Committee on Social Thought WINTER 2016 Course Schedule - 1
20664. Learning for the Sake of What? Newman and
WALKER, Austin
1:30-2:50p
xFNDL 20664
And Mill on a Philosophy of Liberal Education
TR
A liberal education is simultaneously a symbol of unity and disunity: on the one hand, few people will deny that it is a good or an important thing; on the other,
even fewer will be found to agree with their fellows as to what a liberal education actually entails. This debate occupied Allan Bloom, Richard Rorty, and
Martha Nussbaum in the 1980’s just as it enlisted Robert Maynard Hutchins and John Dewey in the 1940’s (just as, in a certain sense, it may have occupied
Socrates and his trial of jurors as well). To some degree, the debate has always involved the meaning of the word “liberal.” From what, after all, is such an
education supposed to liberate a person? From history? From prejudice? From the tyranny of the majority? Or is the liberty supposed to be a liberty “in” rather
than a liberty “from”? Aristotle’s gentlemen, after all, are gentlemen within a particular city, and their education does not liberate them from the city so much as
it prepares them to live as free men within a polis.
30105. Introduction to Spinoza’s Ethics
KIMHI, Irad
1:30-4:20p
xPHIL 27202 & 37202
R
Advanced ug and grads
Introduction to Spinoza’s Ethics is for advanced undergraduate students with background in philosophy and for graduate students. AS we read this work we
will be concerned with its place in history of philosophy and we shall engage with some of its contemporary readers.
30504. Tocqueville’s Ancien Regime and the
LERNER, Ralph &
9-10:20a
Revolution
GANNETT, Robert
MW
A close examination of the origins, substance, and mode of composition of Tocqueville’s classic work.
F 305 xFNDL 20504
31701. Machiavelli’s Literary Works
TARCOV, Nathan &
1:30-4:20p
F 305 xPLSC 20801 & 32101/
LYNCH, Christopher
M
FNDL 20801/LLSO 20802
A reading of Machiavelli’s plays, stories, and poems both as literary works and for what light they shed on his political thought. Familiarity with The Prince is
presumed.
By consent of instructor
31770. Plato’s Republic
TARCOV, Nathan
32402. Perspective as a Challenge to Art History
POP, Andrei
40701. Many Ramayanas
DONIGER, Wendy
1:30-4:20p
F 305 xPLSC 43820/FNDL 29503
R
By consent of instructor
This course is devoted to reading and discussion of Plato’s Republic and some secondary work with attention to justice in the city and the soul, war and
warriors, psychology, education, theology, poetry, gender, eros, and cities in speech and actually existing cities.
10:30-12:50p F 505 xARTH 22402 & 32402
W
ug and grad
Since the introduction of geometrical space in Renaissance painting, a debate has been raging among artists, scientists, and historians whether artworks
constructed in accordance with various rules of empirical and geometric perspective offer a particularly truthful view of the world or are merely seductive
illusions shoring up an arbitrary style of picturing. In the meantime, perspective’s claim to be a principled mode of seeing is kept alive, and complicated, by
mechanical techniques of picture-making, from the photograph to the space telescope. We will try to steer a course between naïve optimism and skepticism,
reading classics on the (primarily cultural and art-historical) significance of perspective, from Erwin Panofsky and Nelson Goodman to Margaret Hagen and
James Elkins.
1:30-2:50p
MW
S 208 xHREL 42501/SALC 42501/
FNDL 22911/RLST 26801
Committee on Social Thought WINTER 2016 Course Schedule - 2
A close reading of the great Hindu Epic, the story of Rama’s recovery of his wife, Sita, from the demon Ravana on the island of Lanka, with special attention to
changes in the telling of the story throughout Indian history, up to its present use as a political weapon against Muslims and a rallying point for Hindu
fundamentalists. Readings in Paula Richman, Many Ramayanas and Questioning Ramayanas; in translations of the Ramayanas of Valmiki, Kampan, Tulsi, and
Michael Dutta, as well as the Ramajataka; Rama the Steadfast, trans. Brockington; the Yogavasistha-Maharamayana; and contemporary comic books and
films.
45404. SEM: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in
NIRENBERG, David
Medieval Spain – 2
The winter quarter will be devoted to the preparation of a research paper.
3-5:50p F 505 xHIST 81304
T
PQ: HIST 81303
49800. Reading Course: Non-Social Thought
STAFF
ARR
ARR CONSENT REQUIRED
Open only to non-Social Thought Graduate Students.
Enter section from faculty list on web.
49900. Reading Course: Social Thought
STAFF
ARR
ARR CONSENT REQUIRED
Open only to Social Thought Graduate Students.
Enter section from faculty list on web.
50604. Philosophical Revolutions in the Concept of
Form
PIPPIN, Robert,
3-5:50p F 505 xPHIL 57609/GRMN 57616
CONANT, James,
W
GRADS only.
WELLBERY, David
Primary readings will be from Plato, Aristotle, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. Our topics will include Platonic conceptions of eidetic form and
Aristotelian conceptions of hylomorphism, their subsequent inheritance in the philosophical tradition, their transformation into German Idealist conceptions of
endogenous (self-determining) form, and their significance for the philosophy of logic, mind, life, and art. Our central secondary readings will be from Gabriel
Lear, Aryeh Kosman, John McDowell, Matt Boyle, Stephen Engstrom, Andrea Kern, Thomas Khurana, and Sebastian Rödl, all of whom will be invited to
campus to present recent work on these topics and participate in the seminar.
50913. Transitions Into, Within, and From Hegel’s
KOCH, Anton
12-2:50p
F 505 xPHIL 50604
Science of Logic
R
Grad seminar
In this seminar we will begin with a short view (1) on Hegel’s immediate predecessors, Kant and Fichte, in order to get an idea of what logic could be apart
from formal logic and (2) a short view on Hegel’s own program and beginning in his Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to highlight the differences between
that book and the Science of Logic. Then (3) we shall investigate the major joints of Hegel’s logical endeavor itself: (i) the transition into it, (ii) the first,
defining transitions within it (from pure being to negativity to becoming to finitude to infinity, etc.), (iii) the transitions from one logical sphere to the next one
(from being to essence and its initial stages, and from essence to concept/notion), (iv) the logic of concept, judgement and syllogism, and finally (v) the
(absolute) idea and the transition from the Logic into the philosophy of space, time, movement and matter.
59900. Dissertation Research
STAFF
ARR
ARR
PQ: Admission to Candidacy or Consent of Instructor.
Enter section from faculty list on web.
Committee on Social Thought WINTER 2016 Course Schedule - 3
Other Courses taught by CST Faculty:
HUMA 11100-13 Readings in World Literature-2
10:30-11:50a Wb 111
TR
This course counts toward the general education requirement in the Humanities. Consent Required to change sections.
HREL 628-36000 Second Year Sanskrit. Readings in
The Kathasaritsagara.
WARREN, Rosanna
DONIGER, Wendy
1:30-2:50p
TR
S 207 xSALC 279-20200-01
PQ: One year of Sanskrit.
Open to ug and grads.
Exam at the end of the quarter. Readings in the Mahabharata.
FREN 26610 La Poésie lyrique du 19ème siècle
WARREN, Rosanna
12-1:20p
TR
Dans ce cours nous examinerons la suite de révolutions poétiques en France pendant le 19ème siècle, à travers la lecture de quelques-uns des plus grands
poètes de la littérature française. En commençant avec le Romantisme lyrique de Lamartine, Hugo, et Desbordes-Valmore, nous étudierons la naissance de
formes nouvelles (le poème en prose, le vers libre) et la survie des cadences anciennes dans l’œuvre de Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, et
Apollinaire. PQ: FREN 20500 plus one other literature course taught in French.