Date

Topic

Reading    (Note: TGC = The Great Conversation by Norman Melchert (Sixth edition); TBA means To Be Announced later; page numbers for primary texts are from Bennett's versions)

August 28

Introductory Session

Descartes, Meditations 1 and 2 (in class)

Sept. 11

Descartes’ dualism, Elizabeth's criticism, and Hobbes’ materialism

TGC, Ch. 18 to p.412, Hobbes, Leviathan, Intro and Book 1, Chs. 1-6; Princess Elizabeth, correspondence with Descartes (pp. 1-8)

Sept. 18

Hobbes and Locke on the Social Contract: the philosophical rationalization of colonial conquest

TGC 411-415;  Hobbes, Leviathan, Chs. 13-15(pp. 56-74),  17, 18, 21 (pp. 77-85, 96-102); TGC 378-381; Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chs. 1-5, 7-11 (pp. 2-18, 26-46);

Mills,The Racial Contract(selections). Optional extra readings: Hall, "Race in Hobbes"; Bernasconi and Mann, "Locke, Slavery, and the Two Treatises".

Sept. 25

1. TGC 416-423, 427-435;

Reading the following selections from Locke's Essay is optional. Please use the extra time to get started on the position paper that is due in a couple of weeks.

2. (Optional) (Locke,Essay Concerning Human Understanding, selections:

Book I, Of Innate Notions
---Chapter 1, Introduction
---Chapter 2, No Innate Principles in the Mind
---Chapter 4 Further Considerations on Innate Principles, just sections 8 and 9

Book II, Of Ideas
---Chapter 1, Ideas in General and Their Origin, sections 1-9
---Chapter 2, Simple Ideas
---Chapter 3, Ideas of One Sense
---Chapter 4, Solidity
---Chapter 5, Simple Ideas of Different Senses
---Chapter 6, Simple Ideas of Reflection
---Chapter 7, Simple Ideas of Both Sensation and Reflection
---Chapter 8, Further Considerations..., Sections 1-19
---Chapter 11, Of Discerning and Other Operations of the Mind, sections 1, 4, 6, 8. 9, 17
---Chapter 12 Complex Ideas
---Chapter 21, Power, Sections 1-29 plus sections 73-74
---Chapter 23, Complex Ideas of Substances, Sections 1-12, 30, 33, 35, 37
Chapter 27 Identity and Diversity, Sections 1-6, 9-10, 16-20, 22, 25

Book IV Knowledge and Opinion
---Chapter 1, Of Knowledge in General
---Chapter 2, The Degrees of Our Knowledge
---Chapter 3, The Extent of Human Knowledge, Sections 1-5
--- Chapter 10, Our Knowledge of the Existence of God, Sections 1-6
---Chapter 11, Our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things

Still trying to keep the reading relatively light this week, so you have time to work on your papers.

1. Read the TGC boxes on Spinoza and Leibniz (477-478);

2. The cartoon version of Spinoza and the cartoon version of Leibniz: selections from Heretics by Steven and Ben Nadler. Steven Nadler is a distinguished scholar of early modern philosophy. His son Ben is a cartoonist. They teamed up to produce this excellent book.

3. School of Life video on Spinoza. (8 minutes)

Optional (not required reading):

Spinoza, Ethics (Take a look at the first few pages to get a sense of how Spinoza proceeds (his 'geometrical method').

Selections from Leibniz:

1. The Monadology

2. The first five sections of the Discourse on Metaphysics (pages 1-3 in Bennett's version) and also sections 23 ( starts on page 16 -- in which Leibniz discussed the Ontological Argument, which we encountered in Meditation #5) and sections 30-33 (pages 20-23 -- with a bit more on the problem of evil and Leibniz's account of the relation of soul and body)

Other resources (not required reading):

For a lot more on Leibniz's metaphysics there is a good article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

For a thorough discussion of his treatment of the problem of evil there is this from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

There is an hour long video on Spinoza and Leibniz in the BBC 'Great Philosophers" series, which begins here.

First position paper due Saturday, October 5, by 10 AM -- (save as a Word doc and send attached to an email to Thomas.Atchison@metrostate.edu)

Oct. 9

Hume on knowledge and causality

TGC 438-451; Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Chs. 1-7

Oct. 16

Hume on God, soul, and freedom

1. TGC 451-458 and 462-464;

2. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sections 8-12 (most important: section 8 on “Liberty and Necessity”, Section 10 on “Miracles”, and Section 12 on “The Skeptical Philosophy”) ;

3. Some selections from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:

• Read from the bottom of page 10, column 1, where Cleanthes states the argument
  from design -- "Look round the world..." -- to the end of Part 2 (p.16).  This gives the main part of Philo’s critique of the argument.
• Part 5 (pp. 24-26) includes another of Philo’s criticisms.
• Part 7 (pp. 30-33) is another short section that includes one of Philo’s wittier criticisms (culminating in the idea that we might as well suppose that the world was spun into existence by a cosmic spider as that it was planned and created by an intelligent God).
• At the bottom of the second column of page 34 Philo begins a remarkable speech that seems to anticipate the theory of evolution by natural selection.  (“Philo went on: And this very consideration that we have stumbled on in the course of the argument suggests another hypothesis…”)  It runs through the first column of page 36.
• In Part 9 (pp. 38-40), Demea states and Cleanthes refutes the so-called cosmological or ‘First Cause’ argument.
• From the first column on page 44 to the end of section 11 (p. 53) Philo develops the so-called ‘problem of evil’ as an empirical argument against the existence of a God who is benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.

Oct. 23

Hume on morality

TGC 458-462; Hume,Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Sections 1, 2, 3, and 9, plus appendix 1. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part 3, section 3, "The
Influencing Motive of the Will" (pp. 215-218)
2. Treatise of Human Nature,,Book III, Part 1, section 1, "Moral Distinctions Aren't Derived from Reason" (pp. 234-242)

Oct. 30

Kant I: on the idea of a Critique of Pure Reason and on Space and Time as forms of Sensible Intuition

TGC 465-472; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason through page B73 (the end of the Transcedental Aesthetic –pp. 1-40 in Bennett’s version)

Nov. 6

Kant II:  on the Categories of judgment and  their Transcendental Deduction

TGC 473-479; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason through page B168 (the end of the Transcendental Deduction –p.41-88 in Bennett’s version

Note: links go to the beginning of Bennet's PDF's, there are internal links imbedded in the table of contents that can take you to the beginning of the relevant section

Nov. 13

Kant III: the refutation of idealism and the distinction between phenomena and noumena

TGC ; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,  pp.B218-B315 (sections 3 and 4 of Chapter 2 and all of Chapter 3 in the Analytic –pp.106-143 in Bennett’s version) --The most important sections to study in these pages are the Second Analogy of Experience (begins on B232; p111 in Bennett's version) and the Refutation of Idealism (begins on B274; p.126 in Bennett's version)

2nd paper due by 10:00am on Saturday, Nov. 16.(instructions)

Nov. 20

Kant IV: The Ideas of Pure Reason: God, Soul, World and Freedom; Kant's moral philosophy; Mills' critique of Kant

Melchert, The Great Conversation, “Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World and Soul” pp. 479-485 and “Freedom” pp. 492-495  (If you have time to read the section on Kant’s moral philosophy, skipped in the pages listed above, that would be great.)

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason,selections from the Dialectic 

Note: These links used to go to specific selections, but Bennet has apparently changd his coding so they all just go to the first page of the Dialectic. You'll have to use the internal table of contents in the PDF or just scroll down to the relevant pages.

a. The first section of the introduction called "Transcendental Illusion" (pp. B349-355, pp. 155-157 in Bennett's version )  This explains the general idea and purpose of the “Dialectic”, to see how reason generates illusions and to guard against them.
b. The introduction and first two sections of the "Parologisms of Pure Reason" (A version), (B396-406;  A349-A361, pp.174-182 in Bennett )  These have to do with our understanding of ourselves and the (bad) arguments that have been put forward by previous Rationalist philosophers for the immortality of the soul.  You may recall that Descartes makes an argument of this kind in the Meditations and that Plato does so in the Phaedo
c.  The third "Antinomy" (B472-479, pp.219-222 in Bennett), and it's solution, (B560-585, pp.249-258 in Bennett ) This is Kant’s solution to the problem of free will and determinism.
d. Kant's discussion of the ontological argument for the existence of God (an argument we encountered in both Descartes and Leibniz), (B620-630, pp.272-276 in Bennett ).

Nov. 27

Dec. 4

From Hegel to Marx

1. TGC Ch. 21;

2. Hegel, The dialectic of master and slave (just read enough to get the flavor of Hegel's prose style. It won't take long.)

3. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, section 135) This brief selection contains Hegel's famous critique of Kant' moral philosophy;

4. TGC, pp.510-517;

5. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (very short);

6. Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy; (super short)

7. from The German Ideology (skip section 3 and read just the first bit of section 4 on Social Being and Consciousness. );

8. Marx,"Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas";

Dec. 11

Nietzsche

TGC Ch. 24; Read as much as you can of Twilight of the Idols, at least the Preface,  The Problem of Socrates , "Reason" in Philosophy,
How the "True World" Finally Became a Fable, Morality as Anti-Nature, and The Four
Great Errors. 3rd paper due by 10:00am on Saturday, Dec. 14.