Philosophy 227 (Fall 2015)
Concepts of Nature in Modern European
Philosophy
Prof. Patrick Frierson
Class Meets: Olin East 129, Tuesday and
Thursday 1-2:20 PM
Office Hours (Olin E124): Tuesday 2:30-4:00,
Wednesday 11-12, and by appointment.
Required Books:
Francis Bacon, The
New Organon. Eds. Lisa Jardine, Michael
Silverthorne. Cambridge University Press. ISBN-10:
0521564832.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Hackett, ISBN: 978-0872204225
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans.
Cress, Hackett ISBN: 9780872201507.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, trans. Goulbourne, Oxford World Classics, ISBN: 978-0-19-956327-2.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. P. Guyer
and E. Matthews. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN:
0521348927
Optional Book: Karl Marx, Selected
Writings. Ed. Laurence H. Simon. Hackett, 1994. ISBN: 0872202186.
Goals and Content:
After a brief introduction to the ancient and medieval context of modern
European philosophy, this course explores various concepts of nature in
European philosophy starting with Bacon and proceeding up to the 20th
century. All of these concepts play
roles in the way nature is conceived of today.
Some of them, even in their original articulations, will seem familiar;
others will seem quite alien. Most will
be challenging to work through and understand.
The course has five main goals.
First, by developing an understanding and appreciation of various
different concepts of nature, you will come to more clearly understand your own
presuppositions about nature – where they come from, and what’s at stake with
them. Second, you will develop a wider
range of concepts for thinking about pressing contemporary environmental
problems in new ways. Third, you will
develop skills of careful reading of difficult philosophical texts. Relatedly, you will learn to attend
patiently, carefully, and critically with views that are different from your
own. Fourth, you will develop the
ability to clearly express and defend your own perspective(s) on nature in
writing and orally. And finally, through
class discussion and small group work, you will learn skills of working
together in groups to develop insights that would not come through individual
study.
Class Time and Rules for
Discussion: This class meets less than three hours a
week, and most of the learning for the class occurs outside of our formal class
meetings, through your own careful reading and thinking about the material,
writing papers, working in groups (both formally and informally), and meetings
with me during office hours. My goal is to use our class periods to accomplish
goals that could not easily be accomplished outside of class.
Lectures. I will do some general lecturing,
but I generally do not lecture extensively, for two reasons. First, extensive empirical (psychological)
evidence and my own personal experience confirm that learning happens best
through active engagement rather than passive listening. Second, lectures from me are not the best way
to get expert commentary on the figures we are studying. Many figures that we study have entries in
the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and most also have Cambridge Companions or other secondary sources available in the
library. These reference sources provide
the highest quality commentary on the texts we are reading, and the Stanford Encyclopedia in particular is
designed to be used by undergraduates.
Most of these sources, however, will not focus specifically on concepts
of nature. So reading these texts with
an eye to their relevance for thinking about nature is something that we will do together. Moreover, relying
on these sources will prevent you from cultivating the skills of reading for yourself and forming your own
interpretations based on close and careful reading of the texts. Even I am not (yet?) an expert on how these
texts relate to thinking about nature, so I’ll be exploring with you.
Discussions.
The main use of our class time will be discussions amongst the entire
class. These discussions provide ways to
engage with the material in sustained ways, and they also provide a context to
practice the virtues of excellent participation in intellectual group discussion. These virtues include the following:
Preparation. You should come to class having
read and thought about the material, so that you have an informed perspective
on it.
Attentive listening.
You should pay close attention to what I, and your peers, are saying.
Whitman has excellent faculty, but we are the excellent college that we
are because of the quality of our students.
Your classmates have insightful things to contribute to our discussion;
classmates’ comments are often more insightful than my own and are usually more
directly relevant to your own readings of the texts.
Boldness and patience.
Boldness and patience are both virtues in conversation. You should participate, even when you are not
entirely sure that what you have to say is profound and well-formulated, but
you should also be patient, letting your own ideas mature and providing
opportunities for others to contribute to the conversation. Some of you will need to focus on boldness,
forcing yourselves to speak even before you are fully comfortable. (If you are one of these students, one good
practice is to prepare some comments and questions before class and to raise
these at the first opportunity. Another good
practice is to speak or raise your hand whenever there is more than 3 seconds
of “dead time,” even if you don’t think what you have to say is particularly
profound.) Some will need to focus on
patience, holding back to practice attentive listening and to give others the
opportunity to contribute. (If you are
one of these, one good practice is to count to five before speaking or raising
your hand. Another is to take the time
to find textual support for your views before you articulate them.)
Respectful engagement with
others’ views. I expect you to engage with one another’s comments
in class. Discussions should not be
public dialogues with me. This engagement will often involve answering or
refining another student’s question, taking another student’s point further,
providing additional textual support for a point that a classmate makes, and so
on. Engagement also can and often should
involve criticism of the views of others, but such criticism should always
remain respectful. Everyone in this room
(including myself) is in the process of learning to philosophize well. When we criticize one another, it should be
in the spirit of helping each other to develop as philosophers, not in an
attempt to show that one person is better than another.
Growth mindset.
Just as you engage respectfully with others, respect those who engage
with your own views. My assumption in
this course is that every comment that everyone makes (including myself) is
provisional. In class, we are trying to benefit from our conversation, not to
score points in it. And that means that
when others offer objections or criticisms of your comments in class, these are
not evidence of your inadequacy as a philosopher; they are opportunities for
you (and your interlocutor) to grow. You
should defend your view as effectively as you can, but you should also change
your view when you come to see that it is not defensible.
“Class participation.”
Participation can have a significant impact on your final grade. When evaluating participation, however, I am
not interested merely in the quantity of comments. A student who dominates class discussion but
fails to show the virtues listed above may have their overall grade lowered due
to poor participation. A student who
speaks occasionally but in well-informed, respectful, growing ways may have
their grade raised. (A student who never
speaks in class, however, cannot effectively demonstrate the above
virtues.) If you are concerned about
your participation, either because you fear participating too much or too
little, please ask me about it at any time.
Small Group Work.
Occasionally, we will divide the class into small groups for more
focused work. This provides those who
might be timid in a large group setting an opportunity to participate more
actively, and it provides a different dynamic for discussion. All of the virtues listed above apply to
work in small groups. In addition, it is
particularly important in these groups that students remain “on task.”
Assignments:
Reading: The material we are reading this
semester is often very difficult. Budget
a lot of time to read it
carefully. For all of these texts, you
will need to read through the entire reading once to get an overview and a
sense of the whole. But then you will
need to return to key passages and read them very closely. Philosophical
writing takes a sort of reading that is somewhere in between reading through
the steps of a complex mathematical proof and reading really dense poetry. For the passages that you identify as
particularly important, you need to go through them line by line, paying attention
to how the argument goes, but also paying attention to what is implied about
the author’s conception of nature from this passage, and why s/he thinks that
is justified.
Participation and Quizzes (10%
total): As noted above, participation is a particularly
important part of this class. In
addition, for most days of the semester, I will have short daily quizzes based
on the readings. For some classes, I
will require that you prepare something for class that may take the place of
the quiz.
Object-based Reflections (Short
Writing Assignments) (15% each; 60% total):
The goal of this course is to use a variety of concepts of nature to
think about our relationship with the “natural” world. To facilitate your reflections on the
readings, you should choose some object in nature that will be your focal
object for the semester. This can be any thing
that you consider to be a part of nature.
You could choose the Blue Mountains, or a particular mountain, or the
sun, or the Lakum Dukum, or
a particular twig or flower, or your roommate, or wheat fields, or even a power
plant. If you consider it an object, and
you consider it part of nature, it’s a reasonable starting point. In principle, you could even choose a kind of object (diamonds, coffee,
butterflies), though for some purposes, it will help to have a particular
exemplar of that general kind. On the
second day of class, we will collect candidate objects and students will be
assigned to a group of 2-4 students who will reflect on the same (or closely related)
object(s) over the course of the whole semester.
This object can provide a context for reflection constantly, but
over the course of the semester, there will be six specific exercises that draw
on our readings to reflect on your object.
For each of these, there are specific requirements in terms of how you
will engage with the object in the context of the texts we are reading. Two of these reflection exercises must be
completed as a group, and you will
receive a group grade for your work. Two
of them must be completed as an
individual. You may choose (with
your group) which to complete individually, and which to complete as a
group. Every student (either
individually or as part of a group) must complete at least one of the first two
exercises. If you complete more than
four over the course of the semester, only the best four will count towards
your grade. (There is one exception to
this. For all group projects, I will
encourage group members to report “bad group-mates,” and when I receive such
reports before the final grade is assigned, I may assign students identified as
bad group-mates a lower grade than the rest of the group. If your groupmates report that you
significantly negatively impacted a group exercise, that exercise will count
towards your grade, even if you have other, better individual work.)
Each of these exercises is worth 15% of your final grade, and
there are no extensions. Any exercises
turned in more than 60 minutes after their due date will suffer a full grade
point drop. Any turned in more than 24
hours late will receive an F. (I’ll
still give comments on them at your request.)
For that reason, I very strongly recommend that you save at least one of
your “skips” to use in case of emergency.
Final paper (30%), DUE AT THE
TIME AND DATE OF OUR SCHEDULED FINAL EXAM: You have two options for your
final paper. For each option, you will
be expected to draw from at least three of the philosophers we study over the
course of the semester. You should
articulate a clear, controversial, and interesting thesis and defend this
thesis using excellent textual support and rigorous argumentation.
(1)
Literary
analysis. Choose any example of
contemporary writing about nature (that is, something written within the past
20 years or so). Show how this author
draws (even if implicitly) from concepts developed by major European
philosophers, and then use at least one concept that does not feature in the
writing to open a new perspective on the topic of the writing, revealing an
insight that the author may have seen had s/he been more influenced by one (or
more) of the philosophers we read in this class.
(2)
Environmental
problems. Choose an important
contemporary environmental problem. This
could be a complex ethico-political problem or an
issue you are particularly concerned with for yourself as an individual. Draw from the philosophers you’ve studied in
this course to suggest at least two different ways of conceptualizing that
problem, and then defend what you think is the best way to proceed in
addressing it.
This paper will be due at the time and date of our scheduled
exam. Any paper turned in more than 60
minutes late will automatically suffer a full letter grade reduction (from an
A- to a B-, for example). Any paper more
than 24 hours late will receive an F. I
strongly recommend that you complete and turn in these papers early.
Timeline: Here’s a timeline for what we will read
together in class. Particularly since
this is my first time teaching this course, I reserve the right to modify this
over the course of the semester, as I see how our progress goes.
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Readings |
Exercise Due Dates |
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Sept. 1 |
Opening Day: Ancient Greek
Philosophy 1 Parmenides, Poem Heraclitus, Fragments (read only the
English translations on the right) Plato (Allegory of the Cave,
pp. 1-5) |
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Sept. 3 |
Ancient Greek Philosophy 2: Reread material from previous class
and read…Aristotle, Physics,
Book II. Posterior
Analytics, §§1-2 (pp. 1-7) On
the Generation of Animals, Bk I, chapters 22-23 (pp. 31-34 of the etext) |
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Sept. 8 |
Hebrew and Christian Religion: (If you do not own a Christian
Bible, you can find all of these references, in many different translations, here.) Genesis 1-3 Psalm 8 Job 38-39 Romans 8:18-25 Revelation 21:1-22:5 Augustine Confessions 11.iv-v, xii, (pp.
157, 161 of this
.pdf); St. Francis, Canticle of the Sun,
The Little Flower
(read chapters xxi and xxii); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II,
Q91A1-2, Q93A1, 2, 4; Hildegaard of Bingen, “O
Most Noble Greenness” and selection from Divine Works |
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Sept. 10 |
Francis Bacon, Novum Organon Preface and Book I, pp. 2-101 |
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Sept. 15 |
Francis Bacon, Novum Organon Book II, pp. 102-221 |
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Sept. 17 |
Francis Bacon, Novum Organon Book II and “Outline,” pp.
102-238; The
New Atlantis |
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Sept. 22 |
Bacon Review Selection (to be determined) from Margaret Cavendish’s
Blazing
World Sandra Harding, Whose
Science? Which Knowledge?, pp. 42-46, 64-67. |
Exercise #1 Rough draft due by 9
AM on Monday, September 21. Exercise #1 final draft
due Friday, September 25, by 9AM. You should email both drafts as Word
documents to frierspr@whitman.edu with
your name at the start of the filename. |
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Sept. 24 |
Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts 1-4 and The
World (read chapter six and skim chapters seven and eight) |
Exercise #1 Due. |
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Sept. 29 |
Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts 5-6. |
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Oct. 1 |
Rene Descartes, handout with
selections from correspondence (on animals and unity with nature); Dedicatory
Letter to Principles of Philosophy |
Exercise #2 Due at 9 AM on Monday, October 5.
I will comment on drafts only if I receive them by 3 PM on Friday,
October 2. |
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Oct. 6 |
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics,
Book 1, Definitions; Axioms; Propositions 1, 7, 10, 14, 28, 29, 33 with their
proofs; Book 2, skim Definitions, Axioms, Propositions 1, 2, 7, and read P13
with its note; Book 5, proposition 42. Arne Naess, “The
Shallow and the Deep” Arne Naess,
“Spinoza
and Ecology” |
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(Oct. 8) |
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Oct. 13 |
John
Locke, Second
Treatise, Chapters 4 and 5 Adam Smith Wealth of
Nations, Introduction, Book I, Chapters 1, 2, and 11(paragraphs 1-9) Karl Marx, Selected
Writings, pp. 58-67, 132-3 (starting with “[Division of labor]”) |
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Oct. 15 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, entire (focus
on Preface and Part One) |
Exercise
#3 Due Friday, October 16, by 3 PM. I will comment on drafts that I receive by
3 PM on Wednesday, Oct. 14. |
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Oct. 20 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Part Two; Reveries, Fifth Walk (pp. 49-58) |
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Oct. 22 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries, Seventh through Ninth Walks
(pp. 69-106) |
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Oct. 27 |
Adam Smith, History of Astronomy, selections You should also get started on the reading for Kant. |
Exercise #4 Due by 9 AM on Monday, October 26. I will comment on drafts only if I receive
them by 9 AM on Friday, October 23. |
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Oct. 29 |
Immanuel Kant, Selections: B-Preface
to the Critique of Pure Reason Preface from The
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Conclusion from The Critique of Practical Reason Critique of the Power of Judgment, pp. 59-63, 68-73. I would also recommend that you read
the secondary source available here. |
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Nov. 3 |
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 89-116, 121-124, 173-6 |
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Nov. 5 |
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 128-49, 182-188 Schiller, Aesthetic
Education of Man, Letters 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 25. |
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Nov. 10 |
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 68-73, 233-234, 242-52, 268-71, 286-7,
293-301 |
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Nov. 12 |
J. S. Mill, “On
Nature” |
Exercise #5 due by 5 PM on Saturday, November 14. I will comment on drafts only if I receive
them by noon on Friday, November 13. |
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Nov. 17 |
Heidegger, “Question
Concerning Technology” |
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Nov. 19 |
Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology” |
Exercise #6 due
by 9AM on Monday, November 23. |
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Dec. 1 |
Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology” and/or “Origin
of the Work of Art” (if we have time) |
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Dec. 3 |
Hannah Arendt, selections |
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Dec. 8 |
Hannah Arendt, selections |
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Dec. 10 |
Catch-up,
Review, Reflect, Celebrate |
Exercise #7 due by 1 PM on Thursday, December 10. I will comment on drafts that I get by 1 PM
on Tuesday, December 8. |
This would be a great reflection to do as a group.
Do a Baconian natural history of some
feature of your chosen object. For
instance, if you chose the sun, then you might focus on “heat” for your natural
history, or you might focus on “light” or “stars” or “heavenly bodies” or
“brightness.” You might also, if you
think it’s consistent with Bacon’s method, choose “the sun” itself. Then do a natural history, in a Baconian
style, with three tables and a hypothesis.
The goal here is to have something like a Baconian lab report about some
topic, where your chosen object shows up somewhere in that lab report. The lab report should briefly lay out a
justification for your topic, an explanation and defense of your methodology,
your lists, analysis of those lists, and preliminary hypothesis about the
nature of ___. You might also add some
explanation of the benefits/fruits of this natural history. This will make up the first part of the
paper.
For the second part, you should write
a brief (no more than 1000 word) analysis of
your Baconian history. For this, you
should discuss what you learned from this sort of natural history that you
would not have noticed without the “Organon” provided
by Bacon, and/or what this organon prevented you from
being able to discuss/learn, and/or more broadly what the chief strengths and
weaknesses are of this approach to nature.
This would be a great reflection to do
as an individual.
Write a short essay (1200-2000 words)
comparing Bacon and Descartes in terms of how they would conceptualize your
chosen object. Whose “concepts of nature”
provide for greater insight into your object?
How? Why? How would you improve on both? For this paper, you should write clearly,
concisely, with adequate textual support, with specific illustrations in terms
of your object, and with persuasive arguments for a well-defined and
controversial thesis.
Arne Naess took Spinoza, whose philosophy might seem to say nothing about contemporary environmentalism, and used him as a springboard to develop a concise manifesto for one of the most influential environmental philosophies today. Draw on any of the philosophers we’ve read this semester (including Parmenides, Hildegaard, Marx, etc.) to develop an environmental manifesto for the present day. As in the case of Naess’s Spinoza article, you should use specific interpretations of specific passages to defend your claim that your manifesto is rooted in the historical philosopher, but you should also use general philosophical arguments to defend your approach as a good one for today. For this particular exercise, you need not focus on your chosen object, but you should reference that object in course of developing, defending, or explaining your position. This manifesto should be approximately 1200-2000 words.
Using Rousseau as a model of both form
and content, go for a walk and reflect on yourself and your object. Your reverie should be written as though in
your own voice, but you should sprinkle footnotes throughout with specific
textual references to Rousseau, showing how your reverie addresses the issues
that arose in the Discourse or
illuminates (or improves on) the insights in Rousseau’s own Reveries. (I put “solitary” in quotes because,
realistically, these reveries could also be done by a group. In that case, you should add at least one
footnote talking about the extent to which your group reverie remains faithful
to, falls short of, or improves on, Rousseau’s deliberately solitary ones.) Including footnotes, this “reverie” should be
at least 1200 words.
For this exercise, you should choose
one key idea from Kant’s philosophy and apply that key idea to your chosen
object. You can present the results in
an essay, a poster, a skit, or whatever other form you choose (if you get my
sign-off on your genre). Whatever you
choose, however, you should include (either as part of the presentation or in a
separate short essay) sufficient textual support. You should show how Kant helps us think about
nature, but you might also include clearly delineated critique of Kant or
extension of his ideas in a further (and/or different) direction (as, e.g.,
Schiller did).
J.S. Mill discusses several different senses
of “nature,” and Heidegger the complex nature of modern technology. For your chosen object, think about whether
it is “natural,” and in what senses of natural, whether it is “technology,” and
in what senses of technology. Then use
these reflections on your object, Mill, and Heidegger, to answer the question,
“Is there an essential difference between technology
and nature?” In your answer, be sure to discuss specific
passages from both Mill and Heidegger.
Your essay should be between 1200 and 2000 words.
This paper is a chance to think back on the different concepts of nature we’ve explored this semester from the standpoint of Heidegger and/or Arendt. The main purpose of the essay is to show that Heidegger and/or Arendt provides a stance for thinking about nature that allows for insights not made available by any of the other thinkers we’ve studied this semester. In defending this overall thesis, you should be specific, both about the relevant insights and in your argument that Heidegger/Arendt’s concepts of nature facilitate those insights. In addition, you should discuss the philosopher whose concepts most blind us to these important insights as well as the philosopher who comes the closest to helping us see what Heidegger/Arendt provoke us to see, in the first case using Heidegger/Arendt to show how that philosopher blinds us, and in the second showing how they go beyond their predecessor. Throughout, your chosen object should be a focal point of analysis. The result should be an essay of 1500-2200 words.