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”