Philosophy (PHIL) 1 Encheiridion, on which the Living a Good Life course is partly based. No previous knowledge of Greek (classical or modern) is necessary. PHILOSOPHY (PHIL) Offering: Host PHIL111 Introduction to Critical Philosophy of Race Grading: Cr/U This first-year seminar (FYS) course will examine contemporary figures in the Credits: 0.25 emerging field of critical philosophy of race. We will attempt to examine what Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL contributions (if any) the critical philosophy of race has provided not only to Identical With: CGST225 philosophy as a discipline but also to more traditional and established modes Prereq: None of thinking race and racism. We will do so by exploring issues such as the PHIL154 What Is Rationality? differences between critical philosophy of race and critical race theory, as well as What does it mean to be rational? Although this question has traditionally been the historical role of race and racism in philosophical thinking, and by attending the province of philosophy, reference to reason and rationality is also pervasive to the major debates currently held in this emerging tradition. in the modern social and behavioral sciences. Humans are rational creatures--or, Offering: Host if they are not in practice, they should be. This course takes an expansive view of Grading: A-F rationality and its history, tracing how the concept has changed over time, and Credits: 1.00 critically examining its significance in the sciences and broader culture today. Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL From the role of reason in human flourishing and civic discourse in the ancient Identical With: AFAM111 world, to early modern conceptions of logic as "the art of thinking," to Cold War Prereq: None attempts to build machines that might reason more reliably than frail humans, PHIL112 Virtue and Vice in History, Literature, and Philosophy this exploration of reasoning and rationality explores several interlocking Beginning with Confucius and Aristotle and reading our way through significant themes: the relationship between reason and other facets of the mind, especially texts of Christianity, humanism, postmodernism, and critical race theory, we will emotion; conceptions of reason as an evaluative vs. a calculating faculty; the role explore the ethics, power, and politics intersecting in ideas of virtue of reason in human judgment; the relationship between rationality and rules; the Offering: Crosslisting relationship between choosing rationally and choosing ethically; and the fraught Grading: OPT history of attempts to formulate universally valid principles of rationality. Credits: 1.00 Offering: Crosslisting Gen Ed Area: HA-COL Grading: A-F Identical With: COL228, CHUM228, HIST140 Credits: 1.00 Prereq: None Gen Ed Area: SBS-HIST Identical With: HIST283, SISP283 PHIL118 Reproduction in the 21st Century Prereq: None This course will cover basic human reproductive biology, new and future reproductive and contraceptive technologies, and the ethics raised by PHIL160 Philosophy and the Movies: The Past on Film reproductive issues. This course examines how films represent the past and how they can help us Offering: Crosslisting understand crucial questions in the philosophy of history. We begin with three Grading: A-F weeks on documentary cinema. How do documentary films achieve "the reality Credits: 1.00 effect"? How has the contemporary documentary's use of reenactment changed Gen Ed Area: NSM-BIOL our expectations of nonfiction film? Much of the course is devoted to classic Identical With: BIOL118, FGSS118, SISP118 narrative films that help us critically engage questions about the depiction of the Prereq: None past. We think about those films in relation to texts in this history of philosophy and contemporary film theory. PHIL151 Living a Good Life: Chinese Lab (CLAC.25) Offering: Crosslisting This optional "lab" class is intended for students (1) who have taken or are Grading: OPT currently taking PHIL 210: Living a Good Life; and (2) who have little or no Credits: 1.00 exposure to classical Chinese. Each weekly session will introduce students to Gen Ed Area: HA-FILM aspects of the classical Chinese language--the written language of pre-20th- Identical With: FILM360, HIST129 century China. Students will be able to read (in Chinese) and discuss (in English) Prereq: None key passages from the Confucian classics on which the Living a Good Life courses is partly based. No previous knowledge of Chinese (classical or modern) is PHIL201 Philosophical Classics I: Ancient Western Philosophy necessary. This course provides an overview of the development of Ancient Greek and Offering: Host Roman philosophy, from its inception in the 6th century BCE through to Socrates, Grading: Cr/U Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. In exploring this material, we will Credits: 0.25 touch on all or nearly all of the central concerns of the Western philosophical Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL tradition: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, aesthetics, religion, and Identical With: CGST224 logic. Our focus in class will be on the close analysis of primary texts. Students Prereq: None must be willing to engage with readings that are fascinating but at the same time dense, difficult, and perplexing. The course requires no prior experience PHIL152 Living a Good Life: Greek Lab (CLAC.25) in philosophy and should be of equal interest to students who are pursuing or This optional "lab" class is intended for students (1) who have taken or are intend to pursue other majors. currently taking Phil 210: Living a Good Life; and (2) who have little or no Offering: Host exposure to Classical Greek. Each weekly session will introduce students to Grading: OPT aspects of Attic Greek--the written language of most of the Greek texts we will Credits: 1.00 be studying this semester. Students will be able to read (in Greek) and discuss Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL (in English) key passages from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Epictetus' Identical With: COL359, CCIV217 2 Philosophy (PHIL) Prereq: None PHIL210 Living a Good Life PHIL202 Philosophical Classics II: Early Modern Philosophy from Descartes For many philosophers, Eastern and Western, philosophy has been more than an Through Kant effort to answer fundamental theoretical questions. It has been an activity aimed Can we ever hope to attain certain knowledge of the external world? Can we at changing one's orientation to the world and, thus, how one lives one's life. We know ourselves? How is our mind related to our body? Are our senses more will explore Chinese, Greco-Roman, and contemporary versions of the idea that reliable than our intellect? Or is it the other way round? Can we have science philosophy should be seen as a way of living a good life. How does philosophical without a belief in God? These are some of the questions that excited the reasoning interact with lived practice? How do views about metaphysics or philosophical imagination of the major intellectual figures of the early modern psychology lead to ethical commitments? Despite their differences, Confucians, period, an era of unparalleled collaboration between science and philosophy. Daoists, Aristotelians, and Stoics all agreed that philosophy should aim at making In this course we will examine how the Scientific Revolution encouraged us better people. Can such an idea still get traction in today's world? philosophers toward radical innovation in epistemology and philosophy of mind, This course will typically have a large-group lecture each Monday, smaller laying the foundations for our own modern conceptions of natural law, scientific breakout sections with the instructors on Wednesdays in which the texts and explanation, consciousness and self-consciousness, knowledge and belief. We ideas will be discussed, supplemented by smaller weekly student-led dialogue will be reading, analyzing, and arguing with some of the most influential works sessions on Fridays. Please note that the locations for the different sections in the history of Western philosophy, including Descartes' MEDITATIONS, Locke's of this course are NOT all listed below. For details of the locations of each ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, Hume's ENQUIRY CONCERNING class session and breakout section, please see the course website: https:// HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, and Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. livingagoodlife.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/. Offering: Host Grading: OPT Students who would like to explore the ancient Chinese and Greek texts on Credits: 1.00 which the course draws are encouraged to enroll in either of two, optional Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL 0.25-credit classes that are associated with our course: PHIL151 Living a Good Identical With: COL360 Life: Chinese Lab; and PHIL152 Living a Good Life: Greek Lab. These courses will Prereq: None expose students with no prior background to the Classical Chinese and Greek PHIL204 Philosophical Classics IV: 20th-Century Analytic Philosophy languages. See their separate entries in WesMaps for more information. This course will study selected writings by the antispeculative, logic- and Offering: Host language-oriented thinkers who have shaped 20th-century Anglo-American Grading: Cr/U philosophy--including Peirce, Frege, Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, Credits: 1.00 Ryle, and Austin. Gen Ed Area: SBS-PHIL Offering: Host Identical With: CEAS253, COL210 Grading: OPT Prereq: None Credits: 1.00 PHIL211 Critical Philosophy of Race Gen Ed Area: HA-PHIL This course will examine contemporary figures in the emerging field of critical