Winter 2018 Courses – Philosophy

PHI 285: Philosophy of Race and Gender
TR 9:30-10:45am, DH 203, Dr. Jennifer Kling
“That’s racist!” “Look, we had a black President—racism just isn’t a problem anymore.” “Ugh, what a sexist pig.” “Well, his intentions were good—give him a break.” “We’re living in a post-racial, post-gender world.” “Look, I’m not a sexist, but I just don’t want to date someone who’s not pretty.”

Our day-to-day lives are filled with these sorts of claims; but what do they mean? Are they true, accurate, or sensible? Are they reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified? What grounds claims like these? This is where philosophy comes in. In this course, we will explore and evaluate a number of important concepts related to race and gender in the United States. Specifically, we will consider competing conceptions of race, racism, gender, and sexism, whether and how reparations for slavery and anti-black racism ought to be made, whether and how gender equality ought to be attained, and whether and how the anti-racism and anti-sexism intellectual and activist movements are interrelated. If we have time, we will explore the role of African-American and feminist art in these contentious debates.

PHI 320: Social Ethics
MW 11-12:15pm, SCI 31, Dr. Patrick Mayer

PHI 341: Modern Philosophy
TR 11-12:15pm, DH 203, Dr. Jennifer Kling
We’re all familiar with the claim that ‘appearances can be deceiving,’ or that ‘things aren’t always what they seem.’ And we’ve all had experiences that exemplify those claims as well; we glance quickly from a distance and wind up mistaking a stranger for a close friend, or we get confused by an optical illusion, or we read a news story and get outraged, only to hear the full story later on. Since we make our judgments about the way things are on the basis of the way things seem, it makes sense to ask ourselves how we can tell the cases where appearances are deceiving apart from the cases where they are not.

What is reality like, and how can we figure that out from the way things seem or appear to be? When can we say that we know something instead of merely having a belief or an opinion? What does it mean to do science? And how optimistic can we be about scientific progress? Where should we look for moral guidance? What can and should the role of religious faith be? And how should we balance freedom and security? These questions were of major concern for philosophers in the early modern period, and in this course, we will study some of the most important/influential attempts to answer such questions offered by leading scholars of the day. We will also see how their answers to these questions underlie many of our contemporary geopolitical, cross-cultural, religious, and interpersonal debates.