Philosophy 202 (Fall 2021)

Readings in the Western Philosophical Tradition: Modern Philosophy

Professor Patrick Frierson (call me “Patrick”)

My email: frierspr@whitman.edu

Class Meets in Olin 192, Monday and Wednesday 1-2:20

Come see me!

I’m in my office (Olin East 194) and happy to meet with students on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9-10 am and Thursdays from noon-1 pm. We can talk about questions related to class, but you don’t need a specific reason to come, if you just want to talk philosophy. If you can’t make these times, send me an email and we can make an appointment for another time. I’m also happy to meet with students over zoom who prefer to meet in that format. I will hold zoom office hours Monday evenings from 9-10 PM at https://whitman.zoom.us/j/92189368747.

Accommodations: If you are a student who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Antonia Keithahn, Assistant Director of Academic Resources: Disability Support (Memorial 326, 509.527.5767, keithaam@whitman.edu) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Ms. Keithahn that you are eligible to receive an accommodation, I will provide it in as discreet a manner as possible. Moreover, all students should be aware that the Academic Resource Center provides free peer tutoring for many 100 and 200 level courses.  All tutors are students who have already completed the course, earned a B+ or better, and were recommended by their instructor.  If you feel you would benefit from utilizing this service, please visit the ARC webpage and submit a request.  You can also locate a schedule for drop in tutoring on the ARC website.

Required Texts:

Roger Ariew, Eric Watkins, eds., Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2019).  Page numbers in the timeline refer to the THIRD edition (2019) of this book, which is the edition we will use in this class.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Ed. E. Steinberg, Indianapolis: Hackett, ISBN: 978-0915145454

Sor Juana Iñez de la Cruz, Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Works, trans. M. Peden, Penguin Classics, ISBN: 978-0140447033.

Goals: With respect to content, this course focuses on central epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical arguments of three philosophers of the modern period (1600-1800). The philosophers on whom we will focus are Rene Descartes (1596-1650), David Hume (1711-1776), and Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz (1648-1695). We will do additional readings from and have presentations on other major European philosophers of the period, including Elizabeth of Bohemia, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Anne Conway, and Immanuel Kant.

Throughout our study of these philosophers, we will focus on five key philosophical problems:

(1) To what extent is it possible to have knowledge of anything?

(2) How should we philosophically address the (epistemological) problem of human diversity, that is, that people see the world in different (and incompatible) ways?

(3) What is the ultimate nature of all reality? (For example: Is there a God, and if so, what is God’s nature? And/or: What is the nature of causation? How does one thing cause changes in another?)

(4) What is the human being? (In particular: Are human beings free? and What is the connection between the mind and the body?)

(5) What is the good life for human beings? Relatedly, what is what is the nature and status of morality and moral claims?

With respect to skills, this course will help you develop as a philosopher in four key respects.

First and most importantly, you will learn to philosophize better. A philosopher pursues wisdom through careful reflection. In this course, we use modern philosophers to help our own philosophical reflection, philosophizing with them and offering philosophical critique of them. By the end of this course, you will learn how to follow through on philosophical insights in historical and systematic ways.

Second, we will read difficult texts and read them carefully. Reading (and the related skill of listening) to complex arguments expressed in unfamiliar terms will prepare you for engaging with those who hold viewpoints or forms of expression different form your own and thus for thriving in an increasingly diverse world. Because learning to read difficult texts for yourself is one of the goals of this course, you should not consult any internet resources in order to clarify the meaning of the primary texts we read in this class.

Third, you will learn both to explain the ideas of others and to articulate your own ideas orally and in writing. Everyone is expected to participate in class discussion in a respectful way, and one of the goals of this course is to help all students develop confident, articulate, respectful modes of oral communication. Everyone will also prepare at least one class presentations over the course of the semester and at least two papers, with opportunities to submit drafts of written work for feedback.

Finally, woven throughout the other goals, you will develop some basic knowledge of the history of philosophy and you will learn to consider and reconsider questions and problems as they are raised and transformed by a succession of thinkers.

This course is an opportunity to learn and improve, not primarily an opportunity to show how good you already are.

Assignments

	Readings (Except where noted, page numbers refer to the 2019 3^rd edition of Ariew and Watkins, Modern Philosophy)	Presentation Option(s)
Sept 1	Descartes, Meditation 1 (pp. 40-43)
Sept 6	Descartes, Meditations 1-2 and intro (pp. 35-47) Get started on the Descartes Reading Guide Discourse on the Method, Parts 1-2 (pp. 25-33)
Sept 8	Meditations 2-3 (43-54) Critiques of Med 2 (76-79a) Turn in Reading Guide in by 9am every Friday
Sept 13	Meditation 3-4 (47-58) (with Objections and Replies, pp. 70-75, 79-92)	Francis Bacon Marie de Gournay Montaigne
Sept. 15	Meditation 4 (54-58) I also strongly recommend that you get started on the reading for Sept. 22^nd, particularly Spinoza. Turn Reading Guide in by 9 am on Friday	Pascal Leibniz Voltaire
Sept. 20	· Meditation 5: God (58-61) · Anselm, Proslogium, chapter two, available here. Spinoza Ethics, Propositions 1-14 & Appendix (pp. 172-77, 188-92)	Spinoza Anne Conway Kant’s Philosophy of Religion
Sept. 22	· Meditation 5: Math (58-61) · Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (I.1-2; II.1, pp. 346-53) · Leibniz, New Essays, selection (pp. 463-466a) Turn Reading Guide in by 9 am on Friday	John Locke W. G. Leibniz Malebranche Arnauld Gassendi
Sept. 27	· Meditation 6: Proof of external world (61-8) · Berkeley, Principles (p. 487)	George Berkeley (Emily and Michael) Galileo Samuel Clarke
Sept. 29	Meditation 6: Mind and Body (61-8) · Correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth, pp. 93-99. · Also read the Synopsis of Meds II and VI (pp. 39, 40) and the related proof from the Discourse on the Method, available here (go to Part 4, the paragraph starting “In the next place, I attentively examined what I was”) Turn Reading Guide in by 9 am on Friday	Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia Margaret Cavendish French Cartesiennes (Anne del la Vigne, Marie Dupre, and Catherine Descartes)
Oct. 4	Read the attached pdf, a dissertation on Descartes written by Anton Wilhelm Amo. (Scroll down and click on view pdf to get a printable version.) · Also check out this podcast on Amo.	Anton Wilhelm Amo
Oct 6	Mind and Body Day: · Correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth, pp. 93-99. · Anton Amo, dissertation. · Hobbes, Leviathan, introduction and chapters 1, 2, and 5, pp. 120-125, 131-135. · Spinoza, Ethics, pp. 184, 192-200 (Part One, Prop. 28; Part Two, Definitions, Axioms, and Props 1-3, 7, 11-13). · Conway, Principles of Philosophy, pp. 154-64. · Margaret Cavendish, Philosophical Letters 30, 35-36, pp. 143-145, 148-149. · Malebranche pp. 248-251 (6^th proof and reply) Locke, Essay, pp. 389-90, 394-96, 423-24 (II.xxiii.1-5, 22-32; IV.iii.6). Turn Reading Guide in by 9 am on Friday	Anne Conway Hobbes  Malebranche Spinoza Cavendish Locke
Oct. 11	Part Three of Discourse on Method, available here. · Preface and Dedicatory Letter to The Principles of Philosophy, available here.	Machiavelli (Shawn) Guillaume du Vair Hugo Grotius
Oct. 13	Descartes’s ethics correspondence with Elizabeth and Passions of the Soul, selections. Turn your final and completed Reading Guide in by 9 am on Friday	Pierre Nicole Damaris Cudworth, aka Lady Masham
Oct. 18	Descartes Paper Due. Hume Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding §§1-2, [pp. 579-87] Also read Locke’s Essay, pp. 353-4, 357-9, 369-70 (Bk II, Chap. I §§1-8, 24-25; Chapters II, XI (entire))	Francis Bacon (Adam) Locke (Sophia)
Oct. 20	Hume, Understanding, §§1-7 [pp. 579-610]	Malebranche and/or Mary Shepherd and/or Robert Boyle
Oct. 25	Hume, Understanding, §6-8 [pp. 601-621] [Optional but incredibly interesting: Locke’s Essay, pp. 378-87 (II.xxi)]	Henry More or Ralph Cudworth
Oct. 27	Hume, Understanding, §9-12 (focus on §10) [pp. 621-646]	Samuel Pufendorf Emilie du Chatelet Mary Astell
Nov. 1	· Focus on Hume, Treatise, Part One, Chapter 4, §7, available here. · Review Hume, Understanding, §12 · Get started on the next reading, which will take a long time and be quite difficult.	Robert Boyle Isaac Newton or Thomas Reid (Nick)
Nov. 3	Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, selections from B-Preface, Introduction, Second Analogy, pp. 776-83, 830-832. For the first reading, focus expecially on the long paragraph that starts on p. 779 with “I would think…”. For the reading on pp. 830-32, start at “Second Analogy” and read to “solely and exclusively under this presupposition.”	Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy (Spencer) Thomas Reid
Nov. 8	Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix II and Chapters I-II.	Bernard Mandeville (Jeff) Thomas Hobbes Thomas Reid’s Moral Theory
Nov. 10	Hume, Morals, Chapters II - V.	Joseph Butler and/or Shaftesbury and/or Hutcheson Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory (Gabi and Hannah)
Nov 15	Hume, Morals, Chapters VI – IX	Thomas Reid Hutcheson Butler (Sam and Emily) Adam Smith
Nov. 17	Hume, Morals, Chapter IX Hume, “Of National Characters” (Don’t ignore footnotes!!) Optional: Mill, Utilitarianism, http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm. For Mill, read chapters 1, 2, and 4. (Chapters 3 and 5 are interesting and important, but you should consider these “optional”.)	J. S. Mill (Manon and Thalia)
	THANKSGIVING
Nov. 29	Sor Juana, Primero Sueño (entire) (For an audio recording of the entire poem in Spanish, click here.)	Thomas Aquinas (Joshua) Teresa of Avila (KeJuan) Rousseau
Dec. 1	Sor Juana, Primero Sueño (entire)	Hegel (Ben) Mary Astell Mary Wollstonecraft
Dec. 6	Sor Juana, Primero Sueño (entire)	Nietzsche (Lee) Kierkegaard
Dec. 8	Sor Juana, Primero Sueño (entire) Final Papers Due	Final Presentations
Dec 17	FINAL EXAM The final exam is at 2 PM on December 17^th. If you need to take the exam early, you must arrange this with me no later than November 29^th.	FINAL EXAM

Reading, Preparation, and Participation in Class: I expect you to come to class prepared, having read all of the material for the day, identified the key sentences in which the most important points are made and defended, worked through the central arguments of those sections, and prepared specific questions that you hope will be addressed in class. For the Descartes readings, you should complete the reading guide. For other readings, you should continue the same close reading that that guide facilitated. You are also expected to participate in class discussion in ways that are meaningful, respectful, and balance courage with humility. Preparation and participation will not count for any specific portion of your grade, but I will adjust final grades based on the quality of your contributions to our class discussions.

Turning in your work: For all written work that you do not do in class, you should email your work to me at frierspr@whitman.edu. Except for handwritten responses in the reading guide, which can be photographs, please turn in all work in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format. Save your file with your full name in the filename, along with some indication of the assignment. For the Reading Guide, also include the date. (So my first Reading Guide file would be “Patrick Frierson Reading Guide 9-10-21.pdf” and my Descartes paper would be “Patrick Frierson Descartes Paper.docx”. Please do not send googledocs. If you work on googledocs, download it as a .doc file and email it in that form to me.

Descartes Reading Guide: For the first main philosopher we will focus on (Rene Descartes), Here is a link to the Descartes Reading Guide. This guide provides a way for you to actively read the material on your own time in preparation for our synchronous class meetings. My hope is that starting class with this reading guide will establish good patterns of close reading and rereading that you can extend into your readings of Hume, Sor Juana, and others. You should email me your Reading Guide every week no later than 9am on Friday. (If you print and handwrite responses, which I recommend, you can send me pictures.) I will not grade the guide, but I will check to see that you are completing it in good faith. If you have specific parts of the guide you want me to pay attention to, please mention that in your email and highlight the relevant sections. Anyone who stays actively engaged with the reading guide in a timely way will get full credit for this assignment. Failing to complete the guide at all will result in a zero. Turning it in late will result in a lower grade for the assignment (as low as a D, and no higher than a B, depending on how late it is).

Papers. Over the course of the semester, you will write at least three papers papers, one short paper on Descartes, one paper along with your presentation(s), and one longer paper that will engage with several different philosophers, including Sor Juana. For more on each of this papers, click the relevant links in the preceding sentence. I will give your papers a “score” based on my grading criteria, available here. (If you prefer a letter grade, simply ask.)

Presentations. Over the course of the semester, each of you will give at least one presentation on a 16^th-19^th-century philosopher other than Descartes, Hume, and Sor Juana. These presentations can be done in groups of up to three, presented either synchronously or asynchronously, and can take any of a variety of formats. The timeline below has various suggestions of philosophers you might present on along with ideal dates by which those presentations should be given/posted. Presentations in bold are particularly recommended. Those who choose to complete two presentations will have only the higher of the two scores retained, and if both presentations receive a 6 or higher, there will be an additional grade boost for having done two. More details on the presentations and associated papers can be found here.

Final Exam. There will be a final exam for this course during the regular final exam period. Hume will be a significant part of this final exam. Over Thanksgiving Break, you will be expected to generate possible questions for the exam, and we will spend at least part of the first week after break discussing what makes for a good philosophical exam question and narrowing our list of questions down. The final will consist of four questions, of which you must answer two, and at least three of these four questions will be taken from those we generate together as a class.

Your final grade will be broken down as follows: Reading Guide (10%), Descartes Paper (10%), Presentation and Presentation Paper (25%), Final Paper (25%), Final Exam (25%), plus 5% which will come from whichever grade over the course of the semester is highest (excluding the Reading Guide), and then any adjustments for your contributions to class discussion.