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Doctoral Course Offerings, Fall 2009 |
PHI 601 Temporality and Time in AugustineAugustine's importance in the philosophy of time is not exhausted by the tiresomely familiar riff from Confessions XI "Don't ask me, I know; ask me, I don't know." His work is a bridge between time as a problem in physics and speculative logic--time as succession and duration--and temporality as the problem of the unity of past, present, and future. After reviewing by way of orientation the treatises on time in Aristotle and Plotinus, we will give close attention to Augustine's early work On Music, deriving from the Pythagorean quadrivium; then to his transitional work Confessions, especially books X and XI; and finally to the fully temporal interpretation of mind as imago dei in the treatise On Trinity. The approach to the material is shaped by phenomenology: on the problem of natural time, by Husserl, and on temporality, by Heidegger, Being and Time. PHI 602 Kant's Ethics in Historical ContextThis seminar treats Kant's foundational principles of the metaphysics of morals in light of their historical context. After we get clear about some major types of ethical theory found in 17th and 18th century moral philosophy, we'll examine key concepts and arguments encounteredÊin works written by Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Rousseau. We'll then turn to a close reading of the following texts:Ê Kant&emdash;Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Sections 1 and 2; Critique of Practical Reason, Chapter 1 (5:19-42); Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction (6:214-221) and Introduction to the Doctrine of Virtue (6:379-540). Required texts: Kant, Practical Philosophy (Cambridge 1996); J. B. Schneewind, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant (Cambridge 2003). PHI 616 Philosophy and Technology: Play, Technofantasy and ImaginationThe technoscience research seminar
is a contemporary, interdisciplinary seminar which reads in the areas of
philosophy of science, philosophy of technology and science studies. We
read living authors in common and participants take turns making
presentations followed by critical discussion. Each participant will
also have a research project which will be presented in the seminar. The
projects may be designed for submission to conferences and eventual
publication. For four years now we have regularly presented at the
Society for the Social Studies of Science, the Society for Philosophy
and Technology and the Society for Phenomenology and Human Sciences.
Each term we begin with a theme, for example, this term we are looking
at instruments in visual art, music and science, and last fall we did
critical animal studies. This fall term we will examine the role of
play, technofantasy, and imagination in relation to technologies. We
will begin with readings from Hans Moravec, Marvin Minsky, and Ray
Kurzweil, all techno-utopians, some with hopes of downloading oneÕs mind
into a computer. But we will also read critics such as Hubert Dreyfus
and others. What do futures hold? Will humans become post-or
trans-human? And what role do imagination and play hold for technology
development? For more information, email dihde@notes.cc.sunysb.edu PHI 619 Challenges to Biomedical EthicsBiomedical ethics in one form applies philosophical concepts to practical decision making in the areas of biomedical research and medical practice. However, such deductive approaches have met with criticism from a number of perspectives: the revival of moral casuistry (Jonsen and Toulmin); the use of mid-level principles (Beauchamp and Childress); the ethics of care; and a retrieved virtue theory emphasizing values intrinsic to the art of healing. Many of these define a medical ethic from within. Still, there are those such as Peter Singer who remain invested in a highly deductive utilitarian approach and who remain highly influential. Not only are the basic methods of bioethics under serious critique, philosophical concepts are being challenged as questions of dignity more to the fore of practical quandries, among which are the notion of personhood, the dichotomy between autonomy and paternalism, the primacy of reason in ethical decision making, and the marginalization of care, emotions and narrative in moral decision making. The course will explore the state of bioethics, and consider various challenges that have been launched, especially from feminist bioethics, care ethics and from the disability community. We will use the latest edition of Practical Ethics by Peter Singer, Principles of Bioethics by James F. Childress and Tom Beauchamp; The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, by Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, Naturalized Bioethics: Toward Responsible Knowing and Practice by Hilde Lindemann, Marian Verkerk, and Margaret Urban Walker (eds.), and the forthcoming Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy, by Eva Kittay and Licia Carlson as well as articles in contemporary journals of philosophy and bioethics. The course will be team taught by Eva Kittay, Department of Philosophy and Stephen Post, Director of Stony BrookÕs newly established Center for Medical Humanities, Bioethics, and Compassionate Care, and will call on the participation of some of the Fellows of the Center. PHI 630 Difference in Recent Continental Philosophy: Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, IrigarayEmphatically after Hegel—indeed, already in Plato’s Sophist—difference has been at the center of philosophical thinking. If philosophy is really about "making distinctions" (Aristotle), then the philosopher is the thinker who discerns differences, as happened abundantly in ancient, medieval, and early modern times. The issue of difference as such was re-engaged in Heidegger’s later writings, which preceded the emergence of philosophies of difference in France in the late 1960s and in ensuing decades. Spurred on by de Saussure’s idea that in language there are only differences and no positive terms, thinkers as diverse as the later Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard, who among others began to reconsider the power and effects of difference in many domains, often taking language as exemplary. Among these others are three figures who, writing in the wake of Heidegger, will form the centerpiece of this seminar: Derrida, Deleuze, and Irigaray. Derrida led the way with his model of "différance," which has extensive implications for the philosophical understanding of time and space, for relations with the other, and the nature of signs (especially writing). Deleuze followed forth very shortly after with reflections on the potent interplay of difference and repetition, finding in this pair of ideas a pas de deux that was neither dialectical nor phenomenological but something at once ontological and political. Irigaray, in her first avatar a psychoanalyst and semiotician who broke decisively with Freud and Lacan, came to reconceive difference as primarily a matter of "sexual difference," which in her view rivals Heidegger’s notion of the "ontological difference" between Being and beings. We shall read crucial texts by the four main figures at stake in the title of this course, giving comparatively brief attention to Heidegger and Derrida so as to focus on the challenging and enigmatic work of Deleuze and Irigaray. A projected list of core readings is likely to include the following texts, though others to be announced are highly pertinent: Heidegger, "Identity and Difference;" Derrida, "Différance"; Deleuze, significant portions of Difference and Repetition; Irigaray, "Sexual Difference" and selected parts of Speculum. Background readings will include Merleau-Ponty, "The Body as Expression and Speech" (from Phenomenology of Perception) and "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" (from Signs); Lacan, "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" and "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious", or Reason since Freud" (both from Ecrits); Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language: on the Distinction of the Semiological from the Symbolic; and Lyotard, The Differend. PHI 638 Philosophical PsychologyThe goal of this seminar is to develop a coherent (though not complete) phenomenology of the body and then see whether it can be extended into an account of affectivity and the emotions. We will do a couple of "depth probes" into Merleau-Ponty’s ground breaking Phenomenology of Perception but the seminar will focus on more recent work that advances phenomenological accounts of the body and affectivity. A concluding unit will sketch a semantics of psychosomatic symptoms. PHI 639 From Political Theology to the Political Philosophy of ReligionThis seminar will begin with a systematic comparison of two great German figures in first half of the last century, Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. Both stand for polar positions, one putting Classical Antiquity against monotheism, the other defending a return to a pre-Hobbesian Catholicism. Then we will engage the work of two important theologians, each representing different version of political theology, from the theological camp: Gustavo Gutierrez and Johann Baptist Metz. These comparisons then will be juxtaposed to recent discussions in the United States about public role of religion, especially as it is taken up in the work of Wolterstoff. The seminar, thus, moves from political theology formulated from without theology, to political theology formulated from within, to then conclude with a political philosophical analysis of religion in the public sphere that is agnostic and abstemious about theological claims. CLT 602 EGL/603.02/FRN 571/ITL 571 PostmodernismsWhat is the postmodern—culturally, aesthetically,
politically, philosophically? What are the differences between the
postmodern and the modern? What is the relation between a postmodernism
and post-modernity? How have those differences been articulated by
various contemporary philosophical, cultural, and art
theorists—particularly in European thought of the late 20th and early
21st centuries? In what sense, is the postmodern plural—as
postmodernisms? In the post-Sept 11th world, how does postmodern thinking
help us to understand significant events in contemporary thought and
cultures? |