Instructor: Nina Mikhalevsky
Office: Trinkle B 48
Phone: (540) 654-1295
Email: nmik at umw.edu
Office Hrs: Monday/Wednesday 10:00-12:00 and by appointment.
Course Goals and Objectives:
This course will help you develop and strengthen the following skills: identifying philosophical issues; constructing, analyzing, and evaluating arguments; identifying, developing, and evaluating your own ideas; critically reading and analyzing philosophical texts; communicating your ideas in discipline-specific writing and through discussion. You will also learn about some core areas of philosophical inquiry and consider a number of major works. This course fulfills the Human Experience and Society General Education requirement.
Course Readings:
Plato, Five Dialogues, translated by Grube (Hackett)
Aristotle, Introductory Readings, translated by Irwin (Hackett)
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Cress (Hackett)
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hackett)
Wittgenstein, On Certainty, edited and translated by Anscombe and von Wright (Harper)
Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (Library of America edition recommended–also available here)
Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (Civil Disobedience) and “Walking” (selections)
WEB DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks (sections I-III)
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Introduction, Chapter One)
Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press) (link to PDF on course website, copy write protected—you need the course password)
Martin Luther King, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”
Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
Steven Best, “The Ethics of Vegetarianism”
Sandra Jane Fairbanks, “Environmental Goodness and the Challenge of American Culture” Ethics and the Environment Fall 2010
Course Requirements:
As for all courses in philosophy, you are expected to come to class having both read and given some serious thought to what you have read. You also need to experience and think about the works we discuss as well as those problems and ideas you take up in your papers and exams. While it is important that you develop an understanding of what philosophers and other theorists have written, it is as important that you work at understanding and arguing for your own views.
Two short papers: your first paper (3-4 pages) will focus on a specific philosophical problem of your choosing, in which you provide a clear, detailed presentation of the nature of the problem, what you take to be its components, its importance and relevance, and a short, annotated “bibliography” of one or two works of two different philosophers who address the problem in ways you initially find helpful or promising. You may use any of the philosophers/readings assigned in class or you may use other philosophers/readings we have not covered. Your second, final paper (5-8 pages) will develop your first paper into an extended essay on the problem you have chosen; you will provide an analysis and evaluation of how the two philosophers have addressed the problem and then develop and argue for your own views. You are strongly encouraged to meet with me to discuss your papers prior to turning them in. First paper is due March 15, final paper is due April 25.
Exams: Midterm Exam, February 24, Final Exam, April 28, 12-2:30 pm. Both exams are essay exams; the final exam will be comprehensive for the course.
Course Grade:
Your final grade for the course will be determined as follows:
First Paper, 20%; Final paper 30%; Midterm exam 20% ; Final Exam 30%
[Grade scale: 97- 100 A+; 93-96 A; 90-92 A-;;87-89 B+;83-86 B;80-82 B-;77-79 C+;73-76 C;70-72 C-;67-69 D+;63-66 D;60-62 D-; 59 and below F]
