Search Results
Your search for courses · during 25FA, 26WI, 26SP · taught by amurphy · returned 5 results
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PHIL 124 Friendship 6 credits
What is friendship? Are there different types of friendships? What makes a friendship good? While this course will familiarize you with a variety of scholarly views on friendship from both historically canonical and contemporary sources, our main goal is to become more reflective about our lived experience of friendship here and now.
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PHIL 124.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 304 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 304 1:10pm-2:10pm
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PHIL 218 Virtue Ethics 6 credits
What is a good human life? Who is a good person? From the time of Plato and Aristotle onwards, many philosophers have thought about these questions in terms of two central ideas. Virtues, such as justice or courage, make us a certain type of person (they give us a certain character). Wisdom enables us to make good judgments about how to act. How do virtue and wisdom work together to produce a good human life? Is a good life the same as a happy life? We will reflect on these and related questions as we read texts from Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, and other significant thinkers in the contemporary virtue ethics tradition. We will also consider the application of virtue ethics to specific areas, such as environmental ethics, as well as the parallels between Western virtue ethics and the tradition of Confucianism in ancient China.
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PHIL 218.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLibrary 305 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLibrary 305 1:10pm-2:10pm
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PHIL 261 The Individual and the Political Community 6 credits
Are human beings by nature atomic units or oriented towards community? What does the difference amount to, and why does it matter for our understanding of the ways in which political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several related contemporary pieces.
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PHIL 261.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 426 9:40am-10:40am
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PHIL 270 Ancient Greek Philosophy 6 credits
Is there a key to a happy and successful human life? If so, how do you acquire it? Plato and Aristotle thought the key was virtue and that your chances of obtaining it depend on the sort of life you lead. We’ll read texts from these authors that became foundational for the later history of philosophy, including the Apology, Gorgias, Symposium, and the Nicomachean Ethics, while situating the ancient understanding of virtue in the context of larger questions of metaphysics (the nature of being), psychology, and ethics.
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PHIL 270.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 330 9:40am-10:40am
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PHIL 276 Existentialism and Literature 6 credits
Against the background of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of secularism, the spread of mass consumption and technocracy, and the devastation of war, the question of the human being’s place in the world became increasingly pressing. ‘Existentialism’ became the term associated with intellectuals and artists who grappled with questions of authenticity, freedom, and our responsibilities to others, all while seeking new forms of meaning and value that were not rooted in traditional sources of authority. We’ll read texts that give voice to modernity’s social upheaval and alienation as well as works of philosophy and literature that responded to this predicament. Authors include Kafka, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, and Viktor Frankl.
- Spring 2026
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 276.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Allison Murphy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 305 1:15pm-3:00pm