Wednesday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
We’ll read important scientific work in evolutionary theory, psychology, etc. about human cognition. We’ll then explore its philosophical implications. For example, we’ll use research in cognitive science to think about whether humans are irremediably tribal and sectarian. Scientific Inquiry I and Social Inquiry I are both prerequisites for this course.
BU Hub areas: Philosophical Inquiry and Life’s Meanings, Scientific Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
PH 688 A1: Topics in Aesthetics
Professor Allen Speight
Wednesday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
What is aesthetics? How do we make judgments about works of art? This seminar is intended to be a general introduction to aesthetics and the philosophy of art, stretching from the development of aesthetic ideas (the beautiful, the sublime, the ideal) to contemporary claims about the “end” of aesthetics. Topics to be considered include: taste and aesthetic sense; the relation among artistic genres; philosophical engagement with and appropriation of specific works of art; the limits of aesthetics and the notion of the “end” of art; and the relation between aesthetics and ethics/politics.
Graduate Prerequisites: graduate standing.
PH 689 A1: Henry James & New Media
Professor Juliet Floyd
Monday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Of all the major literary figures of his late Victorian-early Modernist era, Henry James has had perhaps the most robust afterlife in the 20th and 21st centuries, influencing the methods of writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Dashiell Hammett, Philip Roth, and James Baldwin; providing standard fictional principles and theory for writing programs (both creative and compositional); his novels adapted by leading filmmakers, and his life the subject of numerous fictions featuring him as author protagonist (by Colm Toibin, Alan Hollinghurst, Cynthia Ozick, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others). The guiding claim of this course, team-taught by Professor of Philosophy, Juliet Floyd and Professor of English, Susan Mizruchi, is that James’s remarkable longevity, his status as ‘Our Contemporary,’ is a product of his formal, intellectual, and philosophical devotion to innovation, which runs through all of his writings.
The professional author par excellence who produced a voluminous body of literary works in nearly every genre—short stories, novellas, novels, plays, biographies, travelogues, memoirs, writing notebooks, and letters—there was no writer of his time more committed to his craft and to extending its boundaries, and no writer who experimented more deliberately with what the novel could reveal about the depths of human psychology, gender and sexuality, social life and economy, philosophical meaning and the power of language.
James’s writing developed radically new idioms, “new media” for the presentation of “experience.” His reflections on “perception” deepened and counterbalanced the introspective psychology of his brother William James. His philosophical and psychological meditations expanded the American tradition extending from Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne which viewed “experience” as not mere appearance, but as real, part of Nature itself. “Experience” here is about discovering what really matters. James pressed this self-conscious transcendentalist move toward ordinary reality and its phenomenology forward into the social “media” of his day, inventively demonstrating how criticism of criticism reflects insight into the invention of self, social relations and experiential capacities.
This course asks how might the “new media” for representing social pressures and relations James developed in his novels, be re-expressed and represented in new media today – including not only social media but dating apps, the representation of courtship in popular ‘reality’ shows, and tv series which have come to replace the function of the novel in providing viewers with opportunities for moral reflection, reconciliation with reality, and discussion of present-day dilemmas.
Through close study of major works by James, alongside popular and influential contemporaneous works (by Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Freud, and others) and James film adaptations (by Michael Winner, Campion, Merchant-Ivory, etc.) this course will draw on his insights to illuminate the social media and popular culture of our time, probing his complex texts to understand social issues connected with romance, economic drives, and pandemic responses that are part of contemporary reality.
Course readings will include: The Portrait of a Lady; The Golden Bowl; The Bostonians; The Beast in the Jungle; In The Cage. Students will learn how to incorporate James’s inventiveness into their own thinking, building to a capstone project that will involve creating a video, graphic novel, or another form of new media.
PH 810 A1: Topics in Modern Philosophy
Professor Aaron Garrett
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
PH 840 A1: Metaphysics
Professor Michaela McSweeney
Wednesday, 2:30 PM – 5:15 PM
PH 990 A1: Dissertation Workshop
Professor Paul Katsafanas
Tuesday, 3:30 PM – 5:15 PM
Dissertation Workshop. Required for all Philosophy Ph.D. students in their fourth through sixth years.
PH 994 A1: Philosophy Placement Proseminar II
Professor Michaela McSweeney
Thursday, 3:30 PM – 6:15 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.