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FRESHMAN SEMINAR
“KNOWLEDGE, GOODNESS, AND LIBERTY”
Fall 2016
Richard Foley
Email: [email protected]
Office: 5 Washington Place, #303
Office hours: immediately after class and by appointment
The course will address four fundamental philosophical questions about human lives,
with special attention to the ways in which proposed answers to them, are influenced by whether
they are approached from a subjective or an objective point of view. The questions are:
1) what it is rational for us to believe, and what do we know?
2) what sorts of lives are best for us to live, and what does morality require of each of us?
3) how should human societies be organized and what limits can governments justifiably
place on individual liberties; and
4) how do humans differ from other living things and each other?
The course is divided into four sections. Students will write short papers (4-6 pages) on
each of the first three sections on a topic jointly agreed upon with the instructor. These papers
will be due within a week of the completion of the section. For the fourth section, there will be an
hour oral exam with the instructor in the final week of the course. There will be no final written
exam. 75% of the course grade will be determined by the papers on sections 1-3, and 25% will
be determined by the hour oral exam on section 4. Students are expected to attend class and
participate in the discussions.
READINGS:
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.
Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
Richard Foley, Working without a Net, Chapter 2 (to be supplied by instructor)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism.
Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?”
http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf
Daniel Dennett, “The Zombic Hunch.”
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/zombic.htm
John Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS
SECTION 1: WHAT IS IT REASONABLE FOR US TO BELIEVE? WHAT DO WE KNOW?
Meeting 1
Descartes, Meditations, 1-2
Meeting 2
Descartes, Meditations, 3-4
Meeting 3
Descartes, Meditations, 5-6; and Foley, Chapter 2
SECTION 2: WHAT KIND OF LIVES SHOULD WE LEAD? WHAT ARE OUR MORAL
OBLIGATIONS?
Meeting 4
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Books I-II
Meeting 5
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics Books, VIII-IX
Meeting 6
Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapters 1-2
Meeting 7
Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapters 3-4
Meeting 8
Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism”
SECTION 3: WHAT LIMITS CAN GOVERNMENTS LEGIITIMATELY PLACE ON INDIVIDUAL
LIBERTIES?
Meeting 9
Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapters XIII, XIV, and XV
Meeting 10
Mill, On Liberty, Chapters 1
Meeting 11
Mill, On Liberty, Chapters 2
Meeting 13
Mill, On Liberty, Chapters 3-5
SECTION 4:
WHAT KIND OF BEINGS ARE WE? HOW DO WE DIFFER FROM OTHER
CONSCIOUS CREATURES AND EACH OTHER?
Meeting 13
Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?”
Dennett, “The Zombic Hunch”
Meeting 14
Summary
Final
Individual hour-long conversation with instructor.