Philosophy
202 (Fall 2026)
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
To
skip ahead to the course timeline, click here.
I’m in my office
(Olin East 193) and happy to meet with students on Wednesdays from 10-11am and Thursdays from 2:30-3:30, or by appointment. 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. Set up an appointment and we can meet at https://whitman.zoom.us/j/92189368747.
(I’ll generally save Monday evenings from 9-10pm for zoom, so that’s a
good slot to schedule, but I can make other times available.)
This course provides an opportunity for
philosophical reflection, argument, dialogue, and discussion through engagement
with key works by some of the most creative and thoughtful philosophers during
one of the most creative and thoughtful (even if also fraught and contested)
periods in the history of European thought.
We will start the semester with a deep
dive into a philosopher that we will choose on the first day. Every year (including this one), students in
this class (Philosophy 202) choose which text the following year’s class will
start with, and last year, they were divided about who to choose, so we will
read short selections from various philosophers, and from your peers’ arguments
in favor of those philosophers, and decide who to start the class with.
After our initial deep dive, 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 one or two
papers, give at least two presentations, and take a final exam.
The purpose of this class is to help you—the student and person that you actually are—to learn and grow through engagement with the history of philosophy and through dialogue and conversation with your peers. To that end, if any of the particular requirements of this course do not meet you where you are, I am happy to work with you to develop alternatives that will help you learn and grow. I am also available in office hours (see above) and the college provides additional resources to help you thrive. For my formal statements on accommodations for documented disabilities or religious accommodations, click here.
Lisa
Shapiro and Marcy Lascano, eds. Early
Modern Philosophy: An Anthology, Broadview Press: 2022. You will need a physical copy of this book so
that you can consult it in class without your computer. The book is available on Amazon for $76 and
in used version for $40+. If these costs
are onerous, please let me know and I will work with you to get you a copy of
the book. Penrose Library also has three
copies of the book, which are designed for students who honestly cannot afford
to purchase it.
…Are Available Here. I encourage all students to take a
look at these supplementary texts. In some
cases (for some themes), I will require groups to consult one or more of these
texts. If you choose to use one or more
of these texts for your unit, I will make hard copies available for the class
(within reason).
If
you put forth effort in this course, by the end of the semester you should be
able to do the following:
(For
a more detailed list of objectives under each of these main categories, click here.)
1. Take interest in philosophical
questions and follow through on that interest through reflection, conversation,
and reading a succession of historical philosophers.
2. Approach different points of view from
a stance of humble self-confidence in your own ability to think, decide,
listen, and communicate.
3. Investigate philosophical issues that matter
to you with rational rigor, including self-criticism.
4. Build a philosophical community and
work together with others on common projects with patience, respect, diligence,
empathy, and understanding.
5. Engage others in philosophical
discussion, including leading discussion on topics and figures of interest to
you.
(For
a more detailed list of objectives under each of these main categories, click here.)
This course is an opportunity to learn and improve, not
primarily an opportunity to show how good you already are.
You are responsible for the work that you do in this class. I expect you to turn in work that reflects your own thinking and writing, and I (and your classmates) will hold you responsible for what you say, write, and do. At the same time, thinking and learning are social processes, facilitated by conversation and dialogue and by tools that can help us think for ourselves. I encourage you to use our class discussions and your classmates and friends as conversation partners who can help you think about the subjects we are discussing. Because this class is a community of inquiry together, we will spend some time during the first week of class deciding together how much and what kind of technological assistance is admissible for the work you do in this class. In particular, LLM-based “artificial intelligence” can simulate many of the tasks that are described in “assignments” below. I want you to do the best job you can on those assignments, where “best” includes both articulating thoughts of your own and explaining, expressing, and defending those thoughts as well as possible. We will discuss together what this means for the use of AI on those assignments. (Note that copyrighted material cannot be uploaded to an LLM without the author’s permission, and everything written by your peers or professor is copyrighted material. This sets some limits on permissible AI use.) Once we draft a policy, I will post it here.
Regular, active attendance and participation are essential to the integrity of the class and a necessary expression
of respect for your professor and classmates, who put significant work into
designing this class. You should
attend every class, whether or not you have fully prepared for it. That said, I expect you to come to class
prepared, having read 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.
You are expected to participate in
class discussion in ways that are meaningful, respectful, and that 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. Students who miss more than seven classes
will fail the class.
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. (Thus my exegetical paper would be called
“Patrick Frierson Exegetical Paper.docx”.
Please do not send googledocs. If you work on googledocs,
download your work as a .docx file and email it in that form to me.
Over the course of the semester, you
will write at least one paper, with the option to write a second.
1. Everyone must write a
philosophically interesting exegetical
paper (due 5 PM on Friday, September 25th).
2. Everyone may 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 the final revision due on the
last day of class. The paper can be
worth up to 20% of your final course grade, replacing other work on which you
did less well.)
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.
·
You will give a lesson as part of your thematic unit
leadership (see above).
·
In addition, during the last two weeks of the semester
(after Thanksgiving), each of you will give a short lesson (8-12 minutes) on a
modern “European” philosopher other than the one we focused on at the start of
the semester. The lesson 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 lesson 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.
The most significant component of this
class is the group work you will do that will produce a unit of the course for
your classmates. 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; together with those
philosophers, we will address important questions surrounding a philosophical
theme. Your group will probably have 4-6
people in it, and you will need to work together to plan for and organize the
classes. I have reserved one full class
period (see below) 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
21st. See the hyperlink for
details about what should go into this plan, along with earlier deadline for
different parts of the 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 at
the same time as the theme plan.
Students who complete more than one brief will be graded with a weighted
average of their brief scores (with the best score(s) counting for twice as
much as the others).
3. On the first day of your theme, 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(s) 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. You should plan to use 20-30
minutes of class time for your presentation and discussion questions. I encourage those involved in getting discussion
questions ready to meet with me during my office hours prior to leading
class. If you have an idea for class
that will require an entire class period, please let me know that ahead of
time.
6. A Group Assessment that will be
part of your Community Contribution Log for this Unit. You cannot receive a grade for your
thematic unit leadership if you do not submit this group assessment!)
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.
At the end of each thematic unit, you will
tell the story of Modern European philosophy, based on what you have read
(cumulatively) in the course up to that point.
You may use whatever genre you choose in order to tell this story (an
encyclopedia entry, play, tweetstorm, concept map, podcast, dance, song,
etc.) The point of the narrative is to
tell a coherent (more or less) story about how the figures we have read fit
into an overall intellectual tradition.
If you find this increasingly difficult as we add new themes, that is perfectly
natural. It should be relatively easy to
tell a narrative that weaves our first text together with the topic of the
first unit. Incorporating each
successive unit will be increasingly difficult. Roll with that difficulty. Moreover, feel free to borrow from what you
have already done as you do successive narratives, but don’t let your initial
narrative trap you into a story…let your narrative(s) evolve as you read more
philosophy. The last of these new
narratives will be due at the end of the third unit, but you will also be asked
to write a narrative in your final exam, based in part on what you learn from
the presentations at the end of the semester.
As mentioned above (in my objectives),
one of my goals in this class is for you to learn some of the distinctive ways
you can help to build a philosophical community. For that purpose, over the course of the semester,
you are to find ways to make our learning community more effective. This can
mean a lot of things. You might do things to support, facilitate, deepen, or
refine others' understanding of the course content. Alternatively, you could
help make people feel welcome, engaged, and excited to be in and participate in
the course. Here are some
(non-exhaustive!) ways that you can contribute to the class community:
There are many other ways to engage
with our community, too! I’m interested in your creative ideas. Think about what you like doing, what you are
good at, what you want to share with others.
At several points over the course of
the semester, you will submit a short log of your contributions to the learning
community of this course. These logs
should be submited in accordance with my “Turning in
your work:” guidelines above, and they at 9am on
the day following each major unit of the course (see deadlines in Course Timeline below.)
Each
submission of your Community Contribution Log must include the following
elements:
There will be a
closed book, blue book final exam for this course during the regular final exam
period. Students may consult a single
page of notes that they bring to the exam.
The Final Exam will have three parts.
Part One will consist of quotation identification and analysis, where
you will be given four short quotations and asked to identify the authors of
two of them, explain your answer to each, and briefly state the relation of
each quotation to the rest of the author’s work. (These quotations will include passages
discussed in canon expansion presentations from the last two weeks of the
semester.) Part Two will have four essay
questions which will relate to the themes and figures we covered this
semester. You will be expected to answer
two of those questions. (We will
generate at least six questions together in class during the last two weeks of
class, and I will choose at least three questions for the final from the list
we generate together.) Part Three will consist of a single
question: “Which philosopher should definitely be included in this course next
year? Why? (If your answer is not Sor Juana, be sure to
explain why the philosopher you chose is more important to include than Sor
Juana. If your answer is Sor Juana, be
sure to show why she is more important than at least three other very important
philosophers.” Note that the final exam
will cover all of the material we cover in class, including students’ final
presentations.
Your final grade will be broken down as
follows: Exegetical Paper (10%); Thematic Unit Leadership (30%, divided between your overall group
grade, your presentation grade, and your philosopher’s briefs grade); Canon
Expansion Lesson (10%); New Narratives (15%); Community Contribution Log (10%); Final Exam (25%).
In addition, there is an optional Philosophical
Topic Paper, which can be worth up to 20% of your final grade, taking the
place of other areas where you did not do as well.
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Reading to complete before class |
Assignments to complete before class |
Presenters |
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Sept. 2 |
Selections from various philosophers
(and from student exams) |
Get
yourself excited for the semester! |
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Sept. 7 |
Sor Juana, “Let us Pretend that I am
Happy,” pp. 573-575 |
Before class, you need to read at
least one of the philosophers you’ll read for your theme. |
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Sept. 9 |
Sor Juana, Response to Sor Filotea,
pp. 576-582 |
Before
class, you need to read at least one of the philosophers you’ll read for your
theme, and send me a draft of your Philosopher’s Brief (see above) on
that philosopher. |
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Sept. 14 |
Sor Juana, Response to Sor Filotea,
pp. 576-582 Short selection from Primero Sueño |
Submit Part One of
your Philosophical Theme
Plan. |
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Sept. 16 |
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. |
Class
today will be spent in your groups working on your theme plan, with me
available to help you out. |
|
Sept. 21 |
Sor Juana Reading
TBD |
Submit
your complete Philosophical
Theme Plan today! (Your
first Community Contribution Log
is due at 9am on Sept. 22.) |
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Sept 23 |
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. |
Your
Exegetical Papers
are due no later than 5 PM on Friday,
September 25th. They
should be emailed to me in accordance with my paper submission requirements (see
“turning in your work” above). |
Philosophical
Mini-theme! Let’s choose a theme we
are not doing as a class and discuss that today. (In the past, I’ve done “Mind and Body” or
“Knowledge from Sensory Experience”) |
|
Sept. 28 |
Philosophical
Theme #1, Day One. |
Submit the topic
for your paper
on a philosophical topic. |
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Sept. 30 |
Philosophical
Theme #1, Day Two. |
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Oct. 5 |
Philosophical
Theme #1, Day Three. |
Submit three possible
questions for your paper on a
philosophical topic. |
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Oct. 7 |
Philosophical
Theme #1, Day Four. |
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Oct. 12 |
Philosophical Theme #1, Day Five. |
(Your
Community Contribution Log
is due at 9am on Oct. 13.) |
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Oct. 14 |
Philosophical
Theme #2, Day One. |
New Narrative based on initial philosopher and material from unit #1 |
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Oct. 19 |
Philosophical
Theme #2, Day Two. |
If
you are writing a final paper, send at least 600 words addressing the
question you will answer in your paper on a
philosophical topic. |
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Oct. 21 |
Philosophical
Theme #2, Day Three. |
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Oct. 26 |
Philosophical
Theme #2, Day Four. |
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Oct. 28 |
Philosophical
Theme #2, Day Five. |
(Your
Community Contribution Log
is due at 9am on Oct. 29.) |
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Nov. 2 |
Philosophical
Theme #3, Day One. |
New Narrative
based on material from units #1 and #2 If
you are writing a final paper, send me 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. |
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Nov. 4 |
Philosophical
Theme #3, Day Two. |
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(Note:
This is the day after the election.) |
|
Nov. 9 |
Philosophical
Theme #3, Day Three. |
Email
me a provisional thesis for your paper on a
philosophical topic |
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Nov. 11 |
Philosophical
Theme #3, Day Four. |
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Nov. 16 |
Philosophical Theme #3, Day Five. |
(Your
Community Contribution Log
is due at 9am on Nov. 19.) If
you are writing a final paper, email me, in the proper format, a full draft
of your paper
on a philosophical topic. |
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Nov. 18 |
Review/Catch-up |
New Narrative
based on all course material thus far. |
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Thanksgiving Break |
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Nov. 30 |
Class Presentations, reading TBD by
presenters |
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Dec. 2 |
Class Presentations, reading TBD by
presenters |
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Dec. 7 |
Class Presentations, reading TBD by
presenters |
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Dec. 9 |
Class Presentations, reading TBD by
presenters |
(Your
Final Community Contribution Log
is due at 9am on Dec 12.) If
you are writing a final paper, email me, in the proper format, the final
draft of your paper on a
philosophical topic. |
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Dec. 14 |
Final Exam 9-11 AM |
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[i] This assignment is based on (and borrows extensively from) a similar assignment presented by Bennett McNulty at the Center for Canon Expansion and Change Summer Program (June, 2026).