Philosophy 102
Professor E. Piscitelli
Objectives: To learn how to interpret and assess the contributions of classical and modern philosophy as a way of making sense out of the coming new millenium through a study of Aristotle and selected modern philosophers: R. Descartes, D. Hume, E. Kant, and G. Hegel.
Unit I: Introduction to the Philosophy of Aristotle.
1. Aristotle and the later Philosophy of Plato: Forms-Ideas, Participation, and Individuals
2. Concrete Reality: Primary Substance
3. The Problem of Mind: An Individual Universal?
Reading: Plato, Republic VII
Unit II: Aristotle's Systematic Philosophy
1. First Principles: Energia/Kinesis The Principles of Continuity and Difference. Nature is One in a Manifold. Primary Analogue of Energia: NOUS.
2. Change in a World of Becoming: The Four Causes and the Analysis of Change. What are the necessary conditions for something to be said to change?
3. Aristotle on the Life of Nous: On the Soul, (Peri YucheV) and the Theory of Abstraction: Insight is into Models and Images.
4. Aristotle's Ethics of the Good Life.
Reading: Aristotle's Ethics, Politics Rhetoric and Poetics.Aristotle: On The Soul Book III, Nicomachean Ethics Metaphysics Book XII Poetics,
My Lecture Notes on Aristotle © copyrighted material
Unit III: Between Aristotle and Descartes
1. Christianity and Classical Culture.
2. The Fusion of Christianity and Classical Culture.
3. The Confusion of Christianity and Classical Culture.
4. Decadent Aristotlean Science and Philosophy
5. Decadent Scholasticism, Renaissance Humanism, Reformation Fideism.
6. The Rise of Modern Scientific Method,
7. The Deformation of Classical Greek Philosophy and the Tradition of the Christian Revelation.
Reading: Machiavelli, The Prince
Unit IV Introduction to the Philosophy of the Meditations:
1. The Problem of Method: "The Rules For the Direction of the Mind,"
2. The Doctrine of Simple Natures. Method as Technique? Simplified Cognitional Theory.
3. The Problem of Methodic Foundations:
4. The Doctrine of the "Eternal Truths" and the Methodic Doubt.
5. The Turn to the Subject. The Cogito, its Emergence and Meaning
Decartes' Self -- The Cogito
6. The Historical Significance of the Cogito.
Reading: Meditation I and II Descartes: The Meditations
My Lectures on Descartes © copyrighted material
Unit V: The Proof for the Existence of God and Philosophy:
1. Three Proofs, One Argument.
2. God as Infinite Subjectivity and Foundation for Intellectual Truth
3. Implications of Descartes' Method: Knowledge of the Self? Knowledge of the Empirical World? Consequences of Dualism? Foundations of Dualism.
4. Critique of Descartes' Method: "Conceptualism"?
Reading: Meditation III-VI Descartes: The Meditations
Unit VI: Interlude: The Breakdown of Dualism:
Locke, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Berkeley. The Newtonian World View: Mechanistic Physics Synthesized: The Importance of Newton for Science and Modern Philosophy. What is the Mechanist World View? How does it accord with scientific intellectual experience, and how does it contradict that experience? Critique of Mechanism and Cognitional Theory. Hume, Common Sense Appropriation of Mechanism and the Mechanical Subject. Critique of Hume's Empiricism.
Unit VII: Kant and the Trajectory of Modern and Post-Modern Philosophy:
The Critique of Pure Reason: The Mechanical Subject and the Unknown and Unknowable Object. The Critique of Practical Reason or How to be reasonable in your life when you cannot be in your thought. The Critique of Judgment: the common sense compromise in reflection. What's left of Religious Knowledge?
Reading: Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason; Kant: Groundwork For the Metaphysics of Morals.
Unit VIII: Hegel and the End of the Modern World
The Triumph of Spirit over " Reason": The End of the Modern World. The Phenomenology of Spirit. The "Logic "of History : Dialectics. The Wake of the Hegelian Tidal Wave: Marxism, Existentialism, Positivism, Structuralism, Nihilism. and Post-Nihilist Mediocrity.
Reading: Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit: The Preface
Texts: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Descartes Meditations. Supplemental History of Philosophy Volumes I and IV, Jones
Evaluation: Class Attendance and Participation. Presentation of Term Paper Topic (20%) Test on Descartes's Meditations = 10%. Final Examination and a term paper on Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel or on an approved topic. Term paper topics must be approved by the 8th week. Students can chose beween the basing their evaluation on a final exam and a term paper (35% each ) or two 7-10 page term papers (35% each).
Final Papers and Exams are due on the day of the final exam 7:30 PM in classroom.