Political philosophy forms that branch of philosophy that reflects on the specificity of the political. Why are humans, as Aristotle argued, political animals? How are they political? What are the means and ends of the political, and how best does one organize the political with such questions in mind? The course offers a topic-oriented approach to the fundamental problems underlying political theory and practice.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 10:35 | 11:55 | PL-1 |
Thursday | 10:35 | 11:55 | PL-1 |
In this course we shall examine the birth of empiricism in polemics over the origins of knowledge and political authority, the limits of human reason, and the possibility of philosophy itself finding a way out of the seventeenth century's religious wars and tyranny towards the creation of free and tolerant societies of rational individuals. Readings from Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 10:35 | 11:55 | C-505 |
Thursday | 10:35 | 11:55 | C-505 |
An introduction to one of the key orientations of modern philosophy: critical genealogy and its central problematic, the identity and formation of the subject. The aim of critical genealogy is to unearth the hidden and unsuspected mechanisms, whether institutional or familial, which lie behind the formation of individual and social identities.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 12:10 | 13:30 | Q-604 |
Thursday | 12:10 | 13:30 | Q-604 |
Psychology and philosophy have a long history in common. The course addresses philosophical dimensions and implications of psychology – concerning our understanding of cognition, action, emotion, imagination, mind, body, and brain. It also deals with central issues in philosophy that reflect and elaborate our understanding of human psychology and the way it is scientifically investigated: consciousness, thought and language, identity, and other forms of human subjectivity and its social, cultural, and historical fabric.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 15:20 | 18:15 | C-501 |
Philosophical and political modernity concerns the development of rationality, freedom, and social responsibility from out of the tensions between ethics, religion, politics and the economy. With postmodernist epistemology, the so-called 'return' of religion, and economic globalization, this 'modernity' has been questioned. In this historical context the course re-elaborates the problematic of modernity through selective reading of Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 16:55 | 18:15 | Q-604 |
Thursday | 16:55 | 18:15 | Q-604 |
Digital citizenship is a key concept of our digital age, expressing the hope that a humane use of digital technologies is possible. The course contrasts digital citizenship with political, environmental, and global conceptions citizenship, before studying the political, legal, and educational dimensions of digital citizenship. It also explores selected practices of digital citizenship, including clicktivism, digital commoning, and digital counter surveillance.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Tuesday | 16:55 | 18:15 | Q-509 |
Friday | 16:55 | 18:15 | Q-509 |
Topics vary by semester
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Tuesday | 13:45 | 15:05 | SD-6 |
Friday | 13:45 | 15:05 | SD-6 |
A grand tour of 5th cent. BCE Athens, a fascinating time of intellectual unrest and innovation. Readings include the founding fathers of drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), Old Comedy (Aristophanes), fragments of the Greek sophists, the historiographers Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon’s Recollections of Socrates and early Platonic dialogues, such as the Apology and the Phaedo.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 15:20 | 16:40 | C-505 |
Thursday | 15:20 | 16:40 | C-505 |
Upon a successful thesis application students must complete the thesis workshop in which they develop their thesis proposal through the submission of a literature review, an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and a draft of the first chapter. Students will learn how to plan and execute a substantial research project with the professor's close supervision.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Thursday | 15:20 | 16:40 | Q-709 |
What is politics - the quest for the common good or who gets what, when, and how? We study what defines politics in the modern age: states and nations in the international system, collective action and representation in mass societies, trajectories of democracy and dictatorship, politics and development in the context of capitalism. The course will introduce the student to the concerns, the language and the methods of Political Science.
| Day | Start Time | End Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Tuesday | 09:00 | 10:20 | PL-1 |
Friday | 09:00 | 10:20 | PL-1 |