This year-long course examines the great ideas and great observations and experiments that have shaped the development of science. Using a case study method, students examine the interplay between observations of the physical world, attempts to explain those observations, and the methods used to test the resulting explanations. As part of the methodology of the inquiry, students learn and practice the skills of philosophical analysis, logical argument, and criticism. Topics include Aristotle’s physics, psychology, biology; ancient astronomies in Babylonian, Greek, Chinese, and Islamic cultures; ancient medical study; modern astronomy and physics and development of atomism, electro-magnetism, evolutionary theory, relativity theory and modern psychology and cognitive science.

In addition to the unique problems and questions that constitute its subject matter, philosophy makes use of a variety of intellectual tools and argumentative strategies that are widely applicable to both academic and informal inquiry. This course helps students develop these resources through a careful analysis of exemplary pieces of philosophical argument and literature. To this end, we explore philosophical thinking about modes of reasoning as well as core philosophical discussions of religious concepts, the nature and limits of knowledge, the nature and content of ethics, and the mind’s relation to the world. While the course emphasizes the cultivation of the tools and strategies of reading and argument, the materials encourage reflection on some of the foundational characteristics and assumptions in the disciplines of ethics, religion, and philosophy itself. Readings include Plato, Anselm, Aquinas, Paley, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Mackie, Rachels, Aristotle, Mill, Kant, O’Neill, Nagel, Camus, Hume, Chisholm, Frankfurt, Descartes, Russell, Kafka, and Nietzsche.

Students who choose the Writing Option for Advanced Topics in Philosophy I will complete an additional final research project.

Fall 2015 Topic: Technology and Identity

This semester-long course examines the nature of the self by looking at the ways probable and possible future technologies might transform human nature or challenge fundamental ideas about personal identity. Drawing upon works of science fiction literature and film, “transhumanist” literature, and more traditional philosophical works, we will consider such questions as: Could your identity survive gradual replacement of all of your parts with cybernetic prosthetics? Could your mind be uploaded to a computer? Is it probable that we already are living in a computer simulation? If Star Trek style transporters are ever developed, should you use one? What about a time machine? Is it likely that human beings will one day achieve immortality (or greatly extended lives), and what would this imply about the nature and value of human life? What are the moral implications of the availability of technologies that would give us super-strength or super-intelligence, especially if (as seems likely) they would not be equally available to everyone? Through reflection on these topics, students will sharpen their creative and logical thinking abilities and advance their understanding of central philosophical ideas learned throughout the Core sequence, including theories of the self, free will, knowledge, time, and ethics.

Students who choose the Writing Option for Advanced Topics in Philosophy II will complete an additional final research project.

Spring 2016 Topic: The Nature of Tomorrow: Animals, the Environment, and Value Systems

Would it be wrong to destroy a forest if no humans were impacted? Does the environment have an intrinsic worth? What responsibilities should human animals bear toward non-human animals? Toward living creatures in general? The human impact on the environment has grown exponentially for the last 200 years, and in a great many areas—and for a great many species—the development is untenable. In human interaction with the environment, collective responsibility and consistent value structures are often overlooked, although a critical engagement with this history is of great present significance. In this course, we will explore the complex ethical, political, and historical issues surrounding humans’ relationship to the environment. Students will hone philosophical skills of analysis, argumentation, creativity, and problem- solving; increase their knowledge of historical and modern approaches to rights and responsibilities in this field; and examine why consistency of argument and first principles matter, with a focus on how we value and have valued otherness. In exploring this terrain, we will examine key philosophical texts (including Mill, Kant and Singer), as well as films and literature.

Fundamentals of Literary Analysis is a year-long course designed to develop and strengthen students’ skills in writing, literary interpretation, and critical thinking. A second key goal of this course is to expose students to a variety of major works of literature in different genres. Students will become familiar with the elements of narrative fiction and gain the tools to analyze literary works productively with attention to form, content, and style. Students will lay the foundation for recognizing the allusions to earlier texts—in particular classical and biblical allusions—that permeate Western literature and will also get a sense of the development of writing systems and literary aesthetics over time. Other concepts covered include figurative language, tone, close reading, prewriting tactics, thesis development, diction and clarity, paragraph unity, argumentative structure, revision, and research.

Textual Analysis and Argumentation provides students an American literature survey in a global context. Students master close reading for form in thematically related clusters of texts (such as the captivity narrative) and learn to create precise thesis statements based on these readings. Throughout, students pay close attention to how writing constructs authorial identity, and to self-presentation—their own and those of the authors they read—through language both written and spoken. They learn to structure their essays with increasing sophistication and are introduced to, and become competent in, MLA style.

AP English Language and Composition introduces students to rhetorical terms and structures as a means of analyzing authorial intentions and effects. Building upon readings in TAA and MWA, AP ELC provides students with an intensive study of genres of nonfiction, including creative nonfiction and visual rhetoric. Students write many genres of essays and present formal oral arguments, allowing them to experiment with varied authorial personas and to master multiple argumentative structures. By the end of the course, students routinely formulate compelling, unexpected theses, and their essays are executed at the college level. 

Fall 2015 Topic: Russian Literature in the 19th Century

This course will focus on the interrelationship of history, literature, and philosophy in Russian literature of the 19th century. There are two crucial questions for the literature of this period: “What is life in the face of death?” and “What is literature in the face of life?” Because Russian literature was such a small world, as writers grappled with these questions they tended to argue with each other bitterly in their own works. Students will trace the ways in which writers created timeless art while fighting with each other over questions of the potential for personal freedom, the meaning of suffering, and the power (or the limits) of the word. The class will include lots of close reading, and will also focus on developing a strong historical understanding of Russian literary (and to some degree political) history. Students will read some contemporary literary criticism, and also some older, seminal works by scholars such as Bakhtin, engaging with such ideas as the polyphonic novel, double-voiced discourse, and “the word with the sidewards glance.” Major texts will likely include: Alexander Pushkin, “The Queen of Spades”; Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time; Nikolai Gogol, “Nevsky Prospect,” “The Nose,” “Diary of a Madman,” and “The Overcoat”; Leo Tolstoy, selected stories;  Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons; Nikolai Chernyshevsky, selections from What Is to Be Done?; Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment; and Anton Chekhov, “Ward #6” and “The Duel.”

Spring 2016 Topic: Modernist Texts and 20th Century Revolutions in Art and Society—An Interdisciplinary Approach

Students will explore the dynamic period at the turn of the last century in order to experience and explore the ways in which art, science, and social revolution are deeply interconnected in many surprising, exciting, and critically meaningful ways. While the focus will be on literary texts from the Western tradition, especially such figures as Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, and Rhys, students will also look at the modernist aesthetic in painting, music, cinema, and photography as well. By semester’s end, students will have a solid grasp of the history of modernism, and an understanding of genre and aesthetic movements with an eye toward post-modernism and contemporary questions of the relationships among art and societies.