51 - 60 of 317 results for: PHIL

In this course, we will explore the Timaeus, Plato's account of the nature and creation of the universe. This work, from Plato's late period, with its highly notable postulations of the Demiurge and the receptacle, received the place of prominence in the ancient reception of Plato and contains a number of challenges in interpretation for contemporary scholars of Plato. We will carefully examine the work and its contributions to Platonic metaphysics, physics, psychology, teleology, cosmology, and theology. In so doing, we will also consider questions of how we are to understand it as a likely story, its role within the Platonic corpus, and its engagement with pre-existing traditions of Greek natural philosophy.

An introduction both to Aristotle's own metaphysics and to his treatment of his predecessors on causality, included the early Ionian cosmologists, atomism, Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Plato. Prerequisite: one course in ancient Greek philosophy.

This course investigates the interplay of logic, language, and material textual practices in the Aristotelian tradition. Focusing on selected passages from De Interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, the Topics, Metaphysics, and the Rhetoric, we explore how the structure and interpretation of Aristotle's arguments are shaped not only by abstract logical form, but also by syntactic cohesion, negation strategies, and patterns of sentence structure. We examine how these forms are rendered visible and manipulable in diagrams, editorial interventions, and the organization of compendia.

A chapter by chapter analysis of Aristotle's introductory discussions of physical theory. Topics to be considered include Aristotle's treatment of Eleatic monism, the role of opposites in pre-Socratic physics, the role of matter in physics, and an analysis of the elements of changing objects into form, privation and a subject.

tba

We will consider the interplay between the development and use of logical methods and their deployment in the investigation of foundational problems about the structure of reality.

We will investigate ancient Stoic conceptions of causality and freedom, their arguments for causal determinism, and ancient attaches on and defenses of compatibilism.

TBA

Graduate students enroll in 212. In this course, we shall examine contemporary virtue ethics beginning with G.E.M. Anscombe's famous 1958 paper 'Modern Moral Theory' (although Anscombe herself did not advocate a virtue ethics). In particular, we shall read some of the leading contemporary exponents of virtue ethics (Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, Michal Slote, and Linda Zagzebski). We shall also read some of leading virtue ethics' leading critics, such as David Copp, Julia Driver, Robert Louden, and Jerome Schneewind. We shall consider questions including the following. Can Virtue Ethics give a plausible account of right action? Is Virtue Ethics action-guiding at all? What is the relation between virtue and happiness or flourishing? Is Virtue Ethics a form of ethical naturalism? Is Virtue Ethics compatible with modern biology? Does Virtue Ethics give us a way to avoid the 'ethical schizophrenia' of modern impartialist moral theories or does it produce its own form of ethical schizophrenia? Is Virtue Ethics self-effacing?