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SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS
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PART ONE: THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD
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Module I: Cartesian Rationalism
Week 1 Introduction: Truth and Knowledge
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “It is Now 100 Seconds to Midnight”
Rene Descartes, Meditations, The First & Second Meditations
Week 2 From Skepticism to Knowledge: The Cogito and the Cartesian Circle
Meditations, The Third & Fourth Meditations
Barry Stroud, “The External World”
Erion & Smith, “Skepticism, Morality, and the Matrix”
Week 3 Mind and Matter: Cartesian Dualism & Princess Elisabeth’s Critique
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The Fifth & Sixth Meditations Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Letters
David Chalmers, Philosophical Zombies
Module II: Humean Empiricism
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Week 4 The Empiricist Mind: Impressions & Ideas
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David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section I
Enquiry II & III
Week 5 Hume’s Bonfire: Knowledge and Its Limits
Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Waterless Moat”
Enquiry IV, V, VII
Week 6 The Scottish Heretic: Naturalism, Religion, and Morality
Enquiry X
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Enquiry X1
Week 7 Slave of the Passions: Hume’s Moral Psychology
David Hume, Treatise Book III, Part III
Annette Baier, “What is an Emotion About?”
Sabine Döring, “Why Be Emotional?”
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PART TWO: THE LATE MODERN PERIOD
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Module III: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
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Week 8 Kant’s Third Way Intuitions, Concepts, and the Synthetic A Priori
Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Preface, Introduction, Preamble, I, II, & III
Week 9 Morality as Practical Rationality: Kant’s Moral System
Groundwork Chapters 1 & II
Christine Korsgaard, "Kant's Formula of Universal Law"
Jennifer Uleman, “Kant’s Theory of Motivation”
Week 10 What is Evil? Rationality and the Problem of Evil
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Hannah Arendt, Selections “Eichmann in Jerusalem”
Michelle Kosch, “Kant on Autonomy and Moral Evil”
Kant, Selections from the Critique of Practical Reason
Week 11 The Suffering Other: The Compassion-Based Critique of Kant
Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good
Josephine Donovan, “Attention to Suffering: A Feminist Care Ethic”
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Module IV: Beyond Truth and Error: Nietzsche’s Challenge
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Week 12 The Death of God and the Problem of Nihilism
Parable of the Madman Selected Gay Science
Genealogy First Essay
Week 13 Herd Morality, Ressentiment, and the Will to Truth
Genealogy Second & Third Essay
Week 14 Creating Values: Who are Nietzsche’s Free Spirits?
Nadeem Hussain, “Honest Illusion”
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