Philosophy

Courses

PHIL 120: Philosophical Inquiry

Credits 4
Introduces students to philosophical thinking as well as to figures in the history of philosophy. Topics vary. Stresses careful reading of primary sources. Recent topics include philosophy and film, ethics and political life, and environmental ethics.

PHIL 130: Symbolic Logic

Credits 3
The study of formal, deductive logic emphasizing the methods for demonstrating the validity of arguments. Includes truth functional propositional logic and quantification theory through the logic of relations.

PHIL 155: Ancient Greek Philosophy

Credits 4
An examination of Greek philosophy beginning with the pre-Socratic period and emphasizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. Reading is mainly in the primary sources.

PHIL 180: Existentialism

Credits 3
Explores the question of the meaning of human existence as it has been discussed primarily from the late 19th century to the present day. Draws on a variety of resources, including plays, short stories, films and traditional philosophical texts in the existentialist tradition. Topics may include the notion of individuality, the nature of freedom and its limits, one's relationship to God, and one's responsibility to the community.

PHIL 230: Topics in Aesthetics

Credits 3

Introductory course in aesthetics. Examines a topic or issue that is of importance to historical or contemporary philosophical aesthetics. Topics include the experience of art and the philosophical implications of its creation and reception; the relationship between politics and art; and the cultural impact of various art media, including but not limited to, literature, film and classical representational pieces. Depending upon the topic, readings chosen from works by classical and contemporary philosophers, art critics and artists themselves.

PHIL 250: Modern Philosophy

Credits 4
Focuses on European philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Readings from primary sources introduce students to traditional epistemological and metaphysical questions in the western philosophical tradition.

PHIL 252: Philosophy and Film Theory

Credits 4
Investigates the relationship between philosophical ideas and visual narratives. Examines the philosophical foundations of various theories of film and interprets visual narratives in terms of philosophical ideas.

PHIL 280: Seminar

Credits 4
An intermediate seminar on a single figure, topic or movement. Oral participation is as important as written work. Recent topics include feminist philosophies, skepticism, postcolonial theory, Heidegger and the ethics of belief.

PHIL 310: Philosophy of Law

Credits 4

"What is Law" in the context of legal structure, power, rule and obligation. This course examines the relations between legal rules and the rules of ethics and custom, the case for civil disobedience, the difference between law and mere coercion, the social and ethical foundation of law and legitimacy, the limits of law and the state, citizens' rights against the state and one another, and the norms of our legal system, their beneficiaries and alternatives.

PHIL 315: Marxism

Credits 4
An examination of the Marxist intellectual traditions with an emphasis on the writings of Marx. Examines Marx's critique of capitalism and alienation in his early writing to his more formal analysis of capitalism in his work Capital. Looks at how later Marxists and critics of capitalism have used, criticized and reworked elements of the Marxian analysis to continue developing contemporary conceptions of a non-capitalist or classless society.

PHIL 330: Postcolonial Theory

Credits 4
A study of selected topics in Postcolonial Theory. Investigates the philosophical presuppositions of these topics and the relationship between Modern philosophy and European Colonialism.

PHIL 350: 19th Century Philosophy

Credits 4
Covers the movement of thought in Europe after Kant, focusing on such topics as the study of culture and the human sciences, the rise and fall of idealism, philosophy's turn to historicism, the concept and consciousness of modernity, and the fate of critical philosophy — or philosophy as critique — after Kant. Figures studied may include Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

PHIL 363: Bioethics

Credits 4
Introduces students to the major theoretical discussions and practical actions in the field of bioethics, with a focus on the implications that these discourses and practices have for a diverse and multicultural world. Includes an introduction to essential bioethical terminology and to a breadth of ethical theories and perspectives. Specific topics covered may include: human subject research, genetic technologies, justice and health care allocation, end of life alternatives, and so on.

PHIL 365: Philosophy of Language

Credits 3
Examines current topics in the philosophy of language as discussed in both the continental and analytic traditions of philosophy. Topics include the origin of language, question of meaning, relationship of language and the world, relationship between language and human subjectivity, question of ambiguity in dialogue, evolution of language in community and feminist critique of linguistic philosophy.

PHIL 460: Contemporary Philosophy

Credits 4
Covers a number of the main figures and movements in 20th- and 21st-century continental philosophy. Figures studied may include Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Habermas, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Wittgenstein. Movements studied may include classical phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, feminism, critical theory, philosophy of language and contemporary epistemology. Some analytic philosophers may be read to explore the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy.

PHIL 480: Seminar

Credits 4
An advanced seminar on a single figure, topic or movement. Oral participation is as important as written work. Recent topics include feminist philosophies, skepticism, postcolonial theory, Kant's second and third Critiques, Heidegger and the ethics of belief.

PHIL 487: Senior Capstone Experience I

Credits 3

Students in this course will develop their research and writing skills in preparation for writing a thesis length essay in PHIL 488 Senior Capstone II. Participants will learn to do research and writing by way of library instruction, peer-review writing, and bibliographic development. This teaching-learning process will necessarily involve "awakening the 'teacher within'" by requiring all participants to assume the role of teaching the seminar some aspect of their research. The essays the students produce in this seminar will subsequently be evaluated by the Philosophy Department as a whole and not solely by the seminar's instructor of record.

PHIL 488: Senior Capstone Experience II

Credits 3
The second semester seniors in this course extends the research begun in PHIL 488 Senior Capstone Experience I with a view toward preparing the first semester's work for presentation at Earlham's Annual Research Conference and possibly for publication in an undergraduate philosophy journal. Additionally, this course will provide instruction preparing students for an oral exam at the end of the semester in the subject area they have been researching. If adjustments are needed to this schedule to allow for off-campus study or other reasons, students may petition the Philosophy Department in writing with a rationale supporting a proposal for a different schedule.