Philosophy 202 (Fall 2022)
Readings in the Western Philosophical
Tradition: Modern Philosophy
Professor Patrick Frierson (call me “Patrick”)
My email: frierspr@whitman.edu
Class Meets in Olin 129, Tuesday and Thursday 1-2:20
Come see me!
I’m
in my office (Olin East 193) and happy to meet with students on Monday and Wednesdays from 9-11am. We can talk about questions related to class,
but you don’t need a specific reason to come.
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 generally hang out in zoom office
hours Monday evenings from 9-10 PM at https://whitman.zoom.us/j/92189368747, but if you want to be sure I’m going
to be there, shoot me an email before dropping in.
Course Overview: We will start the semester with Descartes’s Meditations, a text that for the past
couple of hundred years has been considered a (and some would even say “the”)
canonical text in philosophy. After our
initial reading of Descartes, we will study the philosophers of this period
thematically, focusing on three philosophical themes. Those themes will be chosen by you (with help from our textbook editors
and from me). Over the course of the
semester, you’ll read and discuss lots of great philosophy, work in a small
group to organize the thematic unit you choose, write three papers, give two
presentations, and (if you choose) take an optional final exam.
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. Likewise, in accordance with the College’s Religious Accommodations Policy, I will provide reasonable accommodations for students who have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments, or required attendance in class because of religious observances. Please review the course schedule at the beginning of the semester to determine any such potential conflicts and give me written notice (email is acceptable) by the end of the second week of class about your need for religious accommodations. If you believe that I have failed to abide by these policies, you may contact my department chair Michelle Jenkins or file a grievance in accordance with Whitman’s Grievance Policy.
Required Text:
Lisa Shapiro and Marcy
Lascano, eds. Early
Modern Philosophy: An Anthology, Broadview Press: 2022.
Goals: If you put forth effort in this course, by the end
of the semester you should:
·
have a basic understanding of Descartes’s Meditations and his philosophy as a
whole
·
be familiar with ideas of a wide range of modern European
philosophers on a variety of topics
·
be able to read historical philosophers and use their ideas
to stimulate your own philosophical insights
·
have tools to engage with difference and diversity, even
when you find it disorienting, disruptive to your preconceived ideas, and hard
to understand
·
be able to explain your ideas both orally and in writing
·
be able to work as part of a team to develop materials worth
sharing with others
This course is an opportunity to learn and improve, not
primarily an opportunity to show how good you already are.
Assignments
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. Because the goals
for this class include learning how to read challenging texts and engage with
diversity, I want you to struggle with these texts on your own. For that reason, you should not consult the internet for help with any of the primary
sources we read in this class, with the exception of those about which you
give a presentation or help design a class module.
For
the Descartes readings, you should complete the reading guide; though I will
not collect this or grade it, I may ask you to share your answer to questions
in the guide. For other readings, you
should continue the same close reading that that guide facilitated.
You
are 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. Participation does
not count for any particular percentage of your class grade, but based on
participation, I may alter your final grade upwards by as much as ½ letter grade
(e.g. from B to B+) and downwards by as much as a full grade point (e.g. from
B+ to C+).
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. Please turn in all work in .doc or .docx
format. Save your file with your full
name in the filename, along with some indication of the assignment. Please do not send googledocs. If you work on googledocs,
download it as a .doc file and email it in that form to me.
Papers. Over the course of the semester, you
will write two papers.
1. Everyone must write a paper on Descartes (due 5
PM on Wednesday, September 21st, 10% of final course grade)
2. Everyone must write a paper on a philosophical
topic different from the theme that you lead for the class as a whole. This can be a topic related to another
group’s theme, or any other philosophical topic that you choose. (These papers will be written in stages over
the course of the semester. Each
component of the paper must be turned in on time, and the first complete draft
will be due on November 15th, with a mandatory revision due on the
last day of class, 25% of final course grade).
For more on each of
this papers, click the relevant links.
Note, too, the “turning in your work” submission guidelines. I will give your papers a “score” based on my
grading
criteria, available here. (If you prefer a letter grade, simply
ask.) Any paper is revisable until the
last day of class, and your grade will be the average of your initial grade and
your final revision.
Thematic Unit
Leadership. By the third day of classes, you will be
assigned to a group that will, together, develop a module for the class to
explore a philosophical theme through a set of readings by historical
philosophers. Each module will consist
of 5 class sessions during which the entire class will do primary source
readings from at least 3 different philosophers, and together with those
philosophers, we will address important questions surrounding a philosophical
theme. Your group will probably have 6-7
people in it, and you will need to work together to plan for and organize the
classes. I have reserved our class
period on September 15th for you to work on your plan together as a
group and to ask me questions as a group about the plans. I will devote at least 20 minutes to each
group during that class period. In
addition, I encourage you to meet with me during office hours (see my office
hours above).
As part of exercising leadership
over a unit of the course, you and your group will do the following:
1. Submit a Philosophical Theme Plan, no later than 1PM on September
15th. See the hyperlink for
details about what should go into this plan.
2. Submit Philosopher’s Briefs for each philosopher associated with that
theme, identifying (a) the relevant readings from the philosopher, (b) the main
questions they discuss related to the theme, and (c) at least two important
arguments they make related to the theme.
You should end each brief with a short explanation of why you are or are
not assigning readings from this philosopher to the class. (These briefs will be submitted by the team
member or members responsible for those philosophers. Each philosopher should have one brief and
will get one score.) Each student in the
class must submit at least one Philosopher’s Brief, and all Briefs are due no
later than 1 PM on September 15th. Students who complete more than one brief
will be graded with a weighted average of their brief scores (with the better
score counting for twice as much as the others).
3. Give a short opening presentation to the class laying out the theme.
4. Give a short presentation on each major philosopher from whom we do
primary source readings. (This should be
as short as possible.) Each student must
participate in at least one presentation (either on a philosopher or laying out
the theme). Students who complete more
than one presentation will be graded with a weighted average of their
presentation scores (with the better score counting for twice as much as the
others).
5. Prepare discussion questions and/or exercises for each day of class. You will be responsible for getting our
discussion started, but you will not need to “lead” discussion for the
day. I encourage those involved in
getting discussion questions ready to meet with me during my office hours
before the class that you lead.
6. Submit a Group Assessment
within 7 days of the last day that your group is leading class on the
theme. Every student needs to write
their own Group Assessment. You cannot pass the group assignment without
submitting a group assessment. (While no set percentage of your grade is
based on how you are assessed by your peers, I may modify students’ individual
grades considerably based on group assessments.)
7. Be creative! Think of things that have worked well
in discussions in other classes. Bring
in material that can help make the texts more engaging for your
classmates. And so on. This is your chance to make this class your
own.
The philosophical
theme plan should be submitted by the group as a whole. The group assessment should be submitted by
each individual member of the group. The
presentations and discussion-leading can be done by any subset of the
leadership group.
Celebrations of
Learning. At the end of each thematic unit, you will
have a short celebration of knowledge (aka a “quiz” or “exam”). The specific format of this celebration will
be determined by the students who are leading that thematic unity. It can be open- or closed-book, in class (on
the last day of the unit) or take-home, timed or untimed, etc. You will know the format of the exam on the
first (or at the latest, the second) day of the unit.
Presentations. You will probably give a presentation
as part of your thematic unit leadership.
In addition, during the last two weeks of the semester (after
Thanksgiving), each of you will give a short presentation (8-12 minutes) on a
modern “European” philosopher other than Descartes. The presentation should clearly and concisely
lay out what is most important about the philosopher you discuss, including not
only the positions they hold but the most important arguments they offer for
those positions. You should very briefly discuss the life of the
philosopher and something about their influences and impact. The primary purpose of the presentation
should be to convince your classmates and me that this philosopher either should
or should not be included in future courses on modern European philosophy at
Whitman. You may use powerpoint
or other supplementary media, but you do not have to.
Your final grade will be broken down as
follows: Descartes Paper (10%);
Philosophical Topic Paper (30%); Thematic Unit Leadership (30%, divided evenly
between your overall group grade, your presentation grade, and your
philosopher’s briefs grade); Canon Expansion Presentation (15%); Thematic Unit
Celebrations of Learning (15%); Optional
Final Exam (up to 20%).
Course Timeline
|
|
Reading to complete
before class |
Assignments to
complete before class |
What
to expect in class |
|
Aug. 30 |
Descartes, Meditation 1 (pp. 97b-100a) |
Get yourself excited for the semester! |
-- Cartesian meditation -- Cartesian skepticism -- Discussion of the syllabus and course |
|
Sept 1 |
Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts 1-2 and Meditations 1-2 (pp. 87-104a) |
Get started on the Descartes Reading Guide (You should finish the rereading section
before we cover the material in class.) Look at the list of themes on pp.
xiii-xxxii of your book. Email me
three themes (ideally in rank order) that look especially interesting to you. |
-- Cartesian skepticism continued -- Existence of self -- Nature of self |
|
Sept. 6 |
Meditations 2-4 (100-116a) |
-- Argument(s) for the existence of God -- Significance of God’s existence -- Reassessing skeptical doubts -- Organizing into groups based on themes |
|
|
Sept. 8 |
Meditations 5-6 (116b-127) Get started on your philosophical
theme readings |
Submit Part One of
your Philosophical Theme Plan. |
-- Proof for the existence of an external world -- Relationship between mind and body -- Status of skeptical doubts by the end of the Meditations -- Divide up theme readings in groups |
|
Sept. 13 |
Philosophical Theme Readings… Your group, as a whole, needs to read
all of the readings (both
“thematically central” and “thematically relevant”). You should divide these up so that each
central reading gets at least two people looking it over, and at least one
reading it carefully. |
Prepare a draft of your five-class-session plan. |
Philosophical Theme Group work. In groups, you should finalize your
philosophical theme plan. |
|
Sept. 15 |
Descartes-Elizabeth Correspondence
(170-190) |
Submit your complete Philosophical Theme Plan today! |
-- Descartes and Elizabeth on mind and body -- Descartes and Elizabeth on ethics -- Descartes’s moral theory as expressed in his
correspondence |
|
Sept. 20 |
Readings are all optional today, but
I recommend choosing one or two and reading them in preparation for
class. I’ll upload the readings for
this day once we finalize the theme. Now that we’ve settled on Knowledge
from Experience (and innate ideas)…we’ll look at the following: 1. Descartes’s Meditations (pp.116-7, 123 (just a-b from “However, perhaps they…
through the next paragraph), 124b-127) 2. Descartes to
Elizabeth, p. 171 (“First…). 3. Locke, pp. 295-300, 302b-303. 4. Leibniz, New Essays, handout. 5. Sor Juana, p. 579 (optionally also 573-575). 6. Du Chatelet, pp. 718-19, 730 (§§53,56), 731 (§58). 7. Hume, pp. 782-784a. 8. Hume, pp. 785b-791. 9. Kant, pp. 938b-940, 943. |
Your Descartes papers are due no later than 5 PM on Wednesday, September 21st. They should be emailed to me in accordance
with my paper submission requirements (see “turning in your work” above). |
Philosophical Mini-Theme. We can settle on something different if we
want, but our default will be a “mind-body day”. You’ll each take a philosopher and role
play them as we debate the relationship between mind and body and finally solve
this vexing philosophical problem. |
|
Sept. 22 |
Love, Day #1 Sor Juana, pp. 577-581 |
You must submit to
me the topic for your paper
on a philosophical topic. |
|
|
Sept. 27 |
Love, Day #2: Spinoza, pp. 413-423, 429-430 (general
definition of affects), 452 (Props 18, 19, 20), 455 (Prop 33), and 456 (Prop
36) |
|
|
|
Sept. 29 |
Love Day #3: Du Châtelet, pp. 749-58. |
You must submit to
me three possible questions for your paper on a philosophical
topic. |
|
|
Oct. 4 |
Love Day #4: Suchon,
pp. 280-289. |
|
|
|
Oct. 6 – Break |
|
|
|
|
Oct. 11 |
Love Day #5: De Scudéry, pp. 139-146. |
Love Unit Celebration: Take Home, Open Book Exam. This will be due by midnight on Sunday, October 16th, emailed to me. |
|
|
Oct. 13 |
Philosophy of Mind Day #1: Descartes
and Elizabeth, pp. 121-123 and 170-177; Amo, based on this podcast
(optional reading pp. 706-726) |
Send at least 600 words addressing the question you will
answer in your paper on
a philosophical topic. Note that the Celebration of Learning for the Love unit is
due by midnight on Sunday, October 16. |
|
|
Oct. 18 |
Philosophy of Mind Day #2: Conway, pp. 263/264 (ch.ix #2), pg. 259-261, 248-251; Spinoza, starting on p. 388, Part 2: all
definitions, explanations, and axioms, and Propositions 1-5, 7-14. |
Note that the Celebration of Learning for the Love unit is
due by midnight on Sunday, October 16. |
|
|
Oct. 20 |
Philosophy of Mind Day #3: Malebranche,
pp. 481, 487-492,
498-501; Leibniz, pp. 508-531 (§I-III, V-X, XII, XIV, XV, XXIII - XXIX, XXXII-XXIV). |
|
|
|
Oct. 25 |
Philosophy of Mind Day #4: Leibniz, pp. 508-531 (§I-III, V-X, XII, XIV, XV, XXIII - XXIX, XXXII-XXIV) Bayle, Rorarius, pp. 5-7; Masham-Leibniz
Correspondence, pp. 591-604 |
|
|
|
Oct. 27 |
Philosophy of Mind Day #5: Summary
and Review and Celebration! |
Send at least 600 words in which you bring at least two
modern philosophers into conversation with your emerging ideas for your paper on a philosophical
topic. |
|
|
Nov. 1 |
Virtue and Vice, Day #1: David Hume, An
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (pp. 828b-847a). |
|
|
|
Nov. 3 |
Virtue and Vice, Day #2: David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (skim pp. 847a-854a) Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments (pp. 926-931; footnote from
pg. 56 of The Theory of Moral Sentiments). |
Email me a provisional thesis for your paper on a philosophical
topic |
|
|
Nov. 8 |
Virtue and Vice, Day #3: J.J.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins and the Foundations of
Inequality among Men (pp.875-886a (First Part); optional: pp. 886-901
(especially pp. 886-892)) Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the
Nature and Conduct of the Passions (pp. 694-698). |
|
|
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Nov. 10 |
Virtue and Vice, Day #4: Michel de Montaigne, Of Cannibals (pp. 2-10). Bernard Mandeville, “The Grumbling
Hive; or, Knaves Turn’d Honest” (poem only) (pp.
636-641). |
|
|
|
Nov. 15 |
Virtue and Vice, Day #5: Immanuel
Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (skim pp. 1-8,
focusing on p.6’s definition of the categorical imperative; read closely the
“Second Section,” pp. 8-22). |
Email me, in the proper format, a full draft of your paper on a philosophical
topic. |
|
|
Nov. 17 |
Review/Catch-up |
Before class,
email me, in the proper format, a full draft of your paper on a philosophical
topic. You should bring a copy of
your paper to class. |
Papers Workshop |
|
Thanksgiving Break |
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|
|
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Nov. 29 |
Class
Presentations, reading TBD by presenters |
|
Class Presentations |
|
Dec. 1 |
Class
Presentations, reading TBD by presenters |
|
Class Presentations |
|
Dec. 6 |
Class
Presentations, reading TBD by presenters |
|
Class Presentations |
|
Dec. 8 |
Class
Presentations, reading TBD by presenters |
Email me, in the proper format, the final draft of your paper on a philosophical
topic. |
Class Presentations |
|
Dec. ?? |
Final Exam |
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