Philosophy (PHIL) 1 PHILOSOPHY (PHIL) PHIL 3: Ethical Life 3 Credits PHIL 1: The Big Questions This course offers students an overview of ethical issues, moral 3 Credits reasoning, and questions concerning the good and flourishing life for individuals and groups. It engages the work and critical interpretation This course plunges students into the deepest philosophical questions: of major figures in moral thinking, and enters into the full complexity Why is there something rather than nothing? Can I be sure about of contemporary moral problems. Students will study and evaluate anything? What is the purpose of life? Is morality real or conventional? competing accounts of the right way to live, including their overall Can the existence of God be proven or disproven? Can science explain plausibility, their background assumptions, and their practical everything? Students will meet a range of historical and contemporary implementation. formulations of philosophical questions such as these, study various types of response, and acquire the analytical and expository skills to Bachelor of Arts: Humanities develop and defend their own perspectives. The course proceeds through General Education: Humanities (GH) discussion, reading, writing, and other assignments GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think GenEd Learning Objective: Soc Resp and Ethic Reason Bachelor of Arts: Humanities General Education: Humanities (GH) PHIL 4: The Human Condition GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think GenEd Learning Objective: Key Literacies 3 Credits This course introduces central philosophical questions about the lives PHIL 1H: The Big Questions -Honors we humans live: Can our lives have meaning, and does their value depend 3 Credits on it? Does each of us have a true self to be discovered, or a shared human nature we cannot escape? What do we mean by "authenticity," This course plunges students into the deepest philosophical questions: is it worth striving for, and can it be achieved? What difference does Why is there something rather than nothing? Can I be sure about recognizing your mortality make to anything? We explore these questions anything? What is the purpose of life? Is morality real or conventional? in conversation with influential historical perspectives and contemporary Can the existence of God be proven or disproven? Can science explain theories, while approaching them from everyday concerns. Doing so everything? Students will meet a range of historical and contemporary provides a path for introducing philosophical ideas and evaluations into formulations of philosophical questions such as these, study various ordinary life. types of response, and acquire the analytical and expository skills to develop and defend their own perspectives. The course proceeds through Bachelor of Arts: Humanities discussion, reading, writing, and other assignments. General Education: Humanities (GH) GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think Bachelor of Arts: Humanities GenEd Learning Objective: Key Literacies General Education: Humanities (GH) Honors PHIL 5: Film and Philosophy GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think GenEd Learning Objective: Key Literacies 3 Credits This course examines film as both an aesthetic medium and as a medium PHIL 2: Individuals in Society for the exploration of philosophical questions. In addition to watching 3 Credits films, class assignments will include the reading of interpretative texts about specific films, philosophical discussions of film as a form This course provides a philosophical introduction to pressing social of art-work, and writings by major film makers and film critics. With and political issues. We will ask, for example, what justifies having a its origins in the late 19th-century, film is an quintessentially modern government; whether inequality is ever justified; what obligations citizens form of art that reflects changes in modern society (consumer culture, have toward each other and toward non-citizens; what exactly is wrong political organization, and cultural modes of perception), advances with racism, sexism, and other injustices and what we should do about in technologies (cameras, sound recording, computer graphics), and them; the limits and benefits of privacy; and the role of families, schools, aesthetic forms of expression. This complex intersection of society, churches, clubs, and employers in public life. We study prominent technology and art will be a focal point in understanding what is both philosophers and theorists on these questions, and address recent novel and traditional about films: how do films change our perception events or policies. Students will develop an appreciation for thinking of the world? How can films shape our collective consciousness? How about values in the context of conflicting political visions, and the are traditional structures of narrative transformed through the unique analytical and expository skills for examining and discussing them. combination of visual and auditory experience in films? These and other questions are central to an understanding of film as a modern Bachelor of Arts: Humanities form of art. From the beginning of film-making, films have often been General Education: Humanities (GH) used by directors and screen-writers as a medium for the exploration of GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think the human condition, social consciousness, and historical awareness. GenEd Learning Objective: Soc Resp and Ethic Reason The genres of historical fiction and science fiction have traditionally 2 Philosophy (PHIL) represented two important forms in which film raises and seeks to Bachelor of Arts: Humanities answer philosophical questions. Film is also a medium for the exploration Bachelor of Arts: Other Cultures of the social structures and values: family relations, love, friendship, and International Cultures (IL) other social forms of existence are often the main theme of scrutiny and General Education: Humanities (GH) experimentation in films. How can we read what a film reveals about such GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think social relations and individual psychologies? How can film explore basic GenEd Learning Objective: Integrative Thinking questions of human existence? Can such philosophically minded films also aspire to art-works of poetical beauty? This richness in how films PHIL 8: Gender Matters can provoke us to reflect upon the past, the present, and the future will be critically explored through different ways in which philosophers and film 3 Credits critics have reflected on film. These readings will be paired with specific films, with films and assigned readings drawn from international films, Feminism is one approach to addressing systematic oppressions of both classical films from the 20th-century, and contemporary science fiction women and men. This course examines various feminist philosophical films. approaches to issues such the construction of gender, sex, and sexuality, the nature of gender injustice, and the intersectionality of oppressions. Bachelor of Arts: Humanities It also addresses contemporary issues, including sexual harassment General Education: Humanities (GH) and assault, abortion, explicit and implicit bias, and discrimination and GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think exclusion. GenEd Learning Objective: Key Literacies Cross-listed with: WMNST 8 Bachelor of Arts: Humanities PHIL 6: Literature and Philosophy General Education: Humanities (GH) 3 Credits GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think GenEd Learning Objective: Soc Resp and Ethic Reason Explores fundamental issues of human existence through the traditions of western literature and philosophy. CMLIT 6 / PHIL 6 Philosophy PHIL 9: Race, Racism, and Diversity and Literature in Western Culture (3) (GH;IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course is designed to 3 Credits introduce students to the various interpretive approaches to literature and philosophy. The class will explore key philosophic themes as these This course offers a critical examination of the ways we today often think are exhibited in imaginative literature, and in doing so will practice about race and racism, the latter considered in its cultural, institutional, both philosophical interpretation of literature and literary treatment and systemic forms, as well as in its individual manifestations as slurs, of philosophy. The central themes of this course could include, for beliefs, and attitudes. This course also takes up the philosophical example, self-knowledge and self-deception; self-isolation, alienation issues raised by the concept of race in intersection with class, gender, and community; conflict of moral responsibilities; the use and abuse of and related concepts. It aims to promote diversity by fostering an language; the meaning of art; the ideal of a "simple life;" normalcy and appreciation and respect of differences especially in respect of race, madness. The class will ask such questions as what counts as literature, ethnicity, gender, and religious affiliation. what purpose it serves, what is the relationship between literature and ideology, and whether a text can be considered independently from Bachelor of Arts: Humanities what the author wanted to say in it. This course is a non-major General United States Cultures (US) Education Humanities course. It may be used to fulfill minor requirements General Education: Humanities (GH) in philosophy. This course may be used to fulfill an additional-course