Phil 101
University of Alberta
Fall 2009
Edmonton
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY: VALUES AND SOCIETY
SYLLABUS
Class time and room:
Instructor:
Office:
Office hours:
Phone:
e-mail / website:
MWF, 10 – 10.50 am, Tory Lecture Basement 1
Rob Wilson
Assiniboia Hall 3-71
Monday 1-3, Wednesday 2.15-3.15, and by appointment
492-8994
rob.wilson@ualberta.ca / http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~raw/
Please read the whole of this course outline ASAP.
A. GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE
(i) Welcome to Philosophy 101!
As the title of the course suggests, this is an introductory course in philosophy that focuses on philosophical
explorations of values and society. Philosophical thinking about values and society can be found in major
works in the history of philosophy, several of which we will work through together, as well as in ongoing,
contemporary discussions in many philosophical fields, which we will also get a taste of in this course.
The two most central fields in philosophy concerned with values and society are moral and political
philosophy. Moral philosophy is the study of ethics, which concerns moral values and how we ought to
live our lives. Moral philosophy discusses the nature of right and wrong, as well as other moral values, such
as courage and kindness. Political philosophy is the study of the nature of the ideals, institutions, and
practices that structure our social lives. It often focuses on the various branches of government (or “the
state”), and on views about the relationship between the state, society, and the individual.
This course will provide an introduction to both moral and political philosophy. Other areas of
philosophy that discuss values and society include aesthetics, the philosophy of law, and the history of
philosophy insofar as many major philosophical thinkers of the past have substantial works on values and
society. This course should prepare you well for further study in any of these areas of philosophy, as well as
in many related disciplines, such as political science, cultural anthropology, and women’s studies.
(ii) Philosophy 101 and Beginning Philosophy
For many of you, this will be your first exposure to a course with “philosophy” in the title. As a discipline,
philosophy is typically concerned with fundamental questions across the whole of human inquiry. (The
first introductory course I ever taught, at Queen’s University some time in the late middle ages, was simply
called “Fundamental Questions”.) Fundamental questions that we will address in this course include:
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Was the practice of eugenic sterilization in Alberta morally justifiable? (Why or why not?)
Are ethical values relative to, rather than universal across, different cultures?
Does morality crucially involve human pleasure and pain?
Do individuals have rights that no government can legitimately interfere with?
Is capitalism necessarily exploitative of wage labourers?
Does the existential situation of men and women imply a moral difference between them?
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Some of these questions are ones you may have asked yourself (however, don’t worry if they are all new to
you; we’ll address them successively in each of the units of the course). Note three things about them here.
First, although each question can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”, all such answers invite an
immediate follow up: why? As such, answering them adequately involves articulating your reasons for your
initial “yes” or “no”. Second, these questions are abstract: they involve stepping back from simply asking
what your preferences are (Do you like ice-cream?) or what you believe about the here and now (Is it
raining?). They invite you to think a little more about non-obvious features of our world. Third, each of
these questions naturally leads to others. In fact, really coming to grips with any of them requires that you
address a whole host of other questions. Some of these questions will clarify what is being asked initially
(what is meant by “legitimately interfere with” in the fourth question, or by “necessarily exploitative” in the
fifth?), while others arise as you articulate your reasons for your initial answers. Philosophical questions
force you to look at “the big picture”.
We might summarize these points as follows. Philosophy explores the reasons one gives for answers
to initial questions (first point above). Answering those questions adequately often requires that you go
“behind the scenes” of the everyday world that you bump around in and take for granted (second point
above). And answering these questions requires grappling with yet further questions (third point above).
“Ouch”, you might say, “my head is hurting already!”
(iii) This Course and Other Introductions to Philosophy
Students are sometimes introduced to philosophy at university through a general introductory course, often
spread across two semesters, that provides a sampling of many of the major areas of philosophy. At the
University of Alberta, we introduce students to philosophy on a slightly different model.
Where does this course sit in the overall program of study offered by the Department of Philosophy
at the University of Alberta? Here 100-level courses come in two chief, thematic flavours, and in three
sizes. Apart from 101 with its focus on values and society, you can also take an introductory course on
“knowledge and reality”. Philosophy 102 introduces you to “the other half” of philosophy, the half
concerned with what there is in the world (metaphysics) and how we know about it (epistemology). Issues that
populate Phil 102 include the nature of personal identity, whether we have free will, the existence of God,
and whether some sources of knowledge (e.g., the senses) are better or worse than others.
It is not uncommon for students to do both Phil 101 and Phil 102; if you did that, you would get an
introduction to philosophy akin to that of the year-long courses mentioned above. The Department also
offers introductory courses (Phil 120 & 125) in the study of logic, which stands to philosophy as
experimental design (those dreaded lab courses) or as statistical techniques do to many of the sciences.
The three sizes, as everyone knows, are small, medium, and large. (Except in fast food restaurants
and in women’s clothing stores.) In terms of total student numbers, this version of Phil 101 is large; it is
sometimes called the “101 supersection”. It typically has 150 - 250 students, and is taught with many
teaching assistants. Other versions of both Phil 101 and 102 are taught with 50-120 students (and fewer
teaching assistants), or as single-instructor courses that are typically capped at 35-50 students.
The idea of the supersection version of the course is to combine a large lecture format with the small
group discussion crucial to acquiring philosophical skills. You will be assigned to a discussion section early in the
course, and will go to that section each Friday, starting in Week 2. Although the lecture size is larger than that in
medium-sized versions of 101 and 102, the section sizes will likely be smaller and allow for more
concentrated discussion. And although you may see your TA only once a week in your discussion section,
there’s a good chance that you will get to know him or her better than you’ll get to know someone teaching
the small-sized version of the course (since they’ll likely have 35-50 students to tend to, while your TA will
have no more than 25). This format also allows us to direct more attention to developing your thinking
and writing skills, the other way (discussion being the first) in which you will actively learn in this class.
Phil 101-A1 Introduction to Philosophy, Syllabus, Fall 2009
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(iv) Philosophy 101 and What’s for Dessert?
Apart from providing a general introduction to philosophical thinking, and to moral and political
philosophy in particular, Phil 101 also serves as a basis for further study in philosophy. Amongst other
courses that the Department offers for which Phil 101 should provide a solid foundation are:
• Philosophy 217 Biology, Society, and Values
• Philosophy 250 Ethics
• Philosophy 270 Political Philosophy
• Philosophy 272 Feminist Philosophy
• Philosophy 280 Philosophy of Art
• Philosophy 291 Existentialism
• Philosophy 355 Philosophy of the Environment
• Philosophy 368 Equality and Social Justice
• Philosophy 382 Philosophy of Law
While many of these are courses that you can take without any philosophy pre-requisite, students often find
that Phil 101 provides them with both general philosophical skills and particular knowledge that prepares
them well for these and other courses in philosophy.
B. BACKGROUND FOR THE COURSE AND COURSE OBJECTIVES
Phil 101 has no formal pre-requisites. In the most general terms, my objectives in teaching the course are
for you to learn a lot, to think harder and deeper about things you encounter, and to get excited about
learning more. More specifically, amongst the objectives of the course are for you to:
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acquire some substantial knowledge about issues at the heart of moral and political philosophy,
and more generally about philosophical reflection on values and society
develop critical thinking skills that allow you to probe beneath the surface of what you read and
hear both in class and beyond it
improve the quality of your own thinking and writing about morality and politics
become a more sophisticated philosophical thinker about values and society
see how to apply the (at times abstract) knowledge you acquire in the course to everyday moral
and political issues and issues that matter to you.
C. THEMATIC OVERVIEW
The course is divided into six units, each lasting about two weeks. Each unit provides an introduction to a
central topic in moral and political philosophy. The treatments of each topic will be partial and selective,
but collectively they provide a broad introduction to Western philosophical thinking about values and
society. There is more information about the week-by-week readings and topics in Section F below; what
follows provides the bird’s-eye view of the content of the course as a whole. The units in the course are:
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Thinking and Writing about Ethics
Moral Relativism
Utilitarianism
Libertarianism and Political Philosophy
Marx on Society
Existentialism: The Self and Others
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D. COURSE MATERIALS
The course materials consist of
• two required books (don’t worry: they are short!)
• an integrated course packet that contains all other required notes and readings for the course
Between them, these course materials represent a mixture of classic philosophical texts, readings from
contemporary philosophers, and explanatory and supplementary notes written by the instructor that should
bridge between these texts and readings and the lectures. All course materials—books and integrated
course packet—are available from the campus bookstore in SUB.
(i) Required Books
Lewis Vaughn and Jillian Scott McIntosh, Writing Philosophy: A Guide for Canadian Students. Don
Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1859). Edited by George Sher, 2nd edition, 2002. Hackett Publishers.
The first of these books will help you to engage in your own philosophical thinking and writing, and we will
begin the course with it. The second is an influential work by one of the greatest philosophers of the 19thcentury. Both books are relatively short, and are available in reasonably affordable editions. Please use the
editions mentioned above, which should be available from the SUB bookstore. (Not only may other
editions differ in their content, if you pick up a different edition you’ll have to find the right pages in that
edition when the readings are being discussed in the lectures, course notes, and discussion sections, and that
can be a drag!)
Mill’s book provides the classic statement of the main moral theory we will discuss, utilitarianism.
Although Mill’s book is not a difficult philosophical text, there are places where we will need to slow down
and figure out just what Mill means in certain parts of the text, and some lecture time will be devoted to this.
We will be using these books primarily in the first half of the course. There will also be writing assignments
based on your reading of them, and your understanding of the material in them may also be probed in the
final examination for the course.
(ii) Integrated Course Packet
The course packet contains all of the material you need for the course, apart from the two books mentioned
in (i) above. It includes this syllabus, a course schedule, a list of readings, tutorial topics, all twelve course
readings (by others) and the course notes (by me). Where possible, I have chosen readings that are available
online and/or through open access, and included only required readings, in order to keep the copyright
charges (and so total cost) for the course packet to a minimum.
The course notes are about 85 pages in length, and provide a mixture of background, expository,
and additional material related to each unit in the course. Since they supplement the other readings and the
lectures, they form an important part of the material that you should read, and will be assigned class by class.
(iii) Course website
The course also has its own dedicated Moodle website, which you can locate at
https://www.arts.ualberta.ca/philmoodle/ or get to by typing “Philosophy Moodle” into the search engine
on the university’s main page, and following the first links that come up. You will need a password (to be
given in class) to get onto the class Moodle site the first time, and you should log on to this website at least
once a week throughout the semester. This is where the powerpoint slides for the lectures will be posted,
together with assignments and other course materials. The Moodle site will also contain a discussion
Phil 101-A1 Introduction to Philosophy, Syllabus, Fall 2009
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forum, where you can participate in ongoing discussions with your classmates about the issues that arise in
the course. Overall, Moodle has added a useful dimension to the learning experience in the course, and I
encourage you to get on to it early, and use it regularly.
(iv) Films, Class Debates, and other Course Activities
If you consult the course schedule in the integrated course packet, you will see that we will watch a movie early
on in the course, and will hold both class and tutorial debates later in the course. Early on we will also
devote time to discussing philosophical reading and writing, both of which will be new to most of you.
In the class debates, you will get to see fully-grown philosophers argue with one another in front of
your very own eyes! I’ll introduce other course activities as appropriate and as time allows.
E. WORKLOAD AND COURSE REQUIREMENTS
(i) Reading and writing loads
The reading load for the course is light-to-moderate in quantity and moderate-to-difficult in overall level. On
average, the required reading each week comes to about 20 pages without the course notes, and to slightly
more than 25 pages including those notes. The writing load for the course is moderate. You will write three
short essays during the course, each slightly longer than the one preceding it; there will also be several minor
writing exercises given in lectures or in tutorials whose grades will factor into your participation grade. We
will focus on developing your philosophical thinking skills through your writing in the course.
(ii) Grades and Assessment
Assessment will be determined by the following equally-weighted components:
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class participation, including attendance and preparation (lectures and tutorials), two low-risk writing
assignments, and active involvement in your Friday section and web discussions for the course
first paper (on moral relativism, 500 words), due in your section, Friday October 9 th
second paper (on utilitarianism, 750 words), due in your section, Friday October 30 th
third paper (on either libertarianism or Marx, 1000 words), Monday November 23 rd
final examination (covering the whole course), at the scheduled time in the final exam schedule
Each of these components will be worth either 20% or 25% of your final grade, in accord with the
following rules:
If you receive at least a C- for all three required papers , the pair of these papers with
the highest grades will each be worth 25% of your final grade (2 x 25% = 50%), with the grade for
the worst of the three papers dropped. Here class participation and the final examination will also
count for 25% of your final grade. Example: Sally gets an A- for participation, a B+ on the final
examination, and for her papers an A, an A-, and a C-. Since Sally has received at least a C- for all
three required papers, here we drop the C-. Sally’s final course grade likely calculates out as an A-.
If you do
not
receive at least a C- for all three required papers, your three papers
will be weighted equally (20% each), and there will be no droppable grade. Here class participation
and the final examination will also count for 20% of your final grade. To put it differently, if you
either do not submit all three papers, or submit at least one paper that does not receive a grade of Cor better, then you do not get the benefit of dropping the grade for your worst paper. Example:
Phil 101-A1 Introduction to Philosophy, Syllabus, Fall 2009
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Bert gets an A- for participation, a B+ on the final examination (wow—just like Sally), and for his
papers he gets an A, an A- (again, just like Sally), but then doesn’t turn in the final paper and so gets
an F for it. Here since Bert does not receive at least a C- for all three required papers, there is no
droppable grade for Bert, which means that (a) his good papers count for less (20% rather than 25%
each-ouch!), (b) the same is true of his class participation and final exam scores (double-ouch), and
(c) he has 20% (or 1/5th) of his final grade weighed down by the F for the paper not submitted
(triple-ouch!). Bert’s final course grade likely calculates out as a borderline B / B-.
Your three papers will thus collectively count for 50-60% of your final grade. But how much each counts
for will be determined entirely by which rule you fall under—not by how you would like to be assessed,
what your TA says, what your friends think, or anything else. Note that in the Sally and Bert example,
although the only substantive difference between them is that Sally gets a C- on one paper while Bert gets an
F on that paper, their final grades differ significantly (at least two grades!) because Sally gets to drop her
worst paper grade but Bert does not. Take home message: be like Sally, not like Bert! In general, those
who work to be able to drop a weak paper grade will do better than those who do not. Note also that the
participation component includes two minor writing exercises that will be worth 2/5 of this
component to the assessment scheme, making the rest of your participation worth 15% or 12%,
depending on which of the above rules you fall under.
The rationale for this assessment scheme is as follows. Philosophical thinking and writing is
something that will be new to most of you, and it is something that I expect you to struggle with over the
semester, improving as you go. If you do that consistently, then it seems reasonable to allow you one
writing bloop during the learning process. (That justifies the first part of the grading scheme.) However, I
want to encourage everyone to take all three writing assignments seriously, and to keep up with the course
material and lectures relevant for each of them. To put it less pleasantly, I want to do what I can to
discourage you from simply using the droppable grade feature as a way to “blow off” one or more units for
the course that correspond to a given writing assignment. (That justifies the second part of the grading
scheme.) My assumption, based on my teaching experience over the past 17 years, is that even if you don’t
do as well as you would like on any given assignment, provided that you are making a concerted effort
(keeping up with the active reading regime, preparing for and attending lectures and discussion sections, not
writing the paper the night before, etc.), you will write papers that receive at least a grade of C-.
My hope—indeed, expectation, given the past—is that nearly all of you will be assessed by the first
grading scheme outlined above. But that really is up to you: keep up with the work as it is assigned, prepare
for the assignments, and attend to our directions in writing them. Not only will this make it very likely that
you’ll write three good papers (certainly good enough to pass), but it will also make it likely that your
participation and final examination grades will be all that they should be.
(iii) Late Papers, Plagiarism, Violations of Academic Integrity and Other Evils
Late submission of papers is strongly discouraged, and you should contact your TA in advance about a
paper that will not be submitted by the due date. Due date extensions for papers will be given only for
personal medical and family emergency reasons, and we may request documentation of such circumstances.
(Other reasons, such as my car broke down, my printer ran out of ink, my girlfriend was in town last
weekend, my dog ate my paper, won’t result in due date extensions.) Expect a grade reduction for a late
paper lacking an extension in writing from me. We penalize at a grade a day for late papers (e.g., from B+ to
B), and set a date after which the paper will receive a grade of zero—not a passing grade of C- or better! To
avoid disappointment, please take this general policy seriously and plan accordingly.
Plagiarism is a serious academic offense that is grounds for disciplinary action at a number
of levels within the university system. The first item under “Inappropriate Academic Behaviour” in the
University of Alberta’s Code of Student Behaviour reads:
Phil 101-A1 Introduction to Philosophy, Syllabus, Fall 2009
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30.3.2(1) Plagiarism
No Student shall submit the words, ideas, images or data of another person as the Student’s
own in any academic writing, essay, thesis, project, assignment, presentation or poster in a
course or program of study. (my bolding)
I also draw attention to
30.3.6(4) Misrepresentation of Facts
No Student shall misrepresent pertinent facts to any member of the University community for the
purpose of obtaining academic or other advantage
which includes facts about attendance, family emergencies, etc.. This document can be found at:
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/content.cfm?ID_page=37633#38363
The University also maintains a more general website on plagiarism:
http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/
One of the required texts for the course discusses plagiarism explicitly, and we will also devote lecture time
to this as well in advance of the first paper. I would encourage you to consult both early in the course if you
are unfamiliar with their contents and, more generally, not to risk the consequences of plagiarizing in
this course, which could include not only outright failure in the course, but have more severe repercussions for
your future at the University. As 30.3.6(4) above implies, plagiarism is not the only way to violate the Code
of Academic Integrity that the University operates under, and other violations (such as misrepresenting your
situation to an instructor or TA in order to get an extension) will also be treated seriously when detected.
F. UNIT OUTLINES, READINGS, AND GUIDING QUESTIONS
The following proposed schedule conveys the week-by-week content of the course. It should provide you
with some idea of the structure and content of the whole course, and serve as a useful orientation as you
progress through the course. Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of the jargon that follows—you will!
The readings are listed in the order we will cover them. Those numbered 1-12 can be found (with
the corresponding number) in the course packet; all other required readings are in the books by Vaughn and
McIntosh (Units 1 and 2) and Mill (Unit 3). I will also assign readings from the course notes in lectures as
we go, and these will constitute an important part of your background reading. In addition, I may suggest
optional readings from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This is a growing, free online resource
that I would encourage you to use as your philosophical curiosity deepens.
The list of readings for a given unit are followed by a brief description of some of the issues we will
discuss in that unit, together with a few guiding questions. As we start each unit, you should read over each
of these descriptions and use the guiding questions to direct your reading of the relevant material in the
readings and the course notes. So think about the guiding questions at the end of each of the weekly descriptions
below as you prepare for that week’s classes through reading and thought—this should help you through those readings, and
allow you to make sure that you get the main take-home messages from it. The course notes provide further guidance
regarding what skills and knowledge you should have on completion of each unit.
If you have any questions about this schedule, these directions, or the readings themselves, please
don’t hesitate to ask me or your TA for the course. We encourage the full range of questions—from the
bleedin’ obvious through to the truly obscure. Ask away!
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Unit 1: Thinking and Writing about Ethics
Vaughn and McIntosh
1. Matthew Lipman
Writing Philosophy, chapters 1-4
extract from Lisa, pp.1-3.
We will start the course by taking up some moral issues close to home as a basis for developing your own
philosophical thinking and writing skills. Here we will watch a film, The Sterilization of Leilani Muir, on the
history of eugenics in Alberta, and work to identify some of the moral issues that this history raises, and
your own views of it. We will also explore some simple-sounding moral scenarios sketched out as both
thought experiments and short vignettes in order to practice basic philosophical skills, such as identifying
premises and conclusions in arguments, articulating intuitions, and constructing counter-examples.
Guiding questions: What is one contemporary moral issue that eugenic sterilization raises? What can a
simple thought experiment tell us about our individual or collective moral thinking? What is a philosophical
argument, and what makes for a good philosophical argument?
Unit 2: Moral Relativism
Vaughn and McIntosh
Writing Philosophy, chapter 1
2. Steven Lukes,
“Reason, Custom, and Nature”, ch.2 of his Moral Relativism (2008), pp.28-50.
You often hear the view expressed that morality or ethics is “up to you” or “just your opinions”. We will
begin the course by looking at reasons for thinking that various forms of moral relativism are true. One
common reason for thinking relativism to be true is the diversity of moral practices across cultures. Are
values and moral beliefs simply relative to one’s society? Are they subjective in some other way? As we will
see, moral relativism and the arguments for it are problematic in ways that may not be obvious. Although
the objectivity of ethics is a larger topic that we will merely scratch the surface of here, we will do enough
here both to see why moral relativism is plausible and why it is not so plausible that we can dismiss the
possibility of systematic thinking about morality.
Guiding questions: What distinctions are important to draw in trying to understand moral relativism?
What is the strongest reason to accept moral relativism? What is the best objection to moral relativism?
Unit 3:
John Stuart Mill
3. Peter Singer
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism, chapters I – IV; chapter V optional.
“Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-243.
Utilitarianism appears to be a simple, general moral theory. One version of utilitarianism says that an action
is morally right just if it maximizes the greatest amount of pleasure over pain. Although there are good
motivations for this version of the theory, it seems to be subject to a number of intuitive counter-examples.
What do these examples tell us about our everyday morality? We will consider more sophisticated versions
of utilitarianism and learn about some of the conceptual tools available to those who favour a utilitarian
approach to ethics, as well as some of the more complicated objections to even those versions. We will also
see how the utilitarian perspective can be put to work in arguing for the conclusion that our everyday views
of famine and the obligations of the affluent to help those in dire poverty are radically mistaken.
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Guiding questions: What is happiness, according to Mill? What is the distinction between act and rule
utilitarianism, and how does it shed light on Mill’s discussion and utilitarianism more generally? Are there
compelling utilitarian reasons for us to revise our moral views of famine relief, as Singer argues there are?
Unit 4: Libertarianism and Political Philosophy
4. Robert Nozick
5. Eli Clare
6. Susan Moller Okin
“Distributive Justice”, from chapter 7 of his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1973,
pp.149-164, 169-182.
“Freak Show”, from Clare’s “Freaks and Queers”, in Exile and Pride: Disability,
Queerness, and Liberation, 1999, pp.71-81.
“Libertarianism: Matriarchy, Slavery, and Dystopia”, ch.4 of her Justice, Gender,
and the Family, 1989, pp.74-88.
In Unit 4 we shift from moral to political philosophy. We will explore the libertarian approach to politics,
concentrating on the work of the (recently deceased) contemporary philosopher Robert Nozick. In
particular, we will focus on Nozick’s entitlement theory of distributive justice. Nozick is critical of utilitarian
approaches to rights, as well as of Marxist approaches to justice (which we explore next). We will aim to
understand both of these aspects of Nozick’s work, as well as his relationship to classic and contemporary
liberalism. We will consider what makes Nozick’s work libertarian, and probe its vulnerabilities, especially
through the critique developed by the (also recently deceased) philosopher Susan Moller Okin.
Guiding questions: In general terms, how do libertarians view government and the concept of distributive
justice? What is Nozick’s entitlement theory and what does his appeal to self-ownership do in that theory?
What are Okin’s chief objections to Nozick’s views?
Unit 5: Marx on Society
7. Jonathan Wolff
8. Karl Marx
“Karl Marx”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Also online @
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/marx/
“Estranged Labour” (1844), The Manifesto of the Communist Party, sections I and II
(1848), and “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).
Free and online from the Marx and Engels Internet Archive @
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/
Karl Marx famously wrote that “the philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it”. Marx himself came to exemplify just what he was advocating about philosophers and
philosophy, becoming by a long way the most influential political thinker in the last 200 years. There is much
to Marx’s overall philosophical views; here we will aim to understand ideas central to his views of the nature
of justice, labour, human nature, and history. There are a number of respects in which Marx’s views of
justice and history are directly opposed to those of libertarians and liberals. And there are respects in which
Marx’s views, like certain forms of moral relativism, pose a challenge to the entire idea of constructing a
moral or political theory. Finally, just as one can find utilitarian, Kantian, and libertarian ideas at work
behind much contemporary thinking, Marx’s ideas can also be found in contemporary social movements,
and we will attend to some of these in our examination of Marx’s work.
Guiding questions: What is Marx’s view of capitalism? How does Marx use the concept of alienation to
articulate his ideas about labour, justice, and what a utopian society would look like? Does Marx offer a
moral critique of certain aspects of our society, or does he critique morality itself (or neither, or both)?
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Unit 6: Existentialism: The Self and Others
9. Jean-Paul Sartre
10. Simone de Beauvoir
11. Simone de Beauvoir
12. David E. Cooper
extract from Existentialism and Humanism (1945), pp.28-38
“Conclusion”, The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948), pp.156-159
“Introduction”, The Second Sex (1949), pp.xiii-xxix
“Existentialism and Ethics”, Existentialism (1999, 2nd ed.), pp.173-187
Existentialism is a broad philosophical movement concerned with distinctive aspects of the human
condition. Here we will be focused primarily on a very small part of the work of two leading 20th-century
existentialist thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, especially on what their views imply about
ethics and leading a moral life. Existentialists have sometimes been characterized as being anti-moral, or of
having nothing to offer to systematic thinking about morality. Here we will explore some concepts that are
central to Sartre and de Beauvoir’s thinking—human freedom, authenticity, bad faith, and ambiguity—and
will attend especially to Beauvoir’s claim, in The Second Sex that there is a second sex: woman.
Guiding questions: What does the slogan “existence comes before essence” imply about human freedom
and morality? When Beauvoir says that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, what does she
mean? Does an existentialist have a distinctive view of morality? If so, what is it? If not, why not?
G. ALL THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
I was born in the thriving bush metropolis of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia, a mining town
1150km west of Sydney; the town was settled in the 1880s, remains home to one of the largest base-metal
mines in the world, and has served as the shooting location for several landmark Oz films, from the postapocalyptic Mad Max II to key sequences in comedies such as Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. I grew up there
and in Perth on the beach-laden west coast of Australia. I did my BA in philosophy at the University of
Western Australia, and my MA and PhD at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; apart from studying
philosophy at the graduate level, I also took a graduate minor in cognitive studies, mainly doing
developmental psychology. I came to Alberta in July 2000 as a professor of philosophy after teaching
previously at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I was in the Cognitive Science Group at
the Beckman Institute, and at Queen’s University. I have also had a few real jobs, including four years
working mainly in bars while an undergraduate, a year as a computer programmer, and three years teaching
philosophy in elementary schools. I currently direct Philosophy for Children Alberta, and lead a network
organized around the question What Sorts of People Should There Be?
My philosophical interests are broad, but my chief research expertise falls in the philosophy of mind,
cognitive science, and the philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of biology. Recently, I have also
published on constitution views in metaphysics, on John Searle’s views of social reality, on species cohesion
in the philosophy of biology, on collective memory and group minds in the cognitive and social sciences, on
embodied and extended cognition, and on primate sociality. My ongoing research includes a book project
on kinship and sociality. In the last few years I have taught Phil 101, Phil 217, Biology, Society, and Values,
and Science, Technology and Society 400 which focused on contemporary uses of biotechnology and
their relationship to views of disability and normalcy.
In general, I am most interested in connections between philosophy and the various sciences, and I
often get my feet muddy in the process of pursuing those connections. I have authored or edited six books,
the two most recent of which are Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, 2004) and Genes and the Agents of Life
(Cambridge, 2005). Most importantly, I am a long-standing member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club
for Scientists (http://www.improb.com/projects/hair/hair-club-top.html).
Phil 101-A1 Introduction to Philosophy, Syllabus, Fall 2009