Philosophy 227 (Spring 2018)

Concepts of Nature in Modern European Philosophy

Prof. Patrick Frierson

Class Meets: Olin East 192, Tuesday and Thursday 10-11:20 AM

Office Hours (Olin 194): Tuesday 4-5 PM, Wednesday 10-12 AM, 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.”

 

Accommodations: If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Antonia Keithahn, Assistant Director of Academic Resources: Disability Support (Memorial 326, 509.527.5767keithaam@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 due to a verified disability, I will provide it in as discreet a manner as possible.

 

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.

 

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.  Over the course of the semester, there will be seven specific exercises that draw on our readings to reflect on nature.  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.  At the start of the semester, I will assign you to groups of three to four students.  At that time, you should choose (with your group) which assignments 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 assignments over the course of the semester, only the best four will count towards your grade.  (There are two one exceptions to this.  First, I will count at least one individual assignment for every student.  Second, 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 very strongly recommend that you complete and turn in these papers early.

 

Submitting Written Work:  Please submit all written work by email to frierspr@whitman.edu.  Submit work in .doc or .docx format, with your name (or, for group work, the last names of every member of your group) in the filename of the document.  If the document is a draft, please include the word draft in the filename.  Thus, if I were submitting an individual piece of work for the second assignment, I would save my draft as “Patrick Frierson Descartes and Bacon Draft.docx” and email that to frierspr@whitman.edu.

 

Comments on Written Work.  I will write comments on all drafts of written work, as long as these drafts are turned in before the deadlines below.  All final drafts will get comments as well as a “score.”  The score on the paper gives a sense for how well you are doing without the baggage of letter grades.  For an interpretation of those scores, see my grading criteria.  For some general guidance on writing philosophy papers, see this brief guide to writing a philosophy paper.

 

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.

 

 

Readings

Exercise Due Dates

Jan 16

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)

 

Jan 18

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)

 

Jan 23

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

 

Jan 25

Francis Bacon,  Novum Organon Preface and Book I, pp. 2-101

 

Jan 30

Francis Bacon, Novum Organon Book II, pp. 102-221

 

Feb 1

Francis Bacon, Novum Organon Book II and “Outline,” pp. 102-238; The New Atlantis

 

Feb 6

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, Feb 5th. 

Exercise #1 final draft due Saturday, Feb 10, by 5 PM.

You should email both drafts as Word documents to frierspr@whitman.edu with your name (or the last names of every member of your group) at the start of the filename.  Your draft should include the word “draft” somewhere in the filename

Feb 8

Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts 1-4 and The World (read chapter six and skim chapters seven and eight)

Exercise #1 Due.

Feb 13

Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts 5-6.

 

Feb 15

Rene Descartes, handout with selections from correspondence (on animals and unity with nature); Preface to Principles of Philosophy

Exercise #2 Due at 9 AM on Saturday, Feb 17.  I will comment on drafts only if I receive them by 3 PM on Thursday, Feb 15th.

Feb 20

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

Feb 22

Power and Privilege Symposium

Though not directly related to the material in this class, I highly recommend this essay, which discusses environmental privilege.  (You should also get started on the reading for next week, which is relevant to these issues.)

Feb 27

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]”)

 

March 1

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, entire (focus on Preface and Part One)

Exercise #3 Due Friday, March 2, by 3 PM.  I will comment on drafts that I receive by noon on Monday, Feb. 26th.

March 6

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Part Two; Reveries, Fifth Walk (pp. 49-58)

 

March 8

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries, Seventh through Ninth Walks (pp. 69-106)

 

 

Spring Break

Spring Break

March 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, March 26th.  I will comment on drafts only if I receive them by 9 AM on Monday, March 19th.

March 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.

 

April 3

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 89-116, 121-124, 173-6

 

 

April 5

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 128-49, 182-188

Schiller, Aesthetic Education of Man, Letters 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 25.

 

April 10

Undergraduate Conference

Undergraduate Conference

April 12

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 68-73, 233-234, 242-52, 268-71, 286-7, 293-301

Exercise #5 due by 9 AM on Monday, April 16.   I will comment on drafts only if I receive them by noon on Friday, April 13.

April 17

J. S. Mill, “On Nature

April 19

Heidegger,  Question Concerning Technology

 

April 24

Heidegger,  “Question Concerning Technology” 

April 26

Heidegger,  “Question Concerning Technology” and/or “Origin of the Work of Art” (if we have time)

Exercise #6 due by 9 AM on Friday, April 27th.   I will comment on drafts only if I receive them by 9 AM on Monday, April 23.

May 1

Hannah Arendt, selections

 

May 3

Hannah Arendt, selections

Exercise #7 due by 10 AM on Friday, May 4th.  I will comment on drafts that I get by 10 AM on Wednesday, May 2.

May 15

The absolute final deadline for final papers is

9 AM on Tuesday, May 15th.

I will comment on drafts that I receive by  9 AM on Wednesday, May 9th.

 

Exercise #1.  Baconian Natural History.

This would be a great reflection to do as a group.

Do a Baconian natural history of some object or quality, complete with three tables and a hypothesis.  The goal here is to have something like a Baconian lab report about some topic.  The 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 about your chosen topic by doing 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.

Exercise #2: Bacon vs. Descartes

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 some specific natural object.  Whose “concepts of nature” provide for greater insight into the 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. 

Exercise #3: A ___ian Manifesto

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 the present day.  This manifesto should be approximately 1200-2000 words.

Exercise #4: “Solitary” Reveries.

Using Rousseau as a model of both form and content, go for a walk and reflect on yourself and your surroundings.  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.

Exercise #5.  Kant.

For this exercise, you should choose one key idea from Kant’s philosophy and apply that key idea either to better understanding some particular natural object or to addressing some environmental problem.  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).

Exercise #6.  Nature and Technology.

J.S. Mill discusses several different senses of “nature,” and Heidegger the complex nature of modern technology.  Choose something that you encounter in your daily life (a tree, an art-work, a feeling, a coffee-pot, a friend, or the like).  Think about whether that thing is “natural,” and in what senses of natural, and 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.

Exercise #7. Concepts of Nature.

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.  The result should be an essay of 1500-2200 words.