29 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.
CR: 3 An introduction to the rules of formal reasoning, from classical syllogistic logic to modern symbolic logic. Emphasis will be placed on evaluating the validity of arguments (determining whether conclusions follow validly from given premises) and applying this form of evaluation to a critical analysis of logical fallacies.
CR: 3 An introduction to political philosophy and political theory. Possible figures to be covered include Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Smith, and Marx, as well as contemporary thinkers such as Jouvenel, Dahl, Arendt, Nussbaum, and Pitkin.
CR: 3.0 Have you ever wondered: What is the origin of science? What do laws of nature explain? How do scientific revolutions come about? In this course, we explore all these questions and more from both systematic and historical perspectives. Systematically, we study some of the field’s central concepts including explanation, justification, induction, and falsification. Historically, we read key thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions, such as Popper, Ayer, Kuhn, Cassirer, Bachelard, Canguilhem, and Irigaray.
CR: 3.0 An examination of the relationship between philosophy and literature, including reading classic and contemporary literary texts as philosophy and reading representative philosophical texts as literature. Commonalities and distinctions between these two modes of discourse, as well as their historical influence on one another, will be considered. Possible figures to be covered include Kafka, Borges, Baldwin, Beauvoir, Calvino, Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Morrison, Eliot, Barthes, Foucault, and Deleuze. When taught during a 3-week term, this course includes travel to one or two locations for up to two and a half weeks and will focus on the role of place in shaping literary production. Students will be responsible for the travel costs of this course and may apply for a Grant for Engaged Learning (GEL) to offset these expenses. This course may be repeated if the topic changes.
CR: 3 One PHIL course. A detailed philosophical examination of the concept, historical formation, and social reality of race, raciality, and racism. Possible questions to be explored include the following: is the category of race biologically determined, socially (historically, politically, culturally) constructed, or both? What is the meaning of this concept of race, and what role does it play in individual and collective identity formation? What is the historical relationship between race and power? Is racism best understood as a kind of personal attitude, emotion, and belief, or rather as a structural and systematic phenomenon? What are the relations between race and ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality? How do race and racism function outside the United States and in contexts that go beyond the black-white dichotomy?
CR: 3.0 Classical Chinese, a form of Chinese that was written in the period between roughly 500 BCE and 220 CE, is the language of Classical Confucianism, Daoism, and many other philosophical schools of thought. As language is the medium of philosophy, familiarity with Classical Chinese will deepen your understanding of the Chinese philosophical tradition. In this class, we will learn some characters, some basic grammatical structures, as well as other peculiar aspects of Classical Chinese by reading selections from actual texts in Confucianism, Daoism, and other schools together. If you have been wondering what the mysterious Daodejing is really saying, then join us for an adventure! You do not need any prior knowledge of modern and/or ancient Chinese for this class.
CR: 3 A critical study of the relationship between ethical theories and current practices and issues. Applications studied will vary year to year, but may include topics such as euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, animal rights, and affirmative action. Possible figures to be covered include Aristotle, Mill, Kant, and Nietzsche.
CR: 3 What defines our modern way of life? Science, technology, fully autonomous individuals, the separation of church and state? Throughout the history of thought, what we call the “early modern” period played an especially formative role for our way of life today. This period begins with philosophical theology and ends with the rise of science, with a re-conception of human subjectivity as the pivoting ground. This course will introduce you to the origin of our modern conditions, revealing that many of the most commonsensical beliefs that we take for granted today are not self-evidently true, but rather presuppositions formed during a historical period. Possible philosophers covered include René Descartes; Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia; Baruch Spinoza; Lady Anne Conway; and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
CR: 3 A survey exploring how existentialist and postmodern philosophies have challenged and re-created fundamental ideas about what it means to be human, including the topics of freedom, personal and collective identity, social difference, religious faith, madness, and the search for meaning. Students will read works by thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray, Butler, and Gordon. When taught during a 3-week term, this course includes travel to one or two locations for up to two and a half weeks and will focus on the impact of existentialist and postmodern ideas in art and culture, Students will be responsible for the travel costs of this course and may apply for a Grant for Engaged Learning (GEL) to offset these expenses.
CR: 3 A philosophical examination of the nature, meaning, and value of the arts, including the visual arts, literature, music, dance, and theater. Possible topics include the ontological status of the art object (what counts as art, or what distinguishes artworks from other kinds of objects); the relationship between art and truth; the roles of the artist and the aesthetic experience; the connection between art and madness; the political function of art; and the relationship between art and ethics. When taught in a 3-week term, the course includes travel to Washington, D.C. for up to 5 days and will focus on studying artworks at museums. Students will be responsible for the travel costs of this course and may apply for a Grant for Engaged Learning to offset these expenses. No specialized knowledge of the arts is required.
CR: 3.0 Women are significantly underrepresented in surveys on the historical development of philosophy across the globe. This course introduces key female philosophers and their contributions to the field across a broad chronological and geographical span. Figures include Hipparchia, Hypatia, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pizan, Laura Cereta, Isotta Nogarola, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margarete Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Woolstencroft, Olympe de Gouges, Arendt; Ayn Rand, de Beauvoir, Vandana Shiva, etc.
CR: 3 A detailed exploration of feminism and philosophy, including the critical contributions of feminist theory to a range of traditional philosophical subjects (e.g., ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language) as well as feminist philosophy of gender and sexuality in particular. Possible topics include the sex/gender distinction; power, normalization and identity, standpoint epistemology; feminist philosophy of body; feminist theories of justice; feminist care ethics; eco-feminism; feminist art and art theory (including literature); gender, race, and class; feminist legal studies; feminism and queer theory, and global feminisms.
CR: 3 A philosophical examination of the nature, history, experience, and science of the body, consciousness, and perception. Possible topics include the relationship between mind and body; the historical constitution of the body as object of scientific knowledge; the social construction of the body, e.g., as gendered, raced, (dis)abled, etc.; power, normalization, and identity; embodied phenomenology and embodied cognition; consciousness and artificial intelligence; non-human animal consciousness; panpsychism; somatic knowledge; aesthetic transformation of modes of perception, e.g., in philosophy of dance and philosophy of painting; and philosophy of color.
CR: 3 Upper-level research or creative project determined in advance by the student in consultation with two faculty members who will serve as primary and secondary project sponsors. The course is required for the Honors Degree, and serves as the capstone experience for Honors students who do not pursue a senior Honors thesis project. This course is typically taken in the student’s junior or senior year.
CR: 3 During this course, a senior is expected to refine and submit their thesis proposal under the supervision of a thesis advisor. The senior will submit their thesis proposal to the Student Advancement Committee by the deadline determined by the Honors Program. Pending approval by the Student Advancement Committee, the student will spend the remainder of the semester beginning the research described in their proposal. If a student does not submit an acceptable thesis proposal as determined by the Student Advancement Committee, they will not be allowed to continue in the pursuit of the Honors Degree/Program Honors. This course will carry the rubric of the student’s major in which the thesis is based.
CR: 3 In this course, the student is expected to continue the research proposed and approved by the Student Advancement Committee in the 471 Proposal/Research course. This work is completed under the supervision of faculty advisors, culminating in the student defending their thesis before a committee.
Source: Sweet Briar College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
