30 courses with the subject PHIL UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Survey of some of the central problems, key figures, and great works in both traditional and contemporary philosophy. Topics and texts will vary with instructor and semester
Critical introduction to philosophical problems, ideas and methods
Explicit criteria for recognizing valid and fallacious arguments, together with various methods for schematizing discourse for the purpose of logical analysis. Illustrative material taken from science and everyday life
Drawing on classical and contemporary sources, this course will introduce students to a variety of texts that address the philosophical consideration of education, including its role in the development of the individual and the development of a democratic society. Readings from Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and others.
Corequisites: PHIL V2111 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Exposition and analysis of the positions of the major philosophers from the pre-Socratics through Augustine. This course has unrestricted enrollment
Is there an essential difference between women and men? How do questions about race conflict or overlap with those about gender? Is there a normal way of being queer? Introduction to philosophy and feminism through a critical discussion of these and other questions using historical and contemporary texts, art, and public lectures. Focus includes essentialism, difference, identity, knowledge, objectivity, and queerness
This course will survey a number of topics at the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy. Potential topics include free will, consciousness, embodied cognition, artificial intelligence, neural networks, and the language of thought
This course gives students an introduction to various topics in the Philosophy of Language
Buddhist philosophers generally agree about what doesn’t exist: an enduring, unitary, and independent self. But there is surprisingly little consensus across Buddhist traditions about what does exist and what it’s like. In this course, we will examine several Buddhist theories about the nature and structure of reality and consider the epistemological and ethical implications of these radically different pictures of the world. We will analyze and evaluate arguments from some of the most influential Indian Buddhist philosophers from the second to the eleventh centuries, including Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Dignāga, Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Śāntideva, and Ratnakīrti. Topics will include the existence and nature of the external world, the mind, and the self; practical and epistemological implications of the Buddhist no-self principle; personal identity; the problem of other minds; and causal determinism and moral responsibility
Prerequisites: One philosophy course or permission of the instructor.
This course will provide an introduction to meaning, reference, understanding, and content in language, thought, and perception. A central concern will be the question of the relation of meaning to truth-conditions, and what is involved in language and thought successfully latching on to reality. If you have not already taken an elementary course in first order logic, you will need to catch up in that area to understand some crucial parts of the course. All the same, the primary concerns of the course will be philosophical, rather than technical.
Prerequisites: Phil UN2201 or PHIL UN3251 Examines major themes of Hegels philosophy, with emphasis on social and political thought. Topics include Hegels critique of Kant, the possibility of metaphysics, the master-slave dialectic, and the role of freedom in a rational society. Readings from Kant’s Third Critique help explain how Hegels project develops out of Kants transcendental idealism. Some knowledge of Kants moral theory and his Critique of Pure Reason is presupposed. Prerequisite: at least one of PHIL UN2201, PHIL UN2301, or PHIL UN3251
Prerequisites: one philosophy course. Prerequisites: one philosophy course. A survey of Eurpoean social philosophy from the 18th to the 20th century, with special attention to theories of capitalism and the normative concepts (freedom, alienation, human flourishing) that inform them. Also: the relationship between civil society and the state
Corequisites: PHILV3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable
Prerequisites: one philosophy course or the instructor's permission. Philosophical problems within science and about the nature of scientific knowledge in the 17th-20th centuries. Sample problems: causation and scientific explanation; induction and real kinds; verification and falsification; models, analogies and simulations; the historical origins of the modern sciences; scientific revolutions; reductionism and supervenience; differences between physics, biology and the social sciences; the nature of life; cultural evolution; human nature; philosophical issues in cosmology
Corequisites: PHIL V3611 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Systematic treatment of some major topics in metaphysics (e.g. modality, causation, identity through time, particulars and universals). Readings from contemporary authors
This course will focus on one topic at the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy. Potential topics include free will, consciousness, modularity, mental representation, probabilistic inference, the language of thought, and the computational theory of mind
This course is a survey of analytic philosophy of language. It addresses central issues about the nature of meaning, including: sense and reference, speech acts, pragmatics, and the relationship between meaning and use, meaning and context, and meaning and truth
Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points). This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics
Six major concepts of political philosophy including authority, rights, equality, justice, liberty and democracy are examined in three different ways. First the conceptual issues are analyzed through contemporary essays on these topics by authors like Peters, Hart, Williams, Berlin, Rawls and Schumpeter. Second the classical sources on these topics are discussed through readings from Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Marx, Plato, Mill and Rousseau. Third some attention is paid to relevant contexts of application of these concepts in political society, including such political movements as anarchism, international human rights, conservative, liberal, and Marxist economic policies as well as competing models of democracy
This course is a philosophical examination of the meaning and significance of the concept of race. The course will chiefly aim to answer: What do we mean by the term “race”? And why is it often tied to the existence of racism? From where does the concept come? And what role did “race” play in the philosophical thought and the culture of Western modernity? Among the questions that can be asked are, How do concepts of race contribute to the formation and justification of various economic, political, and social institutions and practices, such as slavery, colonialism, and segregation? However, we will also inquire at the end of the course whether “race” is always a destructive concept, or whether it can be re-defined as part of a liberation project centered on racial identity: the appreciation and celebration of racial difference and solidarity
This course will survey political and epistemological questions that are centered around living in a society with oppression, including: What is oppression? What does it mean to be an ally? When is it right to speak for others and advocate for their interests? Do we have a duty to dissent and protest under certain circumstances? What is solidarity and how can we act in solidarity with others?
Talk about “individuality”, about being (or becoming) “yourself” is all around us. But what exactly does this mean? What is genuine individuality, and how can we develop it, in ourselves (though self-development) and in others (by designing appropriate educational institutions)? What is the relationship between being an individual and being a part of society? Is there a tension between the non-conformism often associated with genuine individuality on the one hand, and the demands of community and good citizenship, on the other? Can educational institutions be designed to fulfill both those demands (to the extent they are distinct)? And how might oppressive social institutions hinder the development of “individuality”? In this course, we will explore these and related questions by drawing on both the classics of philosophy of education (Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dewey, Du Bois), and on relevant literary material that is in conversation with the philosophical texts (Rilke, Tolstoy, Woolf)
“What is it to be happy?” Philosophers have passionately debated this question from antiquity until now. Especially in times when happiness seems difficult to find, we naturally want to know what happiness is and how best to secure it. In this course, we will consider happiness in relation to well-being, examining four major theories of well-being (hedonism, desire-fulfillment theories, objective list theories, and eudaimonism/perfectionism). We will gain a nuanced understanding of each view by juxtaposing their ancient and modern advocates and opponents
Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors
Corequisites: PHIL UN3963 Corequisites: PHIL W3963 Required Discussion Section (0 points). What can we know? What is knowledge? What are the different kinds of knowledge? We will read classic and contemporary texts for insight into these questions
Supervised research usually with the goal of writing a senior thesis, under the direction of individual members of the department. ,
Spring 2026: PHIL UN3998 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment PHIL 3998 001/13833 Allison Aitken 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 002/13834 David Albert 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 003/13835 Akeel Bilgrami 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 004/13836 Justin Clarke-Doane 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 005/13837 Jessica Collins 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 006/13838 Melissa Fusco 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 007/13839 Haim Gaifman 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 008/13840 Lydia Goehr 1.00-3.00 1/5 PHIL 3998 009/13841 Axel Honneth 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 010/13842 Timothy Williamson 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 011/13843 Tamar Lando 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 012/13844 Michele Moody-Adams 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 013/13845 Christopher Peacocke 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 014/13846 Carol Rovane 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 015/13847 Wolfgang Mann 1.00-3.00 1/5 PHIL 3998 016/13848 Christia Mercer 1.00-3.00 2/5 PHIL 3998 017/13849 Achille Varzi 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 018/13850 Katja Vogt 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 JE1/20776 W F 9:00am - 11:00am Othr Other Christia Mercer 1.00-3.00 35/35 Fall 2026: PHIL UN3998 Course Number Section/Call Number Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment PHIL 3998 001/12901 Allison Aitken 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 002/12902 David Albert 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 003/12903 Akeel Bilgrami 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 004/12904 Justin Clarke-Doane 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 005/12905 Jessica Collins 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 006/12906 Melissa Fusco 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 007/12907 Haim Gaifman 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 008/12908 Lydia Goehr 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 009/12909 Axel Honneth 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 011/12910 Tamar Lando 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 013/12911 Christopher Peacocke 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 014/12912 Carol Rovane 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 015/12913 Wolfgang Mann 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 016/12914 Christia Mercer 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 017/12915 Achille Varzi 1.00-3.00 1/5 PHIL 3998 018/12916 Katja Vogt 1.00-3.00 0/5 PHIL 3998 030/12917 Timothy Williamson 1.00-3.00 0/5
Source: Columbia University in the City of New York's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
