<p> McAnulty College and the Graduate School of Liberal Arts Basic Philosophical Questions Spring 2017 Tuesday and Thursday: 3:05- 4:20 UCOR 132-22</p><p>Instructor: Tristana Martin Rubio Email: [email protected] Office: College Hall 352 Office Hours: Tuesday 4:20-6:20 pm, or by appointment</p><p>Course Description What constitutes the “self”? Each of us has a basic sense of ourselves as a self. This basic sense of ourselves seems crucially obvious to us: I am myself. I am me. And yet, it is precisely not obvious what this “self” is. This course is fundamentally about what it is and what it is like to be a self. We will read together some important texts and work on the philosophical sense of self. To set the course in motion we shall begin with Plato’s Phaedo and on the nature of the soul found in that text. We will later look to early modern philosophers René Descartes and David Hume to pursue basic questions of the self and identity. The second half of the course turns to G.W.F. Hegel, Frantz Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, and Gloria Anzaldúa to discover the role others play in shaping selfhood, paying particular attention to the social constitution of the self and the role of the body in it.</p><p>Course Outcomes The course is organized to achieve two outcomes: (i) to introduce and acquaint students with the philosophical sense of the self in the Western tradition; (ii) to present students with a sense of the diversity of philosophical approaches to the self. </p><p>Learning Outcomes The course is organized around two student-centered goals: (i) to build up student capacities in verbal and written expression and intellectual clarity and rigor; (ii) to learn the habit of reflecting critically not only on the texts but also on one’s own life.</p><p>Required Texts There is one required text for this course: René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Donald A. Cress (Hackett Publishing Co., 1993). ISBN 0872201929 </p><p>All other assigned texts are available on Blackboard.</p>