Objectives

The primary concern of philosophy is to explore ideas that are central to the ways we live and that we commonly use without much reflection, ideas such as truth and justice, the notion of consciousness, and good and evil. In the course of our daily lives we take the ideas of time, language, knowledge, and our own identity for granted. Philosophy seeks to push our understanding of these ideas deeper. It is the systematic study of ideas that is fundamental to all the other disciplines taught at the University--the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts.

The skills philosophy helps to develop--critical thinking, sound reasoning, enlightened use of one's imagination, and the capacity to analyze complex issues--are invaluable in the study of any subject or the pursuit of any vocation. Philosophy is unavoidable: every thoughtful individual is gripped by philosophical questions and is guided by assumptions that the study of philosophy brings explicitly to light and puts into larger perspective.

How to Become a Concentrator

To become a concentrator in philosophy, students must take PHIL 1a (Introduction to Philosophy), a logic course, a course in the history of philosophy, and five additional courses. Four of the courses required for the degree in philosophy must be advanced and must also meet a distribution requirement. To be a candidate in honors, seniors must complete an Honors Thesis. For further information contact the undergraduate advising head.

Faculty

Philosophy of language. Philosophy of mathematics. Philosophy of time. Greek philosophy.

Logic. Philosophy of science. Philosophy of language.

Metaphysics. History of philosophy. Kant.

Metaphysics. Epistemology. Medical ethics.

Political philosophy. Women's studies.

Ancient philosophy. Political philosophy. History of philosophy and ethics.

Philosophy of mind. Philosophy of psychology. Cognitive science. History of philosophy. Philosophy of science.

Political philosophy. Moral philosophy. Aesthetics. Modern social theory. History of political thought.

Requirements for Concentration

Philosophy courses consist of the following categories:

PHIL 1a (Introduction to Philosophy); Ethics/Political and Social Philosophy (courses numbered 10-34 and 110-134); Language/Knowledge/Metaphysics (PHIL courses numbered 35-59, 135-146, 191a and LING 130a); History (PHIL courses numbered 60-84, 160-184 and AMST 186b); Logic (PHIL 6a, 7a, and 106b); PHIL 191a (Senior Seminar); PHIL 98a,b (Readings in Philosophy); and PHIL 99d (Senior Research).

Advanced courses are those numbered 99d and above. PHIL 98a,b is advanced only if specified by the instructor.

Courses counted toward the concentration cannot be taken pass/fail.

Required of all candidates: Eight semester courses in philosophy (including PHIL and cross-listed courses), conforming to the following provisions:

A. At least four must be advanced courses. (Those numbered 99 and above.)

B. PHIL 1a (Introduction to Philosophy) must be completed within one year of declaring a philosophy concentration. (At the time of declaring a concentration, students who have taken a USEM course focused primarily on philosophical texts, as well as others who already have a background in philosophy prior to coming to Brandeis, may petition the undergraduate advising head to have the PHIL 1a requirement waived.) Please note that PHIL 28a also fulfills this requirement.

C. At least one must be a course in history.

D. At least one must be a course in logic.

E. At least one must be an advanced course in ethics/political and social philosophy.

F. At least one must be an advanced course in language/knowledge/ metaphysics.

G. No more than one semester course in PHIL 98 and one semester in 99 will count toward fulfilling the concentration requirements.

This department participates in the European cultural studies concentration.

Requirements for the Minor

The minor has four "tracks"; each track consists of five courses. Students are required to declare a minor by the beginning of their senior year. Prospective minors are encouraged to begin their course of study with PHIL 1a. Students who have taken a USEM course focused primarily on philosophical texts, as well as others who already have a background in philosophy, may petition the minor advisor to have the PHIL 1a requirement of tracks 2, 3, and 4 waived.

Courses counted toward the minor cannot be taken pass/fail.

Track 1: Language, Logic, and the Philosophy of Science

A. One logic course: 6a, 106b.

B. Three of the following: Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Social Science, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time, Philosophy of Psychology, Topics in Logic, Philosophy of Language, Topics in the Philosophy of Language, Mathematical Logic, a PHIL 98a or b, or a PHIL 191a in this area.

C. One free elective in philosophy (from among the PHIL and cross-listed offerings).

D. Two of the above must be advanced courses.

Track 2: Value Theory: Ethics, Politics, Society, Religion, and Art

A. Introduction to Philosophy.

B. Three courses selected in ethics/political and social philosophy (a PHIL 98a,b or a PHIL 191a in this area may also count).

C. One free elective in philosophy (from among the PHIL and cross-listed offerings).

D. Two of the above must be advanced courses.

Track 3: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind

A. Introduction to Philosophy.

B. Three of the following: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Innate Knowledge, Philosophy of Psychology, Personal Identity, Topics in the Philosophy of Language, Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Theory of Knowledge, a PHIL 98a or b, or a PHIL 191a in this area.

C. One free elective in philosophy (from among the PHIL and cross-listed offerings).

D. Two of the above must be advanced courses.

Track 4: General Minor

A. Introduction to Philosophy

B. Four electives in philosophy, three of which originate in the philosophy department. (Approval of the student's program by the minor advisor is required.)

C. Two of the above must be advanced courses.

Courses of Instruction

(1-99) Primarily for Undergraduate Students

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A general course presenting the problems of philosophy, especially in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Texts will include works of selected philosophers of various historical periods from antiquity to the present. Usually offered every semester.

Messrs. Berger, Greenberg, Hirsch, Makridis, Samet, Teuber, and Yourgrau

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Symbolic logic provides concepts and formal techniques that elucidate deductive reasoning. Topics include truth functions and quantifiers, validity, and formal systems. Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger and Samet

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Explores the basic concepts and theories of ethical philosophy. What makes a life good? What are our moral obligations to other people? Applications of ethical philosophy to various concrete questions will be considered. Usually offered every year.

Staff

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Examines international human rights policies and the moral and political issues to which they give rise. Includes civilians' wartime rights, the role of human rights in foreign policy, and the responsibility of individuals and states to alleviate world hunger and famine. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Teuber

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Focuses on the relation of the individual to the state and, in particular, on the theory and practice of non-violent resistance, its aims, methods, achievements, and legitimacy. Examines the nature of obligation and the role of civil disobedience in a democratic society. Explores the conflict between authority and autonomy and the grounds for giving one's allegiance to any state at all. Examples include opposition to the nuclear arms race, disobedience in China and Northern Ireland and at abortion clinics. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Teuber

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Examines the nature of criminal responsibility, causation in the law, negligence and liability, omission and the duty to rescue, and the nature and limits of law. Also, is the law more or less like chess or poker, cooking recipes, or the Ten Commandments? Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Teuber

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Enrollment limited to 50.

An examination of ethical issues that arise in a biomedical context, such as the issues of abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, lying to patients, and the right to health care. The relevance of ethical theory to such issues will be considered. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Hirsch

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An introduction to the major philosophical problems of religion. The existence of God, "God-talk," evil and suffering, mystical experiences, life after death, free will and determinism, the relation of religion to morality. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Hirsch

Surveys the history of western political philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to contemporary political thinkers such as Harvard's liberal John Rawls, radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon, and conservative Francis Fukuyama. Includes readings on the argument for including women and men in political philosophy and on how politics rests on the philosophy of knowing and the nature of personhood. Usually offered every second year.

Ms. Hirshman

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Philosophers in the 20th century have often taken scientific activity to be the ideal source of our knowledge about the world. Discusses the problems involved in the analysis of the principles and methods of scientific activity, with an eye to assessing this claim. Usually offered every second year.

Messrs. Berger and Hirsch

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Theories of meaning, reference, and methodological issues in account of language and translation. Readings from contemporary sources. Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger, Hirsch, and Yourgrau

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Basic issues in the foundations of mathematics will be explored through close study of selections from Frege, Russell, Carnap, and others, as well as from contemporary philosophers. Questions addressed include: What are the natural numbers? Do they exist in the same sense as tables and chairs? How can "finite beings" grasp infinity? What is the relationship between arithmetic and geometry? We explore the classic foundational "programs": logicism, formalism, and intuitionism. Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger and Yourgrau

PHIL 39b Philosophy of Mind

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Topics include the mind-body relation, the emotions, identity and consciousness, knowledge of one's own mind and other minds, reductionism, philosophical implications of recent work in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Samet

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Covers major figures and schools of philosophy in the 20th century. A basically historical treatment of this period, stressing its continuity with the modern period. Emphasis on the role of logic and language in solving philosophical problems, such as the possibility of doing metaphysics, and whether there are a priori, necessary, or analytic truths. Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger, Greenberg, and Hirsch

Examines the period from Augustine to William of Occam and considers the nature of humans in the philosophies of Averooes, Maimonides, and Aquinas. Brief preparatory study of relevant background in Plato and Aristotle. Usually offered every second year.

Staff

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Introduction to American instrumentalism as a philosophical movement and cultural force. Special attention to pragmatic imprints on law and science across the 20th century. Recurring critical debates over ethical relativism, religious skepticism, legal activism, and the cult of scientific and professional expertise. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Gaskins

Readings, reports, and discussions on assigned topics. Usually offered every semester.

Staff

Readings, reports, and discussions on assigned topics. Usually offered every semester.

Staff

The course is normally a two-semester sequence. It is open to seniors who are candidates for degrees with honors in philosophy and involves the preparation and writing of a thesis, under the direction of a member of the faculty. Usually offered every year.

Staff

(100-199) For Both Undergraduate and Graduate Students

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Covers in detail several of the following proofs: the Gödel Incompleteness Results, Tarski's Undefinability of Truth Theorem, Church's Theorem on the Undecidability of Predicate Logic and Elementary Recursive Function Theory. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Berger

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The course examines the case that can be made for and against distributing certain goods and services on an open market as the result of free exchange, or through public mechanisms of planning and control. For examples, the arguments for and against public funding of the arts, fire departments, patents, zoning laws, and national health care. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Teuber

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Explores representation in painting, photography, and film by studying painters Rembrandt, Velasquez, and Vermeer, as well as later works by Manet, Degas, Cézanne, and Picasso; photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, and Diane Arbus; and filmmakers Renoir and Hitchcock. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Teuber

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Is morality something we have reasons to obey regardless of our interests and desires, or do the reasons grow out of our interests and desires? Is the moral life always a personally satisfying life? Is morality a social invention or is it more deeply rooted in the nature of things? The course will address such questions. Usually offered every second year.

Staff

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Sex, love, and violence are the core problems for political philosophy. Examines how philosophers in the western political tradition have attempted to make arguments for the limitation of the use of force and for the legitimization of force, sex, and love. Usually offered every second year.

Ms. Hirshman

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Focuses on the ancient philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. The aim will be to identify the concerns and ways of thinking that are distinctive of each philosophy. Usually offered every second year.

Staff

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Treating the sexual exchange as a proper subject for politics, students read traditional philosophers like Tocqueville and Mill, as well as laws and court opinions in an effort to understand how sex is regulated in America as a political matter. Usually offered every second year.

Ms. Hirshman

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Scrutinizes the conceptual foundations and textual sources of classical Western political philosophy. Studies a number of cardinal themes including human nature and collective existence, justice and necessity, nature (phusis) and law/convention (nomos), types of regimes and their transformations, and classical philosophies of history. Traces these themes throughout the texts in their proper chronological order. Usually offered every second year.

Staff

(Formerly PHIL 36a)

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An investigation into the nature, sources, and extent of human knowledge, with emphasis on the problem of justifying our beliefs about the existence and character of the external world. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Hirsch

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An examination of some major issues involved in the question of personal identity. What am I? What are the conditions of self-identity? How does the identity of the self relate to the identity of a physical object? Is identity an illusion? Usually offered every second year.

Messrs. Hirsch and Greenberg

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Analyzes contemporary debate as well as the main positions in the history of philosophy bearing on recent research in linguistics and the cognitive sciences. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Samet

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Metaphysics is an attempt to describe in a very general way the nature of reality and how people fit into the scheme of things. Topics vary from year to year but may include truth, ontology, necessity, free will, causality, temporal passage, and identity. Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger and Hirsch

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Topics may vary from year to year and the course may be repeated for credit. We will concentrate on the following: Is logic an a priori or empirical science? Does it make sense to say that we can revise or adopt our logic? Is logic true by conventional rules of language? Usually offered every year.

Messrs. Berger and Yourgrau

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Covers basic problems and puzzles regarding reference and identity--topics that dominate issues in philosophy of language today. Topics include puzzles about belief, necessity, substitutivity of identity statements, and formal semantics for parts of language and modal notions. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Berger

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Explores the various ways in which philosophical ideas are reflected in and illuminate psychological theorizing and also examines the implications of recent work in psychology for traditional philosophical concerns. Topics differ from year to year. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Samet

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Explores the relation between the variable and the constant in experience--a relation embraced by what we as subjects bring to our experience--our subjective point of view of the world. Addresses the question of how our experience, with its inherent subjectivity, variable and constant, can provide us with knowledge of reality. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Greenberg

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The origins of our concept of consciousness can be found among the fundamental ideas of modern philosophy, tied to the concept of self. This connection will be the subject matter of this course. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Greenberg

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An examination of philosophical problems concerning the concepts of space and time as these arise in contemporary physics, modern logic and metaphysics, as well as in everyday life. Specific topics usually include philosophical aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity, the possibility of "time travel," the distinction between space and time, and McTaggart's famous distinction between the "A-series" and the "B-series" of time. Usually offered every second year.

Messrs. Berger, Hirsch, and Yourgrau

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Topics may vary from year to year and course may be repeated for credit. Topics include the relationship between the language we speak and our view of reality reference, the sense in which language may structure reality and formal semantics. Usually offered every second year.

Messrs. Berger and Hirsch

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Engages in a philosophical investigation, not of religion as an institution, but of the very idea of God. Studies the distinction between human being and divine being and addresses the issue of the relation of God's essence to His existence. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Yourgrau

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An introduction to Plato's thought through an intensive reading of several major dialogues. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Yourgrau

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An introduction to Aristotle's philosophy through an intensive reading of selected texts. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Yourgrau

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An attempt to understand and evaluate the main ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjectivity of space and time, the nature of consciousness, and the objectivity of the concepts of substance and causality. Usually offered every year.

Mr. Greenberg

A close reading of Descartes's Meditations, one of the cornerstones of modern philosophy. Considers responses of Descartes's contemporaries to this work and Descartes's replies, and contemporary discussions and interpretations. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the fall of 2000.

Mr. Samet

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Familiarity with the Critique of Pure Reason strongly recommended. Enrollment limited to 25.

Examines some of the main problems of a priori knowledge as seen from a Kantian point of view. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Greenberg

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An intensive study of Spinoza's major works, striving to understand the meaning and basis of his claims that the universe and God are but a single substance, among other topics. Usually offered every third year. Last offered in the spring of 1998.

Staff

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A very close reading of Hume's short classic Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which attempts to distill the key elements of Hume's Empiricism and make his philosophy accessible to a general audience. Topics include the nature of thought, skepticism and the possibility of knowledge, free will, the credibility of miracles, and the prospects for a life hereafter. Usually offered every second year.

Mr. Samet

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Presents the important theological contributions of the major thinkers of the Western Church covering the modern period. Usually offered every fourth year. Last offered in the fall of 1998.

Mr. Yourgrau

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Charts Nietzsche's fateful place in the history of Western philosophy. Examines his revolutionary questioning of traditional ontology and epistemology, and scrutinizes the interaction between his psychological deconstruction and his political philosophy of aristocratic radicalism. Also cultivates sensitivity to the dangers of distortion and misappropriation, which Nietzsche's writings so readily invite.

Mr. Makridis

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This seminar is given on a rotating basis by members of the department. Its purpose is to allow students to work at an advanced level. Special topics in philosophy vary from year to year.

Staff

Cross-Listed Courses

Greek and Roman Ethics: From Plato to the Stoics

Immorality: Its Genealogy, Varieties, and Attractions

Seminar in the History of Ideas: Case Studies

What is Philosophy: Politics? Science? Poetry? Religion?

Semantics: The Structure of Concepts

Medieval Jewish Philosophy