44 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.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableAn introduction to the main topics, fields and figures of philosophy. Multiple sections of this course are offered every semester, under a variety of titles.
Offered Both Fall and Spring; Lecture hours:3Logic is the study of good reasoning. This course introduces methods for identifying and evaluating arguments and considers social/psychological barriers to good reasoning. Students will also be introduced to formal (symbolic) approaches to logic.
Offered Alternating Spring Semester; Lecture hours:3This course introduces students to formal / symbolic approaches to the study of logical reasoning including propositional, first-order predicate logic, and formal inductive logic. The course will also address philosophical questions concerning logic and the foundations of mathematics. PHIL 103 is recommended but optional preparation for this course.
Offered Occasionally,Topics course; Lecture hours:1.5; RepeatableA course applying philosophical theories to a topic of contemporary interest. Offered occasionally under different titles.
Offered Fall Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Studies of the ancient Greek notions of kosmos, society, and soul, through readings of the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle. Some attention will also be paid to the mythic/poetic background from which philosophy arises for the ancient Greeks. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or PHIL 103 or PHIL 201 or permission of instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3 A comparative examination of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions in medieval philosophy. Questions will focus on God, free will, the problem of evil, the meaning of history, the fate of the soul, and the good life. Readings in Augustine, Avicenna, Maimonides and Aquinas. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of instructor.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3Philosophical thought in the classical modern age, including Continental Rationalism, British Empiricism, and Kant. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Analysis of the creative process, the work of art, natural beauty, aesthetic experience, and principles of criticism. Crosslisted as ARTH 222.
Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:3An attempt to formulate adequate criteria for the basic moral conceptions of good and bad, right and wrong, and duty, by a study of leading ethical view points from Plato to the present. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or PHIL 103 or PHIL 201 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Problems such as individual and state, freedom and organization, power and rectitude, philosophy of law, equity and differences, the sociomoral basis of rights.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3What is music—sound waves? live performances? streaming audio code? a conductor’s score? What distinguishes music from noise? Is music something uniquely human? This course explores how a historically and geographically diverse array of intellectual traditions have grappled with such questions, enlisting the insights of philosophers, composers and Indigenous thinkers to sound out the ethical, conceptual and political issues music raises. Crosslisted as MUSC 215.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination of leading theories of individual and mass deception, as well as theories of self-deception, as these theories bear on the task of informed decision making. Philosophers to be studied may include: Freud, Marx, Sartre, Jung, Foucault, Lukacs, Habermas. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An introduction to foundational metaphysical, epistemological, methodological, and ethical questions concerning science and scientific practice. Particular attention will be paid to theory confirmation, observation and experiment, explanation, scientific progress and revolution. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Problems for rational inquiry arising from the claims and practices of religious faith; the nature of religious experience and language, arguments for God's existence, evil. Crosslisted as RELI 216.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Addresses topics related to the nature and acquisition of knowledge, such as belief, justification, evidence, perception, testimony, and skepticism. Readings may include both classic and contemporary authors, such as Plato, Descartes, Russell, Austin, Davidson, Goldman, McDowell, and Sosa. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An inquiry into the nature of being/reality. Topics may include the ontological status of universals, mind, personal identity, freedom, time and God. Readings in such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Ockham, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, Bergson and Heidegger. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3A study of topics in the philosophy of the mind, such as the mind-body problem, thought, consciousness, perceptual experience, and artificial intelligence. Readings may include both classic and contemporary authors, such as Descartes, Hume, Ryle, Davidson, Fodor, Dennett, and Chalmers.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3An examination of philosophical problems concerning the nature of language, meaning, and communication. Readings may include both classic and contemporary authors, such as Locke, Mill, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, Davidson, Dummett, Kripke, and Kaplan. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3Contemporary approaches to the problems of ethics: universality, moral vs. non-moral judgments, facts and values, etc. Readings in such thinkers as Williams, MacIntyre, Nussbaum, Rorty, Korsgaard, and Hursthouse. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or PHIL 103 or PHIL 201 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Critical examination of the nature and meaning of "race" in terms of conceptual analysis, experience, social constructionism, feminism, class, ethnicity, politics, colonialism, violence, and redress. Crosslisted as CBST 229 and POLS 259.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An examination of feminist philosophy primarily as it occurs in the U.S. from the late 18th century to the present. Crosslisted as WMST 230.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An inquiry into the nature of time from various historical and contemporary perspectives. Possible topics include the puzzle of change, the passage of time, the relation between our experience of time and the scientific image of time, the direction of time, personal identity over time, and time travel.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Examination of some central philosophical issues relating to law, including law's relation to economics, literature, democracy, rules, integrity, and interpretation. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or PHIL 103 or PHIL 201 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3The rise, fall, and reaction to German Idealism in 19th-century continental thought. Philosophers to be studied may include: Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course explores the Frankfurt School's program of social critique - inspired by Kant, Hegel, Marx and Freud - which indicted fascism and antisemitism and struck at the heart of modernity: capitalism, culture, Enlightenment, reason and freedom. They ask us, Is ethical life possible under contemporary conditions of barbarism?.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Analysis of selected texts of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Camus, or Sartre. Special attention given to the relation of existentialism to problems of post-Cartesian thought. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or PHIL 103 or PHIL 201 or permission or the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3Analysis of selected texts of Husserl, Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty. Some consideration of the interpretation of the history of philosophy offered by phenomenology. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3A survey of some major currents and figures in 20th-century philosophy. Philosophers to be studied may include: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course will focus on major figures and issues within philosophy in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Latinx U.S., with an emphasis on the connection between identity-formation and politics. Crosslisted as LAMS 264.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An investigation of and focused study of contemporary philosophical issues in the arts and aesthetics more generally. Crosslisted as ARTH 265.
Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An introduction to Chinese thought, including: the major schools and thinkers of the classical age, Chinese Buddhist philosophy, early modern Neo-confucianism, and Chinese philosophy since the Communist Revolution of 1949. Crosslisted as EAST 266 and HUMN 266.
Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3A survey of the Arabic philosophical tradition. Topics discussed include the good life, the status of the philosopher in society, God, death and the afterlife, the political function of prophecy, and reason, faith and reason as potential sources of knowledge. Figures studied include al-Razi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, etc.
Offered Both Fall and Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableFocused study of specific topics in metaphysics and/or epistemology, such as space and time, possible worlds, the mind-body problem, truth, skepticism, virtue epistemology, and norms of assertion. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3We will survey the central epistemological and metaphysical problems addressed in the 20th-century philosophy of biology. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or permission of the instructor.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3This course examines a variety of topics in contemporary bioethics including biomedical ethics, public health, disability, human enhancement and climate change. Our aim will be to understand the complex ethical issues that arise at both the individual and global level through case studies and philosophical texts.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableFocused study of specific topics in value theory, such as specific topics in ethical theory, applied ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of art or aesthetics. Prerequisite: varies.
Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3An introduction to Buddhist thought in comparative perspective, through a close reading and discussion of primary texts of the classical, medieval, modern and contemporary traditions. Prerequisite: PHIL 100. Crosslisted as HUMN 280.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableFocused study of specific topics in philosophical movements and/or traditions, such as specific topics in existentialism, feminist theory, philosophy of peace, and in Chinese, Medieval, Indian, or Islamic philosophy.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3This course can only be taken by philosophy majors who have permission and have taken the prerequisite. Prerequisite: PHIL 100 and permission of the instructor.
Offered Both Fall and Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:Varies,Other:Varies; RepeatableOpen to advanced students who wish to pursue individual programs of study under the supervision of a professor, or of a committee of professors if the subject falls within two or more departments. May be conducted as a seminar for three or more students pursuing similar programs.
Offered Either Fall or Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:Varies; RepeatableIndependent research on a philosophical issue, in consultation with staff members. The thesis should show integrative and creative abilities. Prerequisite: major in philosophy or permission of the instructor.
Offered Fall Semester Only,Topics course; Lecture hours:VariesSubstantial independent work on some problem or topic approved by the Department of Philosophy and the Honors Council as satisfying the requirements for a senior honors thesis. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken PHIL 321 or PHIL 322.
Topics course,Offered Spring Semester Only; Lecture hours:VariesSecond semester of independent work on some problem or topic approved by the Department of Philosophy and the Honors Council as satisfying the requirements for a senior honors thesis. Prerequisites: PHIL 324 and permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken PHIL 321 or PHIL 322.
Offered Both Fall and Spring,Topics course; Lecture hours:3; RepeatableAdvanced seminars typically focus on a particular philosophical figure, historical period or movement, or a significant topic area in philosophy and are intended to engage students at an advanced level of preparation in intensive philosophical discussion and in-depth study. Prerequisites: senior philosophy major standing or permission of the instructor.
Source: Bucknell University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
