Search Results
Your search for courses · during 2025-26 · tagged with PHIL Prac/Value Theory · returned 15 results
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GWSS 365 Black Feminist Thought 6 credits
This seminar offers students an opportunity to engage closely with key concepts, figures, and arguments in the Black Feminist intellectual tradition. We will focus primarily on texts by key figures/scholars from the Americas/Caribbean—in order to situate Black Feminisms within a transnational feminist context. We will take a historical approach, starting in the 19th century and work our way to more contemporary figures and texts throughout the term. Some of the key figures we will examine are Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Angela Y. Davis, Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
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PHIL 209 Philosophy of Theater: Actors, Characters, Performances 6 credits
Ian McKellen explains that when he acts on stage, “I pretend to be the person I’m portraying.” But how do you pretend to be a person? Is it different from playing make-believe or code-switching your behavior between family, friends, and classmates? Is it different from what writers do when they write about fictional people? And just what is a person, anyway? A particular body? A set of beliefs and desires? Is an actor’s race and gender independent of those of the person they portray? We’ll evaluate competing answers to such questions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and theater practitioners.
Not offered in 2025-26
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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 219 American Pragmatism 6 credits
The class is a survey of this distinctly North American tradition, which understands knowing the world as inseparable from exercising one’s agency within it. We will especially focus on the tradition’s directedness towards various dimensions of social improvement and the notion that philosophy is a tool in the realization of an inclusive American democracy.
Not offered in 2025-26
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PHIL 221 Philosophy of Law 6 credits
This course provides students with an opportunity to engage actively in a discussion of theoretical questions about law. We will consider the nature of law as it is presented by natural law theory, legal positivism and legal realism. Then we will deal with responsibility and punishment, and challenges to the idea of the primacy of individual rights from legal paternalism and moralism. We will next inquire into the explanations of why individuals should obey the law, and conditions under which civil disobedience is justified. Finally, we will discuss issues raised by feminist legal theory and some theories of minority rights.
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PHIL 232 Social and Political Philosophy 6 credits
We will study several prominent late twentieth century philosophers writing about social and political justice and representing a variety of views, such as liberalism, socialism, libertarianism, communitarianism, feminism and postmodernism. The following are some of the authors we will read: John Rawls, Gerald Cohen, Robert Nozick, Charles Taylor, Iris Marion Young, Seyla Benhabib, Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard.
Not offered in 2025-26
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PHIL 255 Comparative Philosophy 6 credits
Philosophical problems are motivated by human concerns that are often shared across cultures. In this course, we will analyze how philosophers from different traditions have approached problems concerning the structure of reality, the nature of knowledge and experience, and how we ought to live. We will identify how their cultural context impacts their resolution of metaphysical, epistemic, and ethical problems. Moreover, beyond comparing and contrasting, we will consider how philosophers from different philosophical traditions could have learned from or inspired one another if they had engaged with one another. By engaging in this cross-cultural investigation inquiry, we will gain a broader view of how philosophy has been used to make sense of the world and its limitations and prospects philosophy.
Not offered in 2025-26
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PHIL 257 Contemporary Issues in Feminist Philosophy 6 credits
We will analyze different theories about the distinction between sex and gender. Then we will turn to contemporary issues in feminism for the remainder of the course. These issues include, but are not limited to, conservative feminism, reproductive justice, fetishes, disability, ethics of pronouns, whether men are oppressed, and responsibility for oppression. We will read selections from Oyèrónké Oyewùmí, Robin Dembroff, Karina Ortiz Villa, Robin Zheng, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Audre Lorde, and more. In addition, there will be room for student choice of topics.
Not offered in 2025-26
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PHIL 260 Critical Philosophy of Race 6 credits
What is race? Is “race” real? Is it a biological fact, a social category, or a cultural production? How do we define racism? This course introduces students to the major issues and debates from the emergent subfield referred to as the “Critical Philosophy of Race.” Throughout the course, we will examine the ways in which philosophers first defined the concept of race, how the definition of this concept has evolved since its introduction, and the philosophical/societal implications of these shifts. In doing so, we will investigate how race relates to issues of identity, culture, knowledge, and social difference.
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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 274 Existentialism 6 credits
We will consider the emergence and development of major themes of existentialism in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as “classical” existentialists such as Heidegger, Sartre and De Beauvoir. We will discuss key issues put forward by the existentialist movement, such as “the question of being” and human historicity, freedom and responsibility and look at how different authors analyzed the nature and ambitions of the Self and diverse aspects of subjectivity.
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PHIL 275 Latina Feminist Philosophy 6 credits
Latina feminist philosophers have developed and continue to develop valuable philosophical contributions to feminist scholarship and the discipline of philosophy more broadly. This course sheds light on these contributions by exploring the major questions, concepts, and debates within the Latina (and Latinx) feminist philosophical tradition. We will specifically explore the relationships between race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and identity; lived experience, embodiment, and knowledge; and the possibilities for self/social transformation through the process of creative writing.
Not offered in 2025-26
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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 304 Decolonial Feminisms 6 credits
This course familiarizes students with major issues and debates within the emerging field of decolonial feminist philosophy. We will start by considering some of the historical, geopolitical, and theoretical underpinnings from which decolonial feminisms emerged. We will then investigate core concepts and problems pertaining to decolonial feminisms as a critical methodology and as a practice to build solidarity between and across anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist schools of thought and/or political coalitions. We will pay particular attention to Latina feminist philosopher María Lugones and her development of the “colonial modern gender system” and her articulation of “decolonial feminism.” Recommended preparation: One prior course in Philosophy or a relevant area of studies.
Not offered in 2025-26
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PHIL 338 Philosophy East and West 6 credits
This course will cover philosophical themes within seventeenth and eighteenth century Eastern and Western philosophical traditions and put them in conversation with one another. Some examples of topics that may be covered include, but are not limited to, the following: nature, divinity, knowledge, virtue, animal ethics, philosophy of mind, change, and education. Further, we will analyze methodological issues of translation. We will also evaluate problems for comparative work such as incommensurability, anachronism, ideological imperialism, ethnocentrism, and more. The aim of this course is to gain a contextual understanding of these philosophical traditions to promote the creation of new dialogues.
Not offered in 2025-26
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100, 200 or 300 level PHIL course NOT including Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better.