50 courses with the subject PHIL, 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.
PHIL 101History of Western Philosophy: Ancient1
a. The course concentrates on the ethical and metaphysical thought of Plato and Aristotle. We consider their answers to two questions that both seem intimately connected: What is a good life for a human being? And: what is it for something to exist? Jeffrey Seidman. a. This course provides an introduction to philosophy in the ancient Mediterranean world, from the early Greek cosmologists to the Roman Stoics. We focus on competing views about the highest good for human beings and philosophy’s role in helping one achieve it. Key readings include Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics , the letters of Epicurus, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations . Christopher Raymond. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This is an introductory-level philosophy course focusing on the social and political philosophies in the modern period (roughly between 1648 and 1810). This class responds to the vibrant time and volatile political landscape of that era. Topics studied include: the political category and philosophical concept of sovereignty; the ‘birth’ of political science; liberalism; social contract theory; the general will; absolutism; systems of checks and balances; the end of the nation-state; enlightenment as a political category; and a cosmopolitanism no longer rooted in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Political documents and constitutions are consulted. Authors read include: Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Toussaint Louverture, Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Osman Nemli. PHIL 101 is not a prerequisite for the course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This course surveys roughly one thousand years of philosophical activity in the Middle Ages, encompassing the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. Key authors include Augustine, Boethius, Abelard and Heloise, Ibn Tufayl, and Maimonides. Christopher Raymond. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 104Tragedy and Philosophy: Ancient and Modern Perspectives1
Since Greek antiquity, philosophers have puzzled over the meaning, value, and purpose of tragedy. This course traces their conversation from ancient Athens (Plato and Aristotle) to German Romanticism (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) to the present (Stanley Cavell and Martha Nussbaum). Along the way we study several plays that have inspired the philosophical imagination, including works by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, and Edward Albee. Students learn to write carefully-argued analyses of challenging texts, and to reflect on broader issues of literary interpretation, canonization and genre, and the ethical significance of art. Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
An introduction to Chinese philosophy in the period between (roughly) 500 and 221 B.C., covering Confucians, Taoists and others. Among the topics discussed by these philosophers are human nature, methods of ethical education and self-cultivation, virtues and vices, and the role of conventions and institutions in human life. Bryan Van Norden. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Some arguments seem to be strong, while other arguments are unconvincing. But what makes for a good argument? Formal logic provides a framework to precisely define notions of proof, truth, and validity, which we can use in answering this question. In this course, in studying notions central to deductive logic, we translate sentences from natural language into symbolic language and evaluate the logical structure of arguments built from these sentences. Studying formal logic can help you pay close attention to what a claim says (as well as to what it doesn’t say) and can help you get better at thinking clearly about argument structure. Logic has played an important role in the development of many other fields, and students find rich connections between this course and other courses they go on to take in philosophy, computer science, mathematics, linguistics, and others. This is designed as a fully introductory course, however, and does not assume any previous background in mathematics or logic. Jamie Kelly, Kathryn Pendoley. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
According to a recent New York Times Magazine headline, “Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College” (September 5, 2023). In this course, we seek to understand the widely perceived crisis in higher education by examining the history of college in the US and reading foundational and contemporary texts in the philosophy of education (with a focus on the “liberal arts”). Students also research the institutional and ideological history of Vassar, interview senior students about their college experience, and, most importantly, develop their own arguments in response to the course title’s question. There are several short writing assignments, involving peer-to-peer feedback and revision, leading to a longer paper on a topic of each student’s choice. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 203 and MEDS 203 ) Theorizations of the carceral state are commonly traced back to 1975, when, in Discipline and Punish , Michel Foucault famously defined the “carceral archipelago” as a series of institutions that, well beyond the frontiers of criminal law, exported penitentiary logics and penal practices to the entire social body. In this course, we pursue a reconstruction of, both, Foucault’s evolution in his assessment of the carceral archipelago – from the ideology of disciplinary institutions to more capillary self-representations and self-fashionings of individuals in late capitalism -, and the constellations of scholars that, before and after Foucault, have provided theorizations of the carceral state. Among those who preceded Foucault, we focus on Jeremy Bentham’s late 18th century layout of the panopticon as the architectural archetype of the modern correctional facility, and Antonio Gramsci, whose 1930s Prison Notebooks inspires us to reflect on how carcerality has become a culturally hegemonic framework within which to imagine life, death, and survival in today’s world. Among the thinkers who came after Foucault, we concentrate on three different sets of voices: social movements, including the Chicano Movement and the Black Panthers, who launched the prison as a stage and a platform of political resistance in the 1960s and 1970s; social scientists and civil rights advocates, who have theorized the continuity between the plantation economy and the prison industrial complex, including William J. Wilson and Michelle Alexander; and public intellectuals, such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, who have upheld prison abolitionism as the linchpin of criminal justice reform. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
After a brief overview of Kant’s “critical revolution” and its immediate aftermath, we examine the thought of four major European thinkers: Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Themes include the problem of alienation in a post-Enlightenment world; historical materialism and the concept of ideology; philosophical pessimism; and the hope that art can fill the spiritual void left by the collapse of religious belief. Christopher Raymond.
One 100-level Philosophy course, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 206Racial Capitalism0.5
(Same as AFRS 206 , ANST 206 , and MEDS 206 ) First coined by Cedric Robinson in 1983, racial capitalism asserts that the potential for the accumulation and optimization of profit, which drives capitalism, would not be possible without the project of racial ordering and racialized exploitation. This course reconstructs the history of this concept, from Robinson, who was writing at the rise of neoliberalism, privatization, and deregulation in the Reagan era, through and after the War on Terror, the pandemic, until today. By close-reading main sources in this theoretical lineage, students are given critical skills to reflect on two implications universally shared by racial capitalist theorists: on the one hand, rather than homogenizing social relations as Karl Marx had wrongly assumed, capitalism differentiates populations by racializing them, first of all epidermically, and then geographically, culturally, and religiously; on the other hand, in contrast with prominent historical reconstructions of the rise of capitalism and modernity, including Max Weber’s, capitalism absorbs and reformulates racialized orderings that structured the feudal order that preceded it in medieval Europe. To exemplify the workings of racial capitalism on a material level, we devote considerable time to examining the case of London’s West India Dock, from its modern colonial reconstruction in 1802 until its transformation into an educational museum and a tourist attraction located in Canary Wharf. We show how the development of the West India Dock, from a key colonial hub of transport and exchange, including human bodies, to a Wunderkammer of postcolonial equivocations, encapsulates the feedback loop between the conditions of production organizing the plantation economy in the Caribbean and the workings of the imperial metropole, yesterday and today. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This is an introduction to Neo-Confucianism, one of the most influential intellectual movements in China and all of East Asia. Neo-Confucianism combines a profound metaphysics with a subtle theory of ethical cultivation. There is also some discussion of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism whose views of the self and ethics are the primary targets of the Neo-Confucian critique. Bryan Van Norden.
One 100-level course in Philosophy, Chinese-Japanese, or Religious Studies, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 215Phenomenology & Existential Thought1
The twentieth century was a time of enormous social change. Witness both to unprecedented human-made atrocity and ingenuity, philosophers felt compelled to transform their discipline to meet the new cognitive and ethical demands of their historical experience. The founders of phenomenology and existentialism considered their intellectual movements to be revolutionary upheavals of a philosophy, practiced by the previous generation, that had become outdated. Existentialists were acutely aware of the contemporary person’s sense of despair and dislocation . They provided a philosophical explanation of this consciousness that took the most advanced historical, anthropological, and psychological considerations into account. Not only this: they also hoped to enable their readers and students to discover in these negative experiences the true sources of their freedom. The phenomenological tradition began with a different emphasis: it aspired to a living science that could renew ordinary people’s interest in knowledge and culture. Phenomenologists developed a novel descriptive method as the organ of this philosophy. In our class, as much emphasis falls on why existentialists and phenomenologists philosophized as they did as on their central concepts. We read about their ideas on freedom, death, and despair, as well as on time, objective knowledge, and the relationship between self and others. Core authors include Camus, De Beauvoir, Fanon, Husserl, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Nietzsche.
One 100-level Philosophy course or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 217Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy: Cultural Studies Between Media Theory and Philosophy0.5
(Same as AFRS 217 , ANST 217 , and MEDS 217 ) This course is dedicated to exploring the theoretical approach developed by the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. Its core is a close-reading of selected works by its two most impactful voices: Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. A foundational methodology for many interrelated fields – from postcolonial studies to media theory, from sociology to critical race studies – cultural studies seek to understand how meaning is produced by culturally hegemonic social and media formations, which have the power to shape both agencies and counter-agencies. We trace the history of the Birmingham school from the late 1970s, when it was born as a response to the neoliberal agenda of the Thatcher government, through the War on Terror, the pandemic, until today. While focusing on the development of Hall and Gilroy as scholars of Black Atlantic diasporic constellations, we also look back at their critical sources, especially their transformation of the Marxist legacies of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Lefevre, and forward at their ongoing worldwide impact, especially in South Africa and Latin America. Giovanna Borradori. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This course introduces students to key questions and debates in metaphysics, drawing on both Indian and Western philosophical traditions. Through close reading and critical analysis of classic and contemporary texts, students explore fundamental issues, including personal identity, causation, and the existence of an external world. By examining the distinct approaches, underlying assumptions, and conceptual frameworks employed by thinkers in each tradition, students develop a nuanced understanding of the similarities and differences between Indian and Western metaphysics. Students learn to critically reconstruct and evaluate metaphysical arguments from diverse philosophical perspectives. Ultimately, this course aims to provide students with a deep appreciation for the richness of metaphysical debates across these two major philosophical traditions.
One 100-level course in Philosophy or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 222Philosophy of Language1
What is meaning? How does language relate to the mind and the world? How is communication through language possible? This course delves into these questions by examining seminal works in the philosophy of language. We explore important texts from Frege, Russell, Putnam, and Kripke, among others. Additionally, we broaden our perspective by incorporating texts from Gaṅgeśa in Indian philosophy. Through critical analysis of the texts, students gain a deeper understanding of the nature of language, meaning, and communication, while developing skills in analytical thinking and argumentation.
One previous course in Philosophy. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 224Philosophy of Mind1
Can we make sense of beings with thoughts and feelings in a world made of physical stuff? Relatedly, can we identify what it would be for robots, aliens, and nonhuman animals to be conscious and to use genuine communication? Is your phone part of your mind? Are there “group minds”? Students are encouraged to make use of multidisciplinary inquiry as they approach their own responses to these questions. Some class time is set aside for student-chosen topics. Kathyrn Pendoley.
A course in Philosophy, Psychology, Cognitive Science, or Neurobiology is encouraged. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
PHIL 226Philosophy of Science1
(Same as STS 226 ) The way scientific investigation works is more complex than what we are taught when we learn about the scientific method in school. What is scientific investigation, how does it work, and what makes it a good way to learn about the world? Philosophy of science aims at understanding and answering these questions. In this course, we investigate these concerns through the following questions: What is scientific reasoning, and how is it different from the reasoning we use outside of science, if it is? Does science discover objective truths about the world? Many of our past scientific theories have turned out to be wrong. Should we trust our current theories? Why do we accept one theory over another? How might science be biased, and what, if anything, can we do about it? How do the different sciences fit together, if they do? This course draws on historical and current scientific cases across biology, neuroscience, social science, and physics. Toward the end of the course, we turn our attention to a major, new scientific methodology and ask about its virtues and limitations. Is data analysis transforming the scientific landscape and pushing us toward a new scientific revolution? Kathyrn Pendoley.
One 100-level course in Philosophy. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 228Epistemology1
Epistemology is concerned with what knowledge is and what its limits are. What’s the difference between knowing something and just making a good guess? Do we gain knowledge about the world through our senses? Through reasoning? Through what others tell us? What makes something a good source of information, and how do we know? Who gets to decide what counts as knowledge? In the first part of the course we study historical and contemporary approaches to these questions. Then, we turn our attention to the emotions and knowledge. Sometimes emotions seem to be the enemy of reason and feel as if they are beyond our control. Then again, sometimes it seems like our ‘gut’ feeling is required for making moral choices. This part of the course asks how emotions might shape our knowledge, what we can learn from emotions, as well as how our understanding of emotion itself is shaped by the social world. Are emotions required for moral knowledge? What, if anything, can we learn about ourselves from our emotions? About the world? What roles do emotions play in constructing and maintaining systems of power, and how might this shape how we understand ourselves and our world? Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa.
One course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 230The Frankfurt School1
This intermediate philosophy course is an introduction to the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’, officially known as “The Institute for Social Research.” Started in Frankfurt in 1930s, and spanning 30+ years, this group of intellectuals worked in Germany, and in exile in England and the United States during the Second World War and following, the institute’s overarching concerns included: providing a critical theory for, and of, society, a critique of ideology, and an assessment of the role and task for philosophy in the 20th century. Areas of their writings that we examine are: social theory, politics, political-economy, aesthetics, and history. Philosophers studied include: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and fellow traveler Walter Benjamin. Osman Nemli.
One 100-level course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
PHIL 234Ethics1
Why be moral? What does morality ask of us? What is the relation between morality and self- interest? What is happiness? What is the relation between a happy life and a meaningful life? Are there objective answers to ethical questions? Or are whatever answers we give no more than the expressions of our subjective attitudes? These are some of the questions this course seeks to address. We proceed by reading seminal texts in the Western moral philosophical tradition alongside writings by contemporary moral philosophers. Graham Parsons.
At least one 100-level course in Philosophy. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 236Philosophy of Law1
This course introduces students to the philosophical analysis of law and legal institutions. Topics may include legal positivism, natural law, legal formalism and realism, as well as questions about constitutional interpretation and legal discretion.
One 100-level course in Philosophy. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 237Theorizing Pandemic Media and Their Afterlives0.5
(Same as ASIA 237 , MEDS 237 , and STS 237 ) This course is based on a forthcoming book, Theorizing Pandemic Media and Their Afterlives, that I co-authored with Ruoyu Li, a Vassar alumna and my former student, now starting as an Assistant Professor in the Program on Peace and Conflict at Colgate University. The course begins from the observation that the COVID-19 pandemic was conceived, narrated, and visualized as a “numerical” crisis. In contrast to other pandemics (including the 1919 Spanish Influenza, which was represented as a spillover from the WWI battlefield, and HIV-AIDS, which was blamed on socially endangering behaviors), COVID-19 was hailed as an absolute statistical exception. We critically look at how the unprecedented proliferation of COVID-19 dashboards, coupled with the literacy universally required to decode their data visualizations, has conditioned the experience of living and dying under COVID-19, across different geographies, social and educational backgrounds, genders and generations, as well as political regimes. Theorizing the Dashboard as the premiere pandemic mass media enables us to analyze a new set of biopolitical practices that bestowed both care and abandonment by numerically targeting distinct populations of the world. We read the work of theorists of biopower and necropower, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Achille Mbembe, as well as scholars such as Belinda Kong, who has claimed that “the pandemic” is the foremost bio-securitizing and bio-orientalist discourse of the third millennium, and Bishnupriya Ghosh, whose concept of epidemic media as “biotechnical forms” make viral infections not only legible but actionable. These readings not only give students the opportunity to reconnect with the most globally shared trauma of this generation, but also enable them to appraise the COVID-19 pandemic as a specific form of geospatial and biostatistical “world-making,” whose military legacies have transformed how we live and relate to each other today. Giovanna Borradori. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
This course is a survey of contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy. The focus is on important contributions to the understanding of the theoretical foundations of political society in the last several decades. Necessarily, this includes discussions of the nature of the individual, interpersonal relations, the family and reproduction, gender, race, political economy, civil society, and government. Central normative concepts that are investigated include justice, freedom, equality, oppression, domination, legitimate authority, civic virtue, care, misogyny, and white supremacy. Effort is made to apply the theoretical content to urgent political problems such as health care, executive power, wealth inequality, systemic racism, and gender equality. Graham Parsons.
One 100-level course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
PHIL 240Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics1
This intermediate course examines foundational texts in the philosophy of art and aesthetics in order to consider questions such as: What is art? What is the difference between artistic and creative activities, on the one hand, and other sorts of behavior and acts, on the other? What is the beautiful, sublime, and ugly? Is there a difference between natural beauty and art beauty? What is the role of art in society, and does society have a necessary responsibility to review, curate, or censor art? Contemporary and historical works of art are referred to during the course of the semester. Readings include: Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Theodor W. Adorno. Osman Nemli.
One 100-level Philosophy course, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 250Feminist Theory1
(Same as WFQS 250 ) Should housework be waged? Should sex be for sale? What is the patriarchy anyway? This course is an introduction to feminist theory as well as the arguments and questions that have occupied radical, socialist, Black, eco, decolonial and queer feminists. In this class, we’ll read Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Silvia Federici, Audre Lorde, Kimberle Crenshaw, Gloria Anzaldua, Jack Halbertstam and Gayatri Spivak among others, with a view towards understanding connections between gender, work, and identity as well as how they matter for us today. Shivani Radhakrishnan.
One unit of Philosophy or Women’s Studies. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
PHIL 254Decolonial Feminisms1
(Same as WFQS 254 ) What is the relationship between gender and colonialism? This course begins by looking at how colonial projects involved constructions of gendered binaries and heterosexuality on non-European cultures. We then look at continued relationships of coloniality and critiques of Western feminism, while introducing students to Africana, Third World, Indigenous, and Latinx feminist philosophers and taking up questions about decolonial futures and the possibilities of solidarity. We read Mariana Ortega, Maria Lugones, Nkiru Nzegwu, Oyèrónké Oyêwùmí, and Gayatri Spivak among others.
One course in Philosophy or Women’s or Feminist & Queer Studies or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 262Latin American Philosophy1
(Same as LALS 262 ) In 1942, Leopoldo Zea wrote that, “What belongs to us, what is properly Latin American, is not to be found in pre-Columbian culture […] our way of thinking, our worldview, is similar to the European. […] Still, we do not feel it to be our own”. The purpose of this course is to examine the root of this claim and its status, as well as the anxiety it provokes. We begin by studying available pre-colonial sources from the Americas, including a peek into Aztec and Mayan philosophy, with a goal both toward adequate interpretation and toward seeking echoes of this early thinking in later Latin American writing. We then move into colonial-era philosophy, where the issues of emancipation and the rights of indigenous groups and women were playing out on a global scale. This unit includes readings on Bartolomé de las Casas, Sor Juana, Toussaint Louverture, and Simón Bolívar. We then do a unit on the identity movement in the 19th and 20th century, where various minds were grappling with the existentialist problem and (im)possibility of forging a national, racial, or ethnic identity. Readings might include José Martí, Samuel Ramos, Leopoldo Zea, Franz Fanon, Ofelia Schutte, and Gloria Anzaldúa. We end with a discussion of whether there is a distinctive Latinx philosophy, and what philosophy in Latin America looks like today. Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa.
At least one course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
PHIL 280Africana Philosophy1
(Same as AFRS 280 ) The following intermediate-level intensive class provides a historical survey and conceptual introduction to Africana Philosophy. Taking a global approach, the class shows the inter-continental and trans-historical conversations that Africana Philosophy has had with other Philosophical disciplines and schools. This trans-historical and cosmopolitan approach thus reveals the multiplicitous referents of Africana Philosophy and its various practices, methods, and areas of inquiry. Topics addressed include Blackness and the invention(s) of Africa, Blackness and an Anti-Black World, the lived experience of the black, (para-)ontological and racial difference, intersectionality, a poetics of relations, the gifts of black folk, and cosmopolitics. Philosophical approaches studied include black marxism, black existentialism, black feminism, anti-colonial resistance, critical race theory, afro-pessimism, and black ops. Authors studied include David Walker, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston, Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Hortense Spillers, Achille Mbembe, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Lewis Gordon, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Fred Moten, and Frank Wilderson. The Intensive class focuses on six questions throughout the semester; these questions are both present in the literature as well as be formulated in conversation with students. The Intensive class focuses on one of those specific questions every two weeks and assembles a list of work surrounding that question, offering different answers. Work for this Intensive class includes constellation (packet-style) reading where students divide up the reading among one another, experimental writing, co-produced work, and video essays. Osman Nemli. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: INT
PHIL 282Afro-Caribbean Voices in Francophone Phenomenology0.5
(Same as AFRS 282 and FFS 282 ) French phenomenology is a rich and complex lineage of inquiry, whose methodological influence can be traced in a variety of disciplines, from Continental philosophy, where it originates, to sociology, psychology, and virtually every other social science and humanity. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are the figures predominantly considered key to this lineage. This course is aimed at decolonizing this representation of “French” phenomenology by introducing students to the specific questions and methods developed by Afro-Caribbean “francophone” phenomenologists, from the 1930s through the 2010s. The contributions of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Franz Fanon, and Éduard Glissant, as well as their influence on contemporary anglophone decolonial theorists, including Sylvia Wynter, Saidyia Hartman, and Christina Sharpe, will thus emerge as a distinct constellation within the phenomenological tradition. Students learn how these Afro-Caribbean thinkers both shared the agenda of phenomenology and challenged some of its Eurocentric premises. In its historical progression, the exploration of this Afro-Caribbean contellation illuminates an approach to the philosophy of race on phenomenological premises. Giovanna Borradori. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
PHIL 283Born This Way: Essentialism across disciplines1
(Same as PSYC 283 ) Essentialism – the idea that categories like oak tree, woman, or American are natural rather than constructed, that identity is fixed rather than flexible, that characteristics are inborn rather than acquired, and that behavior reflects nature rather than nurture – has been a powerful idea ever since it first became en vogue in the 1800s. This course traces this idea from its theoretical and historical foundations (Philosophy) to its biological reality (Biology) and its cognitive and social implications (Psychology), as students journey from theory to practice within the span of 12 weeks. Across the course, we focus especially on essentialism as it relates to social categories such as race, gender, LGBTQ identities, mental illness, and disability. Kate Pendoley, Rebecca Peretz-Lange.
One 100-level course in Philosophy, Psychology, or Cognitive Science, or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 284Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: Minds and Values0.5
AI is transforming our world. It is changing work, research, institutional structures, and even the ways people relate to one another in personal relationships. AIs are better than humans at some things. At the same time, AIs can reproduce and reinforce harmful biases and injustice. So, we face urgent questions. What would it be to bring AIs into alignment with human values? What can we learn from AI, and how? Should humans use AIs, and if so, for what purposes? Can AIs reason? Experience? Express meaning? This course explores the questions by drawing on work across cognitive science, computer science, and philosophy. Kate Pendoley.
This Intensive provides a philosophical introduction to Richard Wagner’s monumental four-part music-drama, The Ring of the Nibelung (1876), one of the most revolutionary – and controversial – creations of modern culture. After an initial survey of the mythical and philosophical background to the work, we dedicate one week to analyzing each of the Ring ’s four parts, which explore the conflicts between love and power, freedom and fate, human law and primeval nature. Screenings are arranged outside of class, and students have access to the entire cycle through Vassar’s subscription to the Metropolitan Opera on Demand. In the final week, students present on their individual research into the Ring ’s complex reception history, in thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Theodor Adorno, Alain Badiou, and Roger Scruton. No prior musical knowledge is assumed, though students learn to identify the work’s principal themes and their transformations. Christopher Raymond.
One course in Philosophy or Music or German Studies, or permission of the instructor. Second Six-Week Course Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
PHIL 294Film and Philosophy: Ingmar Bergman0.5
This Intensive provides an introduction to the philosophy of film through the study of several films written and directed by the Swedish filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007). Films such as The Seventh Seal , Persona , and Fanny and Alexander have attracted sustained philosophical interest for their explorations of alienation, mortality, the “death of God”, personal identity, creativity, and love. Along with studies of selected films, we read scholarship on the aesthetics of film, auteur theory, and the status of film as a medium for philosophy. Christopher Raymond.
One course in Philosophy or Film, or permission of the instructor. Second six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
PHIL 298Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Supervised by the department faculty. Course Format: OTH
One 100-level course and one 200-level course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall and Spring
PHIL 350Seminar in Modernism, Postmodernism, and Hermeneutics1
The Modernism/Postmodernism/Hermeneutic divide stretches across many different disciplines, including philosophy, literary theory, history, religious studies, political science, anthropology and others. Roughly, these approaches argue over whether rationality, truth, and ethics are culturally and historically universal (Modernism), incommensurable (Postmodernism) or dialogical (Hermeneutics). This course explores these approaches with an emphasis on how they apply in the context of one culture trying to understand another. Requirements include regular class participation that shows familiarity with the readings and many brief essays. Bryan Van Norden.
At least one course in Philosophy, Chinese-Japanese, or Religious Studies at the 200-level, or permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
PHIL 390Senior Thesis0.5
Yearlong development of an extended philosophical essay in consultation with a faculty adviser. Participation in a senior proseminar is required. Christopher Raymond.
One 100-level course in Philosophy. Yearlong course 390- PHIL 391 . Students must register for 390 for fall semester and PHIL 391 for spring semester. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall
PHIL 391Senior Thesis0.5
Yearlong development of an extended philosophical essay in consultation with a faculty adviser. Participation in a senior proseminar is required. Christopher Raymond.
One 100-level course in Philosophy. Yearlong course PHIL 390 -391. Students must register for PHIL 390 for fall semester and 391 for spring semester. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Spring
PHIL 392Senior Thesis1
By special permission only. This one semester course may be substituted for PHIL 390 - PHIL 391 after consultation with your advisor. Participation in a senior proseminar is required. Christopher Raymond. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
Confucius is one of the most influential figures—as historical individual and as symbol—in world history; and the Analects , the sayings attributed to Confucius and his disciples, is a classic of world literature. Nonetheless, how to understand both figure and text is constantly under dispute. In this course we conduct an in-depth examination of the historical context of Confucius, and his views on the virtues, human nature, ethical cultivation and his Way for living and organizing society. Requirements include faithful attendance and weekly response essays. Bryan VanNorden.
One 200-level course in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall
PHIL 394Philosophy of Mental Illness0.5
(Same as STS 394 ) This interdisciplinary intensive focuses on two main issues: psychopathological categorization and diagnosis, and ethical issues that surround categorization, diagnosis, and treatment of mental disorders. We ask questions such as: what are the biological, physical, sociological, and individual characteristics that do influence, and which are the characteristics that should or should not influence, psychopathological taxonomy and diagnosis? What can we learn about mental illness from the disability rights movement? And are current treatment options the optimal approach for general and particular mental illnesses? After an initial seminar-style period of common reading and discussion, students are expected to pursue individual research projects that may involve a short-term production or creative component, with instructor approval. Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa.
One prior course in Philosophy at any level. One 3-hour period. Course Format: INT
Offered
Spring
PHIL 397Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics1
Participants in this intensive undertake an in-depth reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics . The NE is one of the two or three most influential works of moral philosophy in the western philosophical tradition. It is a book which is at once strange to us (written 2400 years ago, in a culture that is very foreign to our own), and yet, at key points, strikingly resonant now. We read Aristotle’s text carefully in order to reconstruct the best arguments for his views that we can; but we also test those arguments, and ask whether their conclusions are, in the end, defensible. Could Aristotle be right that a person can live a good life only insofar as they possess and exercise virtues of character such as courage, justice, and generosity? Is Aristotle right that there is such a thing as an (objectively) good life for a human being at all? How much, if any, of his specific picture of a good life should be defended, and how much should be jettisoned? We meet once a week to discuss a substantial portion of the text. Students should have prior experience studying the history of philosophy, preferably within the western philosophical tradition. We read the Nicomachen Ethics in English, but students with any knowledge of Greek are encouraged to also consult the original. Jeffrey Seidman.
Two intermediate or advanced Philosophy courses (preferably in the history of philosophy), or permission of the instructor. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
PHIL 399Senior Independent Work
0.5 to 1 unit(s) The department. Course Format: OTH
