Syllabus: What is the Human Being?

Phil 340: What is a Human Being?

Prof. Patrick Frierson

My Office hours are 1:30-3 PM on Tuesdays and Wednesday, and by appointment

“The greatest concern of the human being is to know how to properly fulfill his station in creation and to rightly understand what one must do in order to be a human being.” (Immanuel Kant, from a set of handwritten notes written in 1764 in his personal copy of Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime, Ak. 20:41)

“The field of philosophy . . . can be reduced to the following questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? What is the human being? Metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of this as anthropology.” (from Kant’s logic lectures, as compiled by his student Jäsche in 1800, Ak. 9: 25)

Course Description: In a set of lectures to his students, Kant claimed that all of philosophy could be reduced to the question, What is the Human Being? This course focuses on that question. Almost half of the course will be spent exploring Kant’s answer to the question, which will also provide an opportunity to explore Kant’s philosophy as a whole. The rest of the course will look at several contemporary approaches to the problem (including, for example, existentialism and scientific – especially evolutionary – accounts of human beings).

Requirements (Tutorial Option):

For the tutorial option, the class will be divided into pairs, and each pair will meet with me each Wednesday for a 75 minute tutorial meeting. In addition, we will meet as a whole class most Tuesday nights for a brief lecture and question period (probably no more than one hour). These meetings are required.
Each week, one student in each pair (the author) will write a paper discussing issues related to the reading for the day. Although I have provided one or more questions for each week, the papers can be on any topic related to the primary reading. You are expected to take secondary sources into account where they are relevant, and you should, over the course of the semester, make use of at least four sources not listed on the syllabus. (For advice on finding these sources, click here.) Your tutorial papers should be 1500-2500 words. Papers must be emailed to me and your tutorial partner no later than 8 AM on the Monday before the tutorial. (I will read these papers and give you some written feedback, but not as much as you might typically expect on papers. Much of my feedback will be oral, in both my lecture and our tutorial sessions.)
The other student (the commentator) will be responsible for responding to the written paper. These responses will be given orally during the tutorial meeting.
The structure of the tutorial meeting will go as follows: The tutorial will begin with the author reading her or his paper aloud, followed by the commentator offering his or her response. We will then have an intensive discussion of the paper that can (and generally will) expand into a broader discussion of the material for the day.
Over the course of the semester, each student will write 6 papers and prepare 6 responses. At the end of the semester, each student will have the chance to expand one of their tutorial papers into a longer final essay (2500-3500 words; this expansion is not required). Final evaluation will be based on written work (60%), prepared oral responses (20%), and general oral participation in the tutorial (20%).

Requirements (Seminar Option):

Attendance, Reading, and Participation (10%). You are expected to read and reread the assigned texts for each class with thoughtfulness and care. Merely passing your eyes over the relevant pages is not reading. You need to engage with the material, thinking through passages that you find confusing until you are able to either understand them or clearly articulate the nature of your confusion. You should constantly assess how the readings relate to one another and to your own emerging thoughts about what it means to be a human being. You should bring this deep understanding of and insightful questions about the texts to class with you each week, prepared to contribute in substantive ways to our cooperative class project of coming to a deeper understanding of what it is to be human. You are required to attend every class and are expected to participate in a learning community of mutual respect.
Seminar Paper (20%). For at least one of our weekly meetings, you will be expected to write a seminar paper of approximately 2000-4000 words that engages with the material assigned for the day but also incorporates at least two additional readings you find on your own. (I strongly recommend using some of the strategies listed here for finding additional readings.) Your paper may develop a thesis that answers the assigned prompt for the day, or you may write on another issue related to the general theme for the day. You must distribute this paper no later than 5 PM on the Sunday preceding class, in order to give all of us enough time to read the paper carefully. A seminar paper that is late will automatically suffer a one grade point drop (from a B to a C, for instance). If the paper is more than 24 hours late, it will receive an F. The seminar paper should not be “exploratory,” but rather a well-reasoned argument that defends a specific and interesting thesis related to the topic for the day. Because of the expectations for this seminar paper, you should not wait until the week that it is due to begin writing it. Although each week’s reading builds to some extent off of previous weeks, each week’s reading also stands largely on its own. You should start the reading for your seminar paper at least three weeks before it is due and have started writing (at least brainstorming) at least two weeks before the paper is due.[1] By 5 PM on the Wednesday before your paper is due, you must turn in (to me) a draft of your paper, showing how far you have come. (Students who do not turn in a draft will suffer at least a one grade point drop on their paper.) I strongly encourage you to meet with me on Wednesday or Thursday to discuss this draft and ideas for improving the paper.
Presentation (20%). For at least one of our weekly meetings, you will be expected to give a presentation. The primary focus of this presentation should be the seminar paper written for that week’s meeting. You should very briefly explain what you take to be the central thesis of that seminar paper and what you take to be the core argument for that thesis. You should then raise significant objections and/or suggest ways that the argument of the paper could be fruitfully developed. (You might also use this opportunity to defend alternative positions that are neglected or insufficiently treated in the paper.) You should feel free to connect your comments on the paper with your own interests, but the focus should be on the arguments and ideas in the seminar paper. Your introductory comments should not take longer than 10 minutes. In addition, you should come with specific questions to guide discussion. (This might include passages from the reading that you want to read closely in the context of the seminar paper, or passages from the seminar paper that you want to look at more closely.) Because the oral portion of your presentation will be brief, I strongly recommend including a handout with your presentation. Your handout might include such things as: a summary of the thesis and main argument of the seminar paper; brief bullet points with your central questions, criticisms, extensions, and observations about the paper; quotes for discussion (from the paper and/or readings for the day); and/or key questions that you hope we will discuss as a class.
Weekly Responses (20%). On weeks that you are neither writing a paper nor giving a presentation, you are expected to write a short response to the readings. For each week, I have provided a prompt for written work, and you may use this to guide your weekly response. Alternatively, you may simply write up a question about or response to the readings, the seminar paper, or both. Generally, these responses need be no longer than 200-400 words. These should be emailed to me no later than 4 PM on the Monday before we discuss the material. Responses will be graded with a check, check-plus, or check-minus. Late responses are welcome but will receive a zero. At the end of the semester, I will drop your lowest score. (That means you get one “free pass,” but use this with care. I will not generally excuse missed or late assignments beyond this one, even if you have an official excuse through the Dean of Students. The point of the free pass is precisely to provide for such contingencies.)
Final Paper (30%). At the end of the semester, you will be required to turn in a substantive research paper of at least 4500 words. This paper should engage with at least some of the material we discuss in class and at least some additional material beyond what we read in class. The topic of these papers is open-ended, but I recommend one of three general approaches: (1) Expansion of seminar paper or weekly response. You may substantially expand either your seminar paper or one of your weekly responses, responding to comments raised during our seminar and/or developing points that you were unable to develop in the original version. (2) Answering Kant’s Question: “What is a human being?” You may write a sweeping paper that lays out a clear and compelling argument for a well-articulated response to the question of what a human being is. Because of the scope of the question and the (relative) brevity of the paper, this will not be an airtight argument, but it should provide a compelling overarching account of human beings. (3) Scholarly paper on a specific topic discussed in class. You might focus your final paper on a specific question or issue that arose in class. Some examples: How does Kant’s aesthetics relates to his empirical account of pleasure? Does Kant adequately solve the problem of radical evil? Is Kant’s treatment of gender consistent with his moral philosophy? Is the use of “memes” consistent with a strictly materialism conception of human beings? (How) can Foucault respond to Sartre’s critique without conceding the primacy of human freedom? Does Heidegger’s conception of Being-towards-death as one’s ownmost possibility provide for human freedom or contradict such freedom (or both, or neither)? For this option, you should clearly articulate a question and a thesis that answers/addresses that question, and your paper should clearly and convincingly defend that thesis while responding to the most important alternatives/objections.

Texts:

E-reserves (e-course-packet): List of texts available here, and links to the actual materials (for Whitman students) available here (email me for the password if you forget it).
Miscellaneous online resources linked below. (Occasionally, readings are available for open access on the web, in which case I have provided a link to the relevant website rather than to ereserves.)
Patrick Frierson, Kant’s Questions: What is the Human Being?. Here is a link to an early draft of my recent (2013) book. If you all agree, we will work through this draft in order to revise it for “publication” free and online through the library. Page numbers in the syllabus below are to this draft. Otherwise, we can use the more polished and more concise version that’s already published (in hard copy) through Routledge Press and available at Amazon, here.
Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves (New York: Penguin, 2003, ISBN: 0-14-200384-0)
Optional: Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN: 0-521-55960-X)

Timeline:

In addition to the readings listed under “readings” for each week, you should read selections from my What is the Human Being?

The relevant page numbers in the draft copy available here are listed under topic.

	Topic	Readings	Written Work
Week One (January 19)	What is the Question? Finish designing the syllabus (as a class)	In class handouts	Give your own best answer to the question “What is a Human Being?”
Week Two (January 26)	Kant: What Ought I Do? (pp. 37-51)	Selections from Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason	To what extent does Kant’s answer to the question “What ought I do?” also answer the question “What is the human being?”
Week Three (February 2)	Kant on History and Diversity (review readings from last week and read pp. 121-176) For this class, we will start in Olin 130 at 7 for a screening of Pascal Blanchard’s film: "Human Zoos"	*“Idea for a Universal History,” selections from Critique of Judgment, Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime,* “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race,” Selections from Metaphysics of Morals (on colonialism)**	Does Kant’s philosophy of history and human difference make his overall answer to “What is the Human Being?” better or worse?
Week Four (February 9)	Kant: What Can I Know? (pp. 1-37)	Selections from Critique of Pure Reason	Briefly summarize Kant’s answer to the question, What can I know? Raise at least one important objection to Kant’s answer.
Week Five (February 16)	Kant: What May I Hope? (pp. 51-72 and pp. 108-121.)	Selections from Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone	Develop and defend a key problem with Kant’s transcendental anthropology.
Week Six (February 23)	Kant’s Empirical and Pragmatic Anthropology (pp. 73-107, 177-196)	Selections from Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View	What is missing from Kant’s answer to the question, “What is a Human Being?”
Week Seven (March 1) This class will need to be rescheduled because I’m gone to a conference in Chicago. Would Monday, Feb 29^th work?	Naturalism (pp. 257-316)	Dennett, Freedom Evolves	Does evolved freedom sufficiently capture the range of human freedom? Or, How might Kant respond to Dennett’s naturalist account of human beings?
Week Eight (March 8)	Naturalism (pp. 257-316)	Dennett, Freedom Evolves	Does evolved freedom sufficiently capture the range of human freedom? Or, How might Kant respond to Dennett’s naturalist account of human beings?
Week Nine (March 29)	Historicism and Human Diversity (pp. 317-352)	*Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions* (selections) Foucault, “The Subject and Power” and “On the Genealogy of Ethics” and debate with Noam Chomsky (available here.)**	Briefly lay out the most serious historicist challenge to Kant and defend the best Kantian response to that challenge. Or Is it reasonable to think that there is a single answer to the question “What is the Human Being?”
Week Ten (April 5)	Historicism and Human Diversity (pp. 317-352)	Foucault, “The Subject and Power” and “On the Genealogy of Ethics” and debate with Noam Chomsky (available here.) *Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, pp. 1-20, 130-172.* Clifford Geertz, “Anti-Anti-Relativism”	Briefly lay out the most serious historicist challenge to Kant and defend the best Kantian response to that challenge. Or Is it reasonable to think that there is a single answer to the question “What is the Human Being?”
Week Eleven (April 12 or 13?) *We must move our class period because of the Undergraduate Conference, unless everyone would prefer to go ahead and meet on Tuesday.*	Existentialism (pp. 353-411)	Kierkegaard, selections from “Subjectivity is Truth” Heidegger, selections from Being and Time Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (non-reserve link)	Is existentialism the best approach to human freedom? If so, defend it against at least one objection. If not, what is a better approach (and why)?
Week Twelve (April 19)	Normativity (pp. 412-437)	*Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity,* selections; MacIntyre, After Virtue, selections;**	If the question “What is the human being?” is a normative question, what is the best answer? (You may focus here on one dimension of human life, such as epistemology or ethics.)
Week Thirteen (April 26)	Normativity (pp. 412-450)	*MacIntyre, After Virtue, selections;* *Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, selections* Korsgaard, selections from The Sources of Normativity	What is the best way to update Kant’s answer to the question “What is the human being?” Here consider whether Habermas or Korsgaard are better updated versions of Kant, and/or propose your own contemporary Kantianism.
Week Fourteen (May 3)	OPEN WEEK	Reread the topic that got the shortest shrift over the course of the semester, or go back to something that we skipped.	*If no one chooses anything else, we can read Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem* and revisit Kant’s views on evil in the light of the 200 years of evil that have passed since Kant.**