Course
Syllabus
The
required weekly readings will be listed next to the day on which they will be
discussed in class. Since discussion of the assigned readings contributes to
your class participation grade, you are strongly encouraged to complete the
assignments in advance of the deadline. You are further encouraged to complete
the readings earlier since this will allow you to start effecting the syntheses
necessary to do well on exams and essays and to ask informed questions during
the lectures.
Anything
listed as (PCOPY) will be distributed as a photocopy in class. All other
readings are drawn from the required readings available for purchase in the
bookstore.
Week
1 (September
4-8): Ancient Greece and Modern Philosophy
T: Language Communities and the
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
Required Reading: Course
Syllabus
Th:
Socrates, Plato, and the Beginnings of Western Philosophy
Required Reading: Plato,
excerpts from Cratylus, Republic, and Timeaus. (PCOPY)
Week 2 (September 11-15): Athens meets Jerusalem
T:
Aristotle
Required Reading: Excerpts
from Aristotle, De Anima, Nicomachean Ethics and Politics (PCOPY)
Th:
The Judeo-Christian Tradition
Required Reading: Genesis 1-25; Exodus 1-20; excerpts from The
Gospel of Matthew, 1.1-25; The
Gospel of Mark,1.1-14;
The Gospel of Luke, 1.1-4; The Gospel
of John, 1.1-18; and Pauls
Letter to the Romans.(PCOPY)
Week 3 (September 18-22): The Medieval Synthesis
T: Christian Philosophy: Paul and
Augustine
Required Reading: Augustine, Confessions,
Books 1- 5, 8-10 pp.
1-82, 127--208
Required Reading: Dante, Divine
Comedy, Canto I
(PCOPY); Ibn Tufayl, Hayy
Ibn Yaqzan, pp. 95-166.
Week 4 (September 25-29): Humanism and the Renaissance
T:
Petrarch and Italian Humanism
Required Reading: Petrarch, The
Secret, pp. 45-154.
Th: Man the Measure of All Things
Required Reading: Pico della
Mirandola, Oration
on the Dignity of Man, pp. 1-63
Week 5 (October 2-6): Secularism, Individualism, and Materialism
I
T:
Machiavelli
Required Reading: Machiavelli,
The Prince, pp. 1-72
(the entire text), and excerpts from Discourses
on Livy, pp. 90-94.
Th:
Required Reading: Paper
Preparation
Week 6 (October 9-13): The Globalization of Europe
T:
*** FIRST
CRITICAL ESSAY DUE IN CLASS ***
Required Reading: Christopher
Columbus, excerpts from Columbuss Log of the first voyage 1492-93; Letter
to Fernando and Isabel (1500); other documents describing Columbus's first voyage
(PCOPY).
Week 7 (October 16-20): The Protestant Reformation/Revolution
T: Martin Luther and the Sovereign Self
Required Reading: Martin
Luther, Preface
to Pauls Letter to the Romans; John Calvin, On
Predestination,
from Institutions of the Christian Religion; Ignatius Loyola, from Spiritual Exercises, and the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum (1559) (PCOPY)
Required Reading:
Week 8 (October 23-27): The New Science
Required Reading: Francis
Bacon, The New Atlantis (PCOPY)
Th:
Galileo and the Making of the Science/Religion Divide
Required Reading: Galileo,
Letter
to Granduchess Christina (PCOPY)
Week 9 (October 30-November 3): Ren Descartes, First Modern Philosopher?
T: Descartes Discourse on Method
Required Reading: Ren
Descartes, Discourse
on Method, pp. 1-18, Meditations
on First Philosophy,
I-III, pp.
47-81.
Th:
Descartes Meditations
Required Reading: Ren
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, IV-VI, pp. 81-103, Discourse
on Method, pp. 23-44.
Week 10 (November 6-10): Thinking through Cartesianism I
T:
The Machines of Thomas Hobbess
Required
Reading: Thomas Hobbes, excerpts from Leviathan (PCOPY)
Th: Descartes and the Birth of
Feminism
Required Reading: Franois
Poullain de la Barre, On the Equality of the Two Sexes, pp. 49-121.
Week 11 (November 13-17): Thinking through Cartesianism II
T: Descartes en outr? Spinozas Monism and
Materialism
Required Reading: Benedict
Spinoza,The
Ethics, Part I, II, and V (PCOPY)
Required Reading: Paper
Preparation
Week 12 (November 20-24): Thinking through Cartesianism III
T:
Th: THANKSGIVING
Week
13 (November 27
December 1): From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science
M: November 27, before 12 noon. *** SECOND CRITICAL ESSAY DUE *** Papers Due in 614 SST or 756 SST.
Required Reading: Isaac
Newton, excerpts from Book III, The System of the World, from Principia
Mathematica; Roger
Cotes, Preface to the Second Edition of Newtons Principia Mathematica (PCOPY)
Recommended:
Browse through the complete contents of the Principia using this
online edition.
Required Reading: Isaac Newton, Scholium on Time and Space, General Scholium, from the Principia (PCOPY)
Recommended:
Browse through the complete contents of the Principia using this online
edition.
Week 14 (December 4-8): Secularism, Individualism, and
Materialism II
T: Spinozism, Newtonianism and the Radical Enlightenment
Required Reading: Excerpts
from Treatise of the Three Impostors; Excerpts from John Toland, Pantheisticon (PCOPY)
Th:
Natural Philosophy versus Science: The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence
Required Reading: The
Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 4-87.
Week 15: (December 11-15): Science and Modern Subjectivity
T:
Man a Machine
Required Reading: Denis
Diderot, DAlemberts Dream, pp. 149-223.
*** FINAL PAPER DUE ***