Below is a listing of the Graduate classes being offered for Fall 2008. For information on specific times, days and instructors, please check  the Master Class Schedule on NOVASIS.

PHI 8710 - 001 TOPIC: On God CRN: 23111

Days: MW from 03:00 pm to 05:30 pm

This course will pay particular attention to difficulties that have arisen in post-Enlightenment modernity concerning the question of God and the following considerations will be stressed. First, the need to understand the sources of modern godlessness in western thought. Second, the inescapability of the question of God, even despite this godlessness. Third, attention to some significant landmark thinkers who have exerted important influences like Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, to name some. Fourth, the need to have some sophisticated sense of the more classical approaches to God (with thinkers like Anselm and Aquinas), in their strengths and limits. Fifth, the need to have an understanding of the ontological ethos within which the quest for God emerges and takes shape. Sixth, how our approaches to God are shaped by fundamental senses of being. Seventh, how these senses of being influence a plurality of distinctive conceptions of God. Eight, how these senses allow a constructive renewal of the thinking of what God might be or be like.

Required Texts: W. Desmond, God and the Between (Blackwell, 2008)
J. Hick, Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, latest edition (Prentice-Hall, Inc)

Some Recommended Texts:
R. Kearney, The God who Maybe (Indiana University Press, 2001)
M. Westphal, Overcoming Ontotheology (Fordham University Press, 2001)
J-L Marion, God without Being (University of Chicago Press, 1991)
Ludwig Heyde, The Weight of Finitude (SUNY, 1999)
John Caputo, On Religion (Routledge, 2001)
W. Desmond, Hegel’s God - A Counterfeit Double? (Ashgate, 2003)
W. Desmond, Is there a Sabbath for Thought? Between Philosophy and Religion (Fordham UP, 2005)

Instructor: William Desmond
Comment: Course Dates: 8/25/08 - 10/3/08.
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8710 - 002 TOPIC: Plato and Aristotle CRN: 23115

Days: T from 02:30 pm to 05:00 pm

Plato and Aristotle: Concepts of Body. Plato and Aristotle both offer accounts of “body”; for Plato body is the by-product of several motions of the soul. The soul starts with a point [itself a monad that has position] and moves it in one direction to produce a line; the line is moved in one direction to produce a surface; the surface is rotated in various ways to produce different kinds of solid and at this point the activity of soul becomes sensible. For Aristotle, body is in the category of quantity; this category is divided into plurality, which is discrete, indivisible, and numerable [think atoms] and magnitude which is continuous, infinitely potentially divisible, and measurable; body is perfect magnitude. Body, perfect magnitude, is bounded by a surface, a surface is bounded by a line and a line is bounded by a point. There is no such think as a “free-standing” point. We shall read a number of texts from Plato, e.g., Laws X, the Timaeus, parts of the Republic and Sophist, and from Aristotle, e.g., from the Categories, the Physics and the metaphysics. We shall consider not only the particulars of each account but how each account in its own ways opposes Democritean atomism; we shall also look briefly beyond Plato and Aristotle to Stoic physics as a response to them.

Instructors: Helen S. Lang (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8710 - 004 TOPIC: Structuralism/Event Phil CRN: 23119

Days: T from 05:30 pm to 08:00 pm

The primary goal of this course will be to understand the major developments in postwar French philosophy by situating them in their larger cultural, social and political context. In order to delimit this vast subject, we will take as our fil conducteur (guiding thread) the important relationship between philosophy and the social sciences—most notably anthropology, sociology, and history—in the postwar era. We will begin by looking at a “control group” from an entirely different historical context: the work of the supposed father of French philosophy, René Descartes. After an examination of a series of key issues in Cartesian philosophy (including subjectivity, truth, science, language and the delimitation of human beings from the animal world), we will turn to the role Descartes played in the Foucault/Derrida debate, which clearly illustrates what was at stake in the supposed shift from Structuralism to Poststructuralism. We will explore most notably the way in which Foucault’s break with the hagiographic elevation of philosophic figures beyond their historical contexts was seen as a problem by Derrida, who claimed that Foucault—his former philosophy professor—was unable to truly read philosophic texts. In other words, we will situate the Foucault/Derrida debate in the larger cultural context of the struggle between philosophy and the social sciences by examining how Structuralism was, in part, an attempt to merge philosophy with the social sciences (history, in the case of Foucault), whereas the Poststructuralist break consisted in rejecting such an undertaking. Against this backdrop, we will then turn to the most recent developments on the French intellectual scene by concentrating on the work of two living philosophers: Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. By focusing on their common attempt to break with their Poststructuralist predecessors in the name of a certain form of “Event Philosophy,” we will also have the opportunity to probe into the ways in which the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences has evolved over the last 20 or 30 years. More specifically, we will look into how their debate on aesthetics can partially be interpreted as a renewal of the Foucault/Derrida controversy, insofar as Rancière’s work on aesthetics is clearly situated in the wake of Foucault and Badiou’s rejection of “historicism” has numerous parallels in Derrida’s work. However, we will also discuss the limitations of such comparisons, most notably by exploring the ground shared by the “philosophers of the event” in the field of politics. This historical overview of contemporary French philosophy from Foucault to Rancière will go hand in hand with an ongoing methodological investigation into the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences in an attempt to hone tools for a critical theory of society.
Instructors: Gabriel Rockhill  (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8710 - 005 TOPIC: Theologico-Political Problem: Spinoza, Marx, Freud CRN: 23120

Days: R from 05:30 pm to 08:00 pm

This course could be subtitled “Materialist History and Politics,” except that we would need to start with Machiavelli and Hobbes, or perhaps even “Impossible Books.”  This semester, we will take up four extremely controversial authors and their difficult to interpret texts on the relationship of religion, philosophy, politics, and society.  The primary texts are

Baruch Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise (1670)
Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (1844)
Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence” (1921),
“Theologico-Political Fragment” (1938);
“On the Concept of History” (1940)
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism (1939).

All four of the authors might be called heterodox Jews; three experienced forms of political exile and/or existential threat contemporaneous with, and reflected in, the texts we will read.  Spinoza was expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community; Benjamin and Freud fled Hitler. (Marx, as it turns out, was expelled from Paris in 1845 over his support for an attempted assassination of Frederick William IV of Prussia.)  All four thinkers represent a materialist approach to history, politics, and the construction and preservation of community.  Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise is the ur-text in the series, and the three succeeding authors pick up and reflect on his concerns about religious nationalism, the relationship of reason and imagination in socio-political life, the origins of laws and political structure, the role of memory and trauma in political identity, and the non-teleological nature of history. 

Time permitting, we will read related texts such as Jacques Derrida’s “Force of Law: the Mystical Foundation of Authority” (1989-90) and Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (1922).  We will also explore contemporary scholarship related to our texts.
Requirements:  Seminar participation and a term paper not to exceed 25 pages.

Instructors: Julie Klein (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8720 - 001 TOPIC: Wittgenstein CRN: 23121

Days: R from 02:30 pm to 05:00 pm

Arguably Wittgenstein is the key figure in the history of 20th century philosophy. We propose in this seminar to conduct a close reading of his two major works: Tracatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. We will focus on his fascination with the philosophical significance of language, his eventual disillusionment with the notion of logical form, and the transition to the enigmatic concept of "forms of life." We will also give select attention to the new wave of Wittgenstein interpretation.

Instructors: Paul M. Livingston E-mail, James R. Wetzel  (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8720 - 002 TOPIC: Beauvoir CRN: 23123

Days: W from 06:00 pm to 08:30 pm

Simone de Beauvoir — philosopher, writer, and social activist — radically challenged 20th century existentialist and political theory. This course critically examines Beauvoir’s work, drawing from her philosophical essays, novels, short stories, and political articles. The course explores situated freedom, the individual other, the social Other, oppression, reciprocity, socialism as a liberatory strategy, and of course, Beauvoirian feminism. Understanding Beauvoir's thought in relation to each of these themes reveals the importance of her influence on contemporary philosophy and feminist theory.

Instructors: Sally J Scholz  (P)
Comment: The time for this course may change;
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8835 - 001 Independent Study II CRN: 23124

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 8870 - 001 Consortium I CRN: 23562

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: May not be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Continuing Studies, Undergraduate
 

PHI 8875 - 001 Consortium II CRN: 23563

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: May not be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Continuing Studies, Undergraduate

PHI 9000 - 001 Doctoral Dissertation I CRN: 23125

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 9020 - 001 Doctoral Dissertation II CRN: 23126

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences

PHI 9081 - 001 Dissertation Continuation CRN: 23127

Instructors: Walter Brogan (P)
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Levels: Graduate Arts and Sciences