Summer Courses 2008
http://courses.uiuc.edu/cis/schedule/urbana/2008/SummerAll/PHIL/index.html
TERM 1
PHIL 250 – CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN NATURE 3 hours
34198 A 10:00 – 12:50 M T W R 245 EVRT Roth, M.
This course will raise and attempt to answer three questions: (1) What is being asserted when it is claimed that humans ‘have a nature’? (2) Given the answer to (1), is there such a thing as human nature? (3) If there is, what is it? We will explore these questions through a comparative analysis of seminal religious and philosophical works on the topic. Authors we will read include Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Sartre.
Grades will be based on a student’s performance in class discussion, short writing assignments, and two exams. The text for the course is The Study of Human Nature: A Reader (2nd edition), edited by Leslie Forster Stevenson.
This course satisfies the General Education Criteria for a History and Philosophy Perspectives course.
TERM 2
PHIL 102 – LOGIC AND REASONING 3 hours
30227 E 1:30 – 2:50 M T W R 161 NOYES Rukgaber, M.
Title: Critical Thinking and Analytic Writing. Description: This class will have two main components: 1) learning and practicing identifying the multitude of errors that are commonly found in ordinary, everyday arguments, and 2) learning and practicing analytic writings skills. Both of these skills have immediate, real-world value in the form of preparing you for the “analytic writing” (as well as “reading comprehension”) sections of standardized tests such as the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). However, these skills will also translate into almost all areas of academic and professional life. After introducing some basic terms and the nature of arguments, we will study such topics as 1) irrelevance, bias and emotion in reasoning, 2) causal and analogical reasoning, 3) ambiguous, vague and deceptive language, 4) authority, coercion, and personal attacks in arguments, and many more such topics. There will be many required and some optional assignments, all of which will be available online through your UIUC Compass account. There will be very little reading for this class. This class will greatly improve your ability to read, critically assess, and write about arguments.
PHIL 105 – INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS 3 hours
30228 D 3:00 – 4:20 M T W R 119 EB Schaaf, E.
Most people take morality seriously. And yet we often fail to seriously reflect upon morality. Here we need to consider certain important questions. What makes something good and what makes something right? More importantly, what are the reasons we have for holding the positions we do? Finally, which of our positions are well supported and which require revision?
In the first part of this course we will attempt to answer these questions by examining the moral theories of Plato, Hobbes, Kant, and Mill, who present diverse accounts of what makes an act right and what is good. We will conclude by examining Nietzsche’s critique of morality, in which we examine the value of our values. The goals will be to come to understand and appreciate the broad range of moral insights of these diverse thinkers, where these insights sit in accord with our moral intuitions, where they do not, and where they can help illuminate and revise our values.
Having these moral theories in hand we will then turn our attention to examining contemporary issues, including arguments for and against abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, war and torture, famine relief, and the use of animals for research. The hope is that, in understanding the various moral theories studied in the first part of the course, we can come to appreciate the subtle issues in the continuing debates regarding these topics—and come to some positive conclusions about them.
Course assignments will include weekly short written responses to the issues we deal with as well as a midterm and a final exam.
PHIL 206 – EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY 4 hours
30230 E 9:00 – 10:20 M T W R 330 ARMRY Melnick, A.
We shall consider the rise of modern philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries as a response to the rise of modern science. Our basic concern will be with what the conception of science is and what the implications of it for human knowledge, freedom, and morality are according to Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The assignments will be three short papers (5-7 pages) on matters discussed in class. There will be no mid-term or final exam.
PHIL 325 – RECENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 3 hours
TOPIC: NIETZSCHE, HEIDEGGER, HABERMAS
34199 A 12:00 – 1:20 M T W R 136 ARMRY Himmelmann, B.
In this summer course we will treat some of the major figures in recent European philosophy. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Habermas still have a great influence on philosophical discussion in Europe. We will read selected passages of some of their most important writings, thus dealing with central aspects of philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. The work of Habermas also includes features of pragmatism and, lately, an interesting discussion of the role of religion in the modern, “post-metaphysical” world.
