Philosophy 202 (Fall 2015)
Readings in the Western Philosophical
Tradition: Modern Philosophy
Prof. Patrick Frierson
Class Meets: Olin East 129, Tuesday and
Thursday 11:00-12:20
Office Hours (Olin E124): Tuesday 2:30-4,
Wednesday 11-12, and by appointment
Required Texts:
Roger Ariew, Eric Watkins, eds., Modern Philosophy: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009). Page numbers in the timeline refer to the SECOND edition (2009) of this book, which is the edition we will use in this class.
Margaret Atherton, ed. Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1994.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Ed. Eric Steinberg,
Indianapolis: Hackett, ISBN: 978-0915145454
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Ed. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmerman, Cambridge University Press,
2012, ISBN: 978-1107401068.
Goals: With respect to content,
this course focuses on central epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical
arguments of key European philosophers of the modern period (1600-1800). The philosophers on whom we will focus are
Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Baruch Spinoza, John
Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.
The early modern period was particularly rich in excellent philosophy,
however, so there will be additional opportunities to study the thought of
other figures in 17th and 18th century European
philosophy throughout the course.
Throughout our study of these
philosophers, we will focus on seven key philosophical problems:
(1)
To what extent is it possible to have knowledge of anything?
(2)
How should we philosophically address the (epistemological) problem of human
diversity, that is, that people see the world in different (and incompatible)
ways?
(3)
What is the ultimate nature of all reality?
(Relatedly, is there a God, and if so, what is God’s nature?)
(4) What
is the human being? (In particular: Are human beings free? and What is the connection between the mind and the body?)
(5)
What is the nature of causation? How does one
thing cause changes in another? (Particularly, how do the mind and body
interact?)
(6) What is the good life for human beings?
(7)
What is the nature of moral claims/reasoning?
With respect to skills, this course will help you develop as a
philosopher in four key respects.
1)
First and most importantly, you will
learn to be a better philosopher. A
philosopher is someone who pursues wisdom through careful reflection. In this course, our focus will be on
reflection that focuses on epistemological and metaphysical questions, but
throughout, you should keep in mind the ethical, political, and social
significance of these questions. We will
thus use modern philosophers to help our own philosophical reflection,
philosophizing with them and through
philosophical critique of them. By the end of
this course, you will learn how to follow through on philosophical insights in
historical and systematic ways.
2)
Second, we will read difficult texts
and read them carefully. Reading (and the related skill of listening) to
complex arguments expressed in unfamiliar terms will prepare you for engaging
with those who hold viewpoint or forms of expression different form your own,
and thus for thriving in an increasingly diverse world.
3)
Third, you will learn both to explain
the ideas of others and to articulate your own ideas orally and in
writing. Everyone is expected to
participate in class discussion in a respectful way, and one of the goals of
this course is to help all students develop confident, articulate, respectful
modes of oral communication. In
addition, everyone will write at least two papers over the course of the
semester (see details below on “writing papers in the history of philosophy”),
and you will have the opportunity to regularly submit drafts of written work
for feedback.
4)
Fourth, though group assignments and
class discussions, you will learn to work effectively in a group settings and
will cultivate practices of respectful, productive, mutually-enriching,
philosophical interaction with your peers.
These skills will be cultivated
through several different kinds of assignments, some of which will also provide
the opportunity to learn (or apply) various technical skills, such as designing
and printing posters, producing and editing audio recordings, and so on, that
are relevant to the communication of your ideas. You have considerable flexibility about which
assignments you complete over the course of the semester. Some assignments are required of every
student, and each student must select other assignments to add up to a “full”
load of assignments for the course.
While not required, I particularly encourage students to complete
assignments that will push them to develop skills at which they might not think
of themselves as particularly excellent.
This course is an opportunity to learn and improve, and not primarily an opportunity to show how good you
already are.
With the exception of the final paper
and the quizzes, which count for all students, if a student completes more than
the required number of assignments, only the best 100% will be counted towards
her final grade.[1] All of these assignments are described in
detail at the end of the syllabus, but here is a brief snapshot of course
requirements:
Required
of all students (60%): Careful
Reading and Reflection (0%) Participation,
Quizzes & Reading Guides (10%) Hobbes
Paper (10%, due September 14) Presentation
(15%) Final
Paper (25%, due December 14) |
Choose
enough to add up to 40% or more of your final grade: Group Projects
(Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, or/and Hume; 20% each, due dates on timeline
below) Philosophical exegesis paper (10%) Analytical critique paper
(10%) Mid-term exam
(20%) Final exam
(written: 30%, or oral: 20%) |
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.
Lectures. My goal is to use our class periods to accomplish goals that could not easily be accomplished outside of class. This will include 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. Thus much of what would normally go into lectures has been built into my “reading guides,” which help guide you through the readings without telling you precisely how to think about them. Second, lectures from me are not the best way to get expert commentary on the texts we are reading. Every figure that we read has at least one major entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and most also have Cambridge Companions 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 at your level.
Quizzes: Most class periods will begin with a short quiz on the reading for the day. If you have followed the advice above, you should do just fine on the quizzes. Occasionally, I may orally “cold-call” on students to talk about their responses to various parts of the reading guide. Responses that show a failure to have read the material attentively will count against a students’ quiz grade.
Presentations. The period from 1600-1800 in Europe was the most vibrant period in the history of philosophy, and the major philosophers we focus on in this course represent only a small fraction of the philosophers who developed exciting and well-developed philosophies worth taking seriously today. Thus a portion of most classes will be devoted to a presentation on another major modern philosopher. This will give each of you a relatively easy way to get a sense for the breadth of philosophy during this period, and it will also give each of you an opportunity to prepare and offer a philosophical presentation to your peers. (For more details on these presentations, see “Course Assignments” below.)
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, but they also – even more importantly – 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.” Your 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 – and often healthy – 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.”
Timeline of Readings and Assignments
|
Reading (Except where noted, page numbers
refer to the 2009 edition of Ariew and Watkins, Modern Philosophy) |
Presentation Option(s) |
Assignments |
Sept. 1 |
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan,
|
Marie de Gournay |
|
Sept. 3 |
Hobbes Leviathan,
Chapters 1-2, 5-6, 13-16 (pp. 6-15, 26-40, 79-106) |
Francis Bacon |
|
Sept. 8 |
Hobbes Leviathan,
chapters 13-18 (pp. 79-117) |
Machiavelli, Hugo Grotius |
|
Sept. 10 |
Descartes’s selections from Discourse and Meditation 1 (AW 25-42) Consult the Descartes Reading Guide as you
read. |
Michel de Montaigne |
Hobbes Paper, Rough Draft Due by 11
AM, Thursday, September 10. You should
email a copy of your paper to me at frierspr@whitman.edu
and also bring a hard copy to class. Final Draft due Monday, September
14, at 9 AM. |
Sept. 15 |
Descartes’s Meditations 1-3 & selected objections and replies 43-54, 69-72, 76-82 |
Michel de Montaigne |
|
Sept. 17 |
Descartes’s Meditations 2-6 & selected objections and
replies 47-68, 72-75, 86b (especially “my only remaining
concern…”), 92b (especially
“finally, as to the fact”) |
Galileo |
|
Sept. 22 |
Descartes’s Meditations 5-6 58-68 Selections from the correspondence
between Descartes and Princess Elizabeth (Atherton volume, pp. 9-21). |
Malebranche (and possible Arnauld and/or Gassendi) |
|
Sept. 24 |
Selections from the Discourse on |
Guillaume du Vair and/or Pierre Nicole and/or the French Cartesiennes (Anne del la Vigne,
Marie Dupre, and Catherine Descartes) |
|
Sept. 29 |
Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Prop. 42 and Part 1,
entire. (Focus on propositions 10, 14,
28, and the Appendix.) (AW 195,
144-164) You should consult this Spinoza
Reading Guide as you read. |
Margaret Cavendish |
Descartes Project due Monday, September 28th,
at 9 AM. |
Oct. 1 |
Spinoza, Ethics, Ethics, Pt. 2., entire (focus on
Propositions 1, 2, 7, 11-14 (including the scholium to P13), and 40-44. (AW 144-187) |
Anne Conway |
|
Oct. 6 |
Spinoza, Ethics, From etext: Part Four, Preface, Definitions, Axiom, and
Propositions 8, 11, 14, 19, 24,
28, 36, 37, 50, 53, 54, 64, 66, 67,
68, 72, 73 (with their
Notes/Scholiums and the proofs for those in bold) From your book: Pt. 5, Preface and
P21-28, 42 (AW 179-83, 188-95) |
Pascal |
Spinoza Project Due Wednesday,
October 7, at midnight. |
(Oct. 8) |
|
|
|
Oct. 13 |
Locke’s Essay Bk I, ch 1-3, Bk II, chs 1-2, 5-12 (especially ch. 8
¶¶9-23) Leibniz’s New Essays, selection AW 316-18, 322-42, 422-425a Consult the Locke
Reading Guide as you read. |
Leibniz (and possibly Voltaire) |
|
Oct. 15 |
Locke’s Essay Bk II, chs 21, 28 (chapter 23 optional
but recommended if you are interested in substance) AW 348-367 |
Berkeley |
Mid-term handed out. You can find a review sheet here and last year’s
midterm here. This midterm is closed-book,
closed-note. You may take up to 2 ½
hours to complete the exam. |
Oct. 20 |
Locke’s Essay IV.1-3, 10-15, especially IV.1-3, IV.10; IV.11¶¶8-14;
IV.15¶¶1-5 AW 386-99, 405-411, 413-14, 415-17 |
Damaris Cudworth
(aka Lady Masham) and/or Ralph Cudworth |
Midterm due at the start of class. |
Oct. 22 |
Cockburn, Defense of Mr. Locke’s Essay, selections Damaris Cudworth
(Lady Masham), selections from correspondence (both are in Atherton, pp. 77-95,
126-146) |
Sor Juana de la Cruz, and/or Catherine Cockburn |
|
Oct. 27 |
John Locke The Second
Treatise of Civil Government, Preface and Chapter 1-6. Also review Essay, Ariew and Watkins, pp. 397-99 |
Samuel Clarke and/or Henry More and/or Ralph
Cudworth |
|
Oct. 29 |
Locke Second Treatise, Chapters 8-19 (especially 8, 9, 18, and 19) |
Samuel Pufendorf
and/or Mary Astell and/or Emilie du Chatelet |
Locke Project Due on Monday, November 2, at
9 AM. |
Nov. 3 |
Hume’s Enquiry §§ 1-7 533-564 Consult the Hume Reading Guide as you read. |
Robert Boyle |
|
Nov. 5 |
Hume’s Enquiry §§ 6-8, 10 555-575, 577-586 Possible selections from Reid or
Rousseau Optional readings: Hume’s Enquiry §12 Hume’s Treatise I.v-vi 593-600, 517-32 |
Isaac Newton or Thomas Reid |
|
Nov. 10 |
Hume Enquiry on Morals |
Joseph
Butler and/or Shaftesbury and/or Hutcheson |
|
Nov. 12 |
Hume Enquiry on Morals |
Adam
Smith |
|
Nov. 17 |
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 717-737 + this
short online handout Consult the Kant Reading Guide. |
Thomas Reid |
|
Nov. 19 |
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 722, 729-37, 768-779 |
Mary
Shepherd |
Hume
Project Due at noon on Friday, November 20th. |
Dec. 1 |
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 724a, 768-779, 798-800, 811-19, handout
(from Critique of Practical Reason) |
Rousseau |
|
Dec. 3 |
Kant Groundwork, Preface and Part One |
Mary Wollstonecraft and/or J.S. Mill
and/or Jeremy Bentham |
|
Dec. 8 |
Kant Groundwork, Parts One and Two. |
Hegel and/or Kierkegaard and/or
Nietzsche |
|
Dec. 10 |
|
||
Dec. 19 |
FINAL
EXAM AT 2 PM |
|
STUDY GUIDE HERE. |
Course Assignments
Reading and Participation: All
students are expected to come to every class having read the assigned material at least twice and to have thought
carefully about it. I do not necessarily expect you to have a complete
understanding of the material, but you should read carefully and repeatedly
until you have a good understanding of much of what is assigned, and for the
material that you do not understand, you should come to class with specific questions about what you do not
understand. If I call on you to explain a particular passage, you should not
respond “I didn’t get that passage.” Instead, you should say, “Well, thought
that Spinoza meant such-and-such, but then I couldn’t figure out how to
reconcile that understanding with what he said later, when he said
this-and-that, since this-and-that seems to conflict with such-and-such in this
particular way.” If your understanding
is still at the “I don’t get it” level, then you have more work to
do. If it’s at the “I thought that he meant
. . . but . . .,” then I have work to do.
In addition, I have provided Reading Guides for many of the readings
we will do in the course. You should
make use of these readings guides as you read and reread. You need not provide written answers to every
question, but you should think about
every question, and writing out answers is strongly recommended. I may check these guides occasionally, I will
feel free to call on any student to give their answer to any question in the
reading guide, and they will inform my decisions about what to include in
quizzes.
Participation in class discussion is an essential part of
the class, I may alter final grades either up or down,
depending upon your participation over the course of the semester. Note that your participation grade is based
on the quality of participation, not
the quantity. You should contribute thoughtful comments to class discussion
in a respectful way. For some of you, this will mean preparing
oral comments before class and making a conscious effort to speak. For others, it will mean holding yourself
back when you find yourself to be dominating discussion. If you desire an assessment of your
participation at any point in the semester, please feel free to ask me about
it.
Deadlines: All assignments
for this course should be turned in at the date and time for which they are
due. I will give a one hour grace period
after assignments are due, but after that grace period, assignments that are
turned in late will immediately be penalized by one full grade point, and the
grade will drop by an addition one point every 24 hours. (Thus an assignment that is A quality work but 61 minutes late will get a B. The same
assignment, 75 hours late, will get an F.)
I highly recommend turning in your assignments – especially group
assignments – early, and all members of a team will be held responsible for the
failure of any one member to get work done on time. (The one exception to this policy is the
final paper. Students who have a good
reason for needing a later deadline on the final paper, and who ask for that
later deadline at least one week before the paper is due, will be granted a
later deadline.)
Written assignments: All
written assignments, including your papers and your group assignments, should
be submitted to me by email. To submit
work by email, you should email your work in .doc or .docx
format to frierspr@whitman.edu. You must include your first and last name as
the first terms in the filename, and the rest of the filename should make clear
what assignment you are turning in. (So, for instance, when Jane Doe turns in
her Descartes paper, she should save the paper under the filename “jane doe descartes paper.doc”.
Papers saved with the wrong filename will not be read by me. For group projects, you should save the paper
with the last name of every group participant in the filename (e.g. “doe lopez mccarty
lee spinoza project.doc”). More specific information on each assignment
is below.
Exams: All exams will be closed book and will involve quotation
identification, short (1-3 paragraph) response questions, and at least one
longer essay question. The midterm will
be a take-home exam, for which you will be allowed two hours, though it should
not take this long. The final will be in
class at our regularly scheduled final exam time (thus you will have 2
hours). Review sheets are available on
the timeline above (where the exam appears).
Group Assignments: This course is organized around a series of
philosophers, for each of which (with the exceptions of Hobbes and Kant) there
are specific projects. I have found these projects to be conducive to learning
the material, so I encourage every student to work on every assignment
throughout the semester, but you will also have the opportunity to work on some
of these assignments for credit. To get
credit for an assignment, you must work on it in a group (of 2-4 students), and
you will be graded on the project as a whole.
Each of these projects can be worth up to 20% of your final grade in the
course. Of that, approximately 15% will
be a group grade, based on the overall quality of the finished product produced
by your group.[2] The remaining 5% will be an individual grade,
based on self- and peer-assessments. For
each group assignment, the group as a whole should send me the finished
product, and each member of the group should send me an email with a short
assessment of the performance of her/himself and of each of the other members
of the group. You should provide a “score” for yourself and your peers, from 1
to 7, along with a short explanation of why you gave that score. In scoring
your teammates, you should focus not merely on specific content that group
members may have contributed, but also to the effect that the group member had
on the dynamics of the group. (A brilliant interpreter of Locke who is hostile
and uncooperative may get a 1. A student who struggles to understand very basic
arguments in Descartes but is able to ask questions well and get his teammates
to cooperate in completing the assignment well might get a 6 or 7.) I very strongly encourage you to be fair with
your assessments, both of yourself and of your teammates, and you should give
at most one score above five (and even that, only if truly warranted). Here is the meaning I intend for you to give
to the scores you assign:
1 = Unacceptable performance. This group member did not contribute to the
success of the group, and/or may even have slowed us down.
2 = Very poor. This group member contributed something, but
either the quantity or the quality of his/her contributions were very weak.
Virtually none of his/her contributions showed up in the final result, or if
they did, group members regret not having the time to change these contributions.
3 = Below Average. This group member made real and positive
contributions that improved the final product, but not in ways as significant
or pervasive as I expect of a typical Whitman student.
4 = Average/Good. This group member did her/his duty,
contributing a reasonable amount of reasonably high quality insight, thought,
hard work, and cooperative engagement with the group. Her/his ideas made a
significant and positive contribution to the final product. (This should be the
standard default score.)
5 = Very good. This group member went above and beyond what
one would expect of a typical member of a group. S/he had insights far beyond
other members of the group, and/or raised important questions that focused on
key issues, and/or explained difficult material to other group members in
particularly clear and helpful ways, and/or helped organize or motivate the
rest of the group in particularly important ways. (You should give at most one
score above 5.)
6 = Excellent. This group member transformed the group in a
way that made the final product and the overall experience manifestly better
than they would otherwise have been. S/he was a de facto team leader,
motivating and organizing us, and s/he contributed in essential and
irreplaceable ways to our performance as a team. (You should give at most one score above 5.)
7 = Extraordinary. I could not have imagined a team member as
valuable as this one. S/he should be hired as a Whitman professor,
or at least as TA for this class next year. (You should give at most one score
of 7 during the course of the semester.)
Presentations: Over the course of the semester, there will be
several opportunities for students to give presentations on important early
modern philosophers that we will not focus on for this course. Any student is
free to sign up for these class presentations. If no students
sign up for a given philosopher, we will not discuss that philosopher in this
course. If more than 2 students sign up for a particular philosopher, only the
first two who sign up will be allowed to present (as a pair) on that
philosopher. You must sign up at least 10 days before the scheduled
presentation. Students who sign up for presentations will need to read primary
sources by this person and secondary sources about them, and then pick a short
selection (no more than 10 pages, preferably less than 5 pages) for your
classmates to read that will give the main points and at least one major
argument of the philosopher. (These selections must be made available to your
classmates the class period prior to your presentation. You may either email
the class with a link, document, or PDF; or bring 25 copies of the reading to
hand out in class.) On the day of the presentation, students will be expected
to give a short presentation (no more than 10 minutes) providing an overview of
the philosopher on whom they are presenting.
(Powerpoint have
often been effective for these presentations, but they should be used
well.) This overview should go
substantially beyond the assigned readings; the idea is to give fellow students
a sense for the philosopher as a whole. On these days, our class discussion in
general may incorporate the readings from these philosophers.
For each presentation, students must
prepare a paper (1500-3000 words) outlining the key aspects of the philosopher
on whom they presented. While you may
include a brief biography of the thinker, these papers should emphasize the
philosophical ideas and arguments of the philosopher. You should give at least some overview of the
philosophical views as a whole, but you may focus your discussion on one or two
ideas that you find most interesting and important. It is also appropriate to make connections
with other philosophers in the course, though this should be done in ways that help
elucidate the core ideas of the philosopher you presented on.
For presentations by groups of more
than one, each person should also submit a very brief self/peer assessment (as
for group assignments).
You can find information about almost
all of the figures you are expected to present on in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and
on many of them in the in the Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century
Philosophy (on reserve). The Philosopher’s
Index, available through Penrose, is also a good way to find recent scholarly
articles that deal with your philosopher.
You can also find information on many modern philosophers not mentioned
in the syllabus. If you would like to
present on a figure who is not included, you will
probably be able to do so if you let me know early in the semester so that I
can schedule an appropriate class time for your presentation. Cambridge
Companions are also good places to start in investigating these
philosophers (The Cambridge Companion to
Hobbes, for instance.) You are expected to make use of both primary and
secondary sources in preparing your presentation, and I strongly encourage you
to come to me for help in tracking these down. You
must make use of at least some non-electronic resources in preparing your
presentation. (Incidentally, while very helpful in some
respects, Wikipedia does
not costitute a legitimate source of information for
your presentations.)
Course Papers
One of the main skills that you will
learn in this class is the integration of historical-philosophical sources into
papers in which you defend your own answer to an important philosophical
problem. For both of the required papers
for the class, I will be looking for a clear, complex, interesting, and
controversial thesis that is defended with compelling philosophical arguments
in precise, elegant, and grammatically correct prose. Both papers will also involve interaction
with historical philosophical arguments, and I am looking for a use of such
arguments that goes beyond a mere “compare and contrast” essay and instead
engages with well-articulated and textually-defended interpretations of
historical philosophers in ways that advance your own philosophical argument.
Hobbes Paper (10%): This
assignment is required for all students.
At the end of the first unit of the course (on Hobbes), you will
write a paper related to one of the seven philosophical problems listed above
(knowledge, diversity, reality, human being, causation, good life, or
morals). In this paper, you should
articulate a specific question related to your problem, one narrower than the
question above. (For example, instead of
“to what extent is it possible to have knowledge of anything?” you might ask,
“How can motions in the brain give rise to justified beliefs about the world?”
or “How can we have knowledge of moral claims?”) You should defend a specific thesis that
answers this question, and you should use Hobbes in the course of defending
that thesis. (We will discuss in class
ways for using Hobbes to defend your own thesis.) This paper will be a first try at what you
will end up doing for your course paper at the end of the semester, so while
you will not be bound to use the same topic for the final paper, you are
encouraged to choose a topic you will want to think about for the rest of the
semester. This paper should be no less
than 800 and no more than 1500 words.
Course Paper (30%): This assignment is required for all
students. Over the course of the
semester, you will write a single, complex paper, answering a question related
to one of the seven philosophical problems listed above (knowledge, diversity,
reality, human being, causation, good life, morals). By the end of
the semester, you will write a paper of no less than 1800 and no more than 2500
words that engages with at least three of the philosophers we study over the
course of the semester and defends a clear, complex, interesting, and
controversial thesis that answers a question related to (but more specific
than) the question listed above.[3]
While your final paper is not due until the
last day of class, you should work on it throughout the semester. Over the
course of the semester, you should update your final paper, refining your
topic, question, and thesis; and incorporating arguments from philosophers as
we read them. I strongly encourage you
to submit new paper drafts after each major philosopher, incorporating material
from that philosopher into your final paper.
Throughout the course of the semester, in addition to adding
perspectives of new philosophers, you should refine the question you aim to
answer and gradually form your own ideas about how best to answer that
question, drawing from your interactions with the philosophers we are studying.
Before submitting the final draft, you will also need to decide which figures
are the most important to include in the final draft, and you will have to cut
material that is less relevant in order to ensure that you do justice to your
topic, defend your thesis adequately, and include sufficient treatments of the
three philosophers on whom you focus. The final draft of the paper will be due
on the last day of class.
Philosophical exegesis paper (10%) Your final paper and paper on Hobbes must offer
your own answer to a philosophical
problem, drawing from major historical figures.
But historians of philosophy often write papers that purport to
elucidate the ideas of a philosopher without necessarily defending those ideas as their own. Papers in philosophical exegesis generally
start with a puzzle of interpretation.
For example, Anne Conway says that there is only one created
“substance,” but also that there are infinitely many created things; so what
precisely does she mean by “substance”?
Or, for another example, Berkeley does not explicitly talk about the
nature of human freedom; given what he does say, what is his likely view on
this matter? The paper then proceeds to
answer these questions, considering various possible interpretations and
defending one’s own on the basis of specific textual support, plausibility in
the light of other claims the philosopher has made, and general philosophical
plausibility. Any student can write a
philosophical exegesis paper on any of the philosophers we read in this
course. Such papers are due at the same
time as the group project for that philosopher, and they should be 1500-2500
words in length.
Analytical critique paper (10%). Where
the philosophical exegesis paper is more
historical than the final paper, the analytical critique paper is less historical. For this paper, you should take an idea or
argument from one of the philosophers we have read and engage with that
argument in your own terms. “Critique”
here need not mean criticism of the argument or position; though it often will
involve criticism, one might also extend a point made by a philosopher or show
that an argument made in one context applies equally well in another. The distinguishing feature of this paper is
that the majority of the paper will be philosophical argument rather than interpretation. As with all papers, but particularly for
these, it is important that the thesis be clearly articulated and that you be
able to see how the thesis is controversial
and even prima facie implausible. Thus, arguing that Descartes was wrong to
think that an the existence of an evil demon would
make our beliefs unreliable could be a worthwhile thesis. Arguing that he was
wrong to think that the pineal gland is the physical seat of the soul would not
be. These papers are due at the same
time as the group project for that philosopher, and they should be 1500-2500
words in length.
Group Assignment #1: Descartes vs.
Hobbes
This assignment is designed to be done
in pairs, and I strongly recommend it for all students. It will help a lot with your final
paper. One purpose of this assignment is to revisit
your Hobbes paper, looking at the same issue but now from the standpoint of
Descartes. Another purpose is to teach
you how to work with others to improve each others’
writing and to craft philosophical positions together. The project has several steps.
(1)
Revise your Hobbes paper, in the light
of my comments and your further reflections.
Make it the strongest Hobbes paper it can be.
(2)
Exchange papers with your
partner. Each of you should,
independently, craft a Cartesian response to the philosophical thesis advanced
in the Hobbes paper. This response
should be 1000-1500 words and should advance a clear thesis, something like
“While Mary successfully argues against Hobbes’ claim that reason is based on
words, she fails to offer a plausible alternative account of reason; seeing
reason as a faculty implanted by God would significantly improve her argument”
or “Tony’s claim that Hobbes develops a plausible materialist approach to
ethics fails to take into account the immortality of the soul. Once we take this into account, we see that
ethics cannot focus on mere bodily goods and must involve the love of God.”
(3)
Exchange these responses and then meet
with your partner to discuss them.
Revise and improve your Cartesian response to your partner’s Hobbes
paper. Repeat step (3) until each of you
has a really good paper.
(4)
Then, together, draft a short paper 800-1000 words that defends a
philosophical thesis, drawing on Hobbes, Descartes, and each of your short
papers.
You will turn in your revised Hobbes
papers, your first and final drafts of your Descartes responses, and your short
philosophical paper. The group grade,
which will be shared by both students, will be based on the final drafts of the
Descartes responses and on the joint philosophical paper.
Group Assignment #2: Spinoza Worksheet
For each proposition below, work
through Spinoza’s whole proof. I recommend reading through the assigned
reading in the order Spinoza presents it, and then working backwards through
each key proposition’s proof, tracing back to the axioms and definitions on
which it ultimately depends. When you finally turn in the worksheet, you
should have clearly written answers to each question. (Answers to part
(a) can take the form of a simple “yes” or “no.” All other questions
should be answered with at least one clear and concise paragraph.)
1. Prop 11: God . . . necessarily
exists.
a) Does Spinoza
successfully prove proposition 11?
b) If not, what specific inferences are invalid, what specific
axioms are false, and/or what specific definitions are illegitimate? (In
answering this question, be prepared to explain in precisely what sense the
inferences are invalid, the axioms are false, or the definitions are
illegitimate; and also be sure that you have identified the precise role that
such inferences, axioms, or definitions play in Spinoza’s argument.)
c) Without considering Spinoza’s subsequent
argument about the nature of God, what significance would P 11 have for
Spinoza’s contemporaries (e.g. Descartes)?
d) Without considering Spinoza’s subsequent
argument about the nature of God, what significance would believing it have
for us?
2. Prop. 14: There can be . . .
no other substance but God.
a) Explain P 14
without using any of Spinoza’s technical vocabulary, in a way that would make
sense and be interesting to a friend who had never read any philosophy.
b) Given
Prop 11, does Spinoza successfully prove proposition 14?
c) If not, what
specific inferences are invalid, what specific axioms are false, and/or what
specific definitions are illegitimate? (In answering this question, be
prepared to explain in precisely what sense the inferences are invalid, the
axioms are false, or the definitions are illegitimate.) In particular,
are there any invalid inferences between P11 and P14 (or
any new axioms or definitions of which Spinoza makes use that are
problematic)? That is, is Spinoza correct that if God
necessarily exists, then there can be no substance but God?
d) What
significance would believing P 14 have for Spinoza’s contemporaries (e.g.
Descartes)?
e) What
significance would believing it have for us?
3. Prop. 28: Every individual
thing . . ..
a)
Explain P 14 without using any of
Spinoza’s technical vocabulary, in a way that would make sense and be
interesting to a friend who had never read any philosophy.
b)
Given Props 11 and 14, does Spinoza
successfully prove proposition 28?
c)
If not, what specific inferences are
invalid, what specific axioms are false, and/or what specific definitions are
illegitimate? (In answering this question, be prepared to explain in
precisely what sense the inferences are invalid, the axioms are false, or the
definitions are illegitimate.)
d)
What significance would believing P 28
have for Spinoza’s contemporaries (e.g. Descartes)?
e)
What significance would believing it
have for us?
4. Book II, Prop. 7: The order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
a) What is the
significance of P 7 within Spinoza’s Ethics? (For example, what significance does it play
in understanding the definitions to part I)
b) What
significance would believing P 7 have for Spinoza’s contemporaries (e.g.
Descartes)?
c) What
significance would believing it have for us?
5. Book V, Prop 25. For analyzing this Proposition, you should
use the hypertext edition of Spinoza’s Ethics, available at http://www.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Spinoza/ethica-front.html.
a) What do you
think would be the most problematic aspects of Spinoza’s proof of proposition
25?
b) What
significance would believing it have for us? (Here take into account,
too, Book V, P42.)
6. Is Spinoza a better Cartesian than
Descartes? Keep your response to less
than 1000 words.
Group
Assignment #3: Lockean Poetics
Analyze a poem in terms of Locke's Essay (and, insofar as
it’s relevant, his Second Treatise). While you may present
your results in the form of a paper, I encourage you to do a poster or any
other format for which you get prior approval from me (e.g. a short play).[4] YOU MAY ANALYZE ANY POEM THAT YOU
CHOOSE. (For a complete and
searchable e-text of Locke’s Essay, click HERE.
And HERE is a great site for finding poems.)
The analysis should explain what sorts
of ideas are referred to by some representative words in the poem. (Aim to find
at least one example each of simple ideas of sensation, simple ideas of
reflection, complex ideas of sensation and complex
ideas of reflection. If possible, you also should give examples of primary and
secondary qualities in the poem.) You should analyze the literal meaning of the
poem, discussing whether it provides "knowledge" in Lockean terms, or probable opinion, or both or neither. But
you should also discuss what you take the main point of the poem to be, what
the poem teaches, what it does to the reader, and so
on. As a whole, does the poem provide "knowledge" in Lockean terms? If so, specifically how?
If not, is this a problem for the poem (or for Locke's theory of knowledge)?
Group Assignment #4: "Cross-Disciplinary Conversations with
Hume"
(This assignment will be done in pairs.)
Due at 5 PM ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH
For this assignment, you will need to help other people explain the most important
aspects of Hume's thought, the relevance of his ideas to their chosen
discipline (major), and their opinions about his philosophy. First, you'll need
to find two friends or acquaintances who have never taken a philosophy class
and who have different majors from each other. Then, you'll need some sort of
recording device (a tape recorder, a microphone-computer set up, or something
similar). Finally, you'll need a comfortable place for a chat, and the
requisite refreshments so that you and your guest are comfortable. (Please
avoid intoxicants while you complete the assignment.) Once you are set up, the
two of you simply need to explain to your guests the basics of Hume's
philosophy, answer questions, clarify Hume’s views, find out what your guests find
most interesting about it . . . in other words, you need to have a
conversation. During this, you should take the stance of people defending Hume's view. (Aim to be Hume-channelers.) In
addition, you should specifically address – and try to figure out with your
interlocutors – the relevance of Hume to their majors. (This is likely to work best if you focus on
one or two key example from within their discipline, such as a particular
scientific or history claim, or a particular approach to art or even a particular
painting.) Your conversation should last
at least an hour, and you should record the whole conversation. However, what you will actually turn in is
three recordings of no more than 7 minutes each (and no more than 12 minutes
total). The first recording should include what you think is the most
interesting and important 5-7 minutes of your conversation. (This can be made up of distinct, shorter
sections of conversation or be a single section.) The second recording should
be the one in which your guests most clearly explains Hume's thought, applies
that thought to their own discipline, and gives his or her opinion about it. In
the final recording (which you can make at a later time), you should explain
what was hardest to explain about Hume, and/or any challenges that you
encountered in the course of your conversation. (At the start of the
conversation, and at the start of the recording that you turn in, you should
have each participant in the conversation state their full name, year, and
major.)
For help setting up and/or editing these
tapes, you may contact Instructional Multimedia Services (see http://www.whitman.edu/content/wcts/ims/).
The recordings should all be converted into .mp3 or .wma
or some other easily readable digital form, and emailed to me.
[1] There is one other exception to this policy. Students who choose to do group assignments
and get very low peer reviews on those group assignments will have those
assignments count towards their final grade, even if they do better on other
assignments.
[2] In special circumstances, I reserve the right to weigh the
individual portion of the grade more heavily.
This will be particularly relevant in cases where a particular student makes
an extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad contribution to their group.
[3] For example, you may start with “What is the human being?” and
end up with a paper that answers the question “Is freedom necessary for moral
responsibility?” by using Spinoza, Hume, and Kant to argue something like,
“While Kant thinks that he can preserve human freedom as a necessary condition
of the possibility of morality, his metaphysics in fact offers decisive reasons
to reject freedom. Fortunately, as Spinoza and Hume show in very different
ways, a robust conception of moral responsibility is consistent with this
rejection of freedom.”
[4] If you do a poster, play, or other non-electronic form of presentation, you should either turn the item in to my office or arrange with me for a means of performing it/turning it in.