Professors Gentzler, A. George (Chair Spring 2020), Moore, Shah (Chair Fall 2019)‡, and Vogel‡; Assistant Professors Hasan and Leydon-Hardy.
An education in philosophy conveys a sense of wonder about ourselves and our world. It achieves this partly through exploration of philosophical texts, which comprise some of the most stimulating creations of the human intellect, and partly through direct and personal engagement with philosophical issues. At the same time, an education in philosophy cultivates a critical stance to this elicited puzzlement, which would otherwise merely bewilder us.
The central topics of philosophy include the nature of reality (metaphysics); the ways we represent reality to ourselves and to others (philosophy of mind and philosophy of language); the nature and analysis of inference and reasoning (logic); knowledge and the ways we acquire it (epistemology and philosophy of science); and value and morality (aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy). Students who major in philosophy at Amherst are encouraged to study broadly in all of these areas of philosophy.
Students new to philosophy should feel comfortable enrolling in any of the entry-level courses numbered 100 through 231. Courses numbered 310 through 341 are somewhat more advanced, typically assuming a previous course in philosophy. Courses numbered 360 through 369 concentrate on philosophical movements or figures. Courses numbered 460 through 478 are seminars and have restricted enrollments, a two-course prerequisite, and are more narrowly focused. No course may be used to satisfy more than one requirement.
All students are welcome to organize and to participate in the activities of the Philosophy Club.
Major Program. To satisfy the comprehensive requirement for the major, students must pass nine courses, exclusive of PHIL 498 and 499. Among these nine courses, majors are required to take:
(1) Three courses in the History of Philosophy: PHIL 217 and 218, and a course on a Major Figure or Movement (i.e., PHIL 360 to 369);
(2) One course in Logic (PHIL 213, or MATH 385, or the equivalent);
(3) One course in Moral Philosophy (PHIL 310);
(4) One course in Theoretical Philosophy (i.e., PHIL 332, 333, 335, or 341); and
(5) One seminar (i.e., PHIL 460 to 478).
Departmental Honors Program. Candidates for Honors in Philosophy must complete the Major Program and the Senior Honors sequence, PHIL 498 and 499. Admission to PHIL 499 will be contingent on the ability to write an acceptable honors thesis as demonstrated, in part, by performances in PHIL 498 and by a research paper on the thesis topic (due in mid-January). The due date for the thesis falls in the third week of April.
Five College Certificate in Logic. The Logic Certificate Program brings together aspects of logic from different regions of the curriculum: Philosophy, Mathematics, Computer Science, and Linguistics. The program is designed to acquaint students with the uses of logic and initiate them into the profound mysteries and discoveries of modern logic. For further information about the relevant courses, faculty, requirements, and special events, see http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/logic/index.php.
This is an introduction to philosophy that explores a range of issues pertaining to religious conviction, knowledge, mind, freedom, ethics, and value. This exploration will take place through critical engagement, via reflection, writing, and conversation, with written work – some classical, some contemporary – in the philosophical tradition.
Each section limited to 25 students. In the Fall 6 seats will be reserved for first-year students. Fall semester: Professor Hasan and TBA. Spring semester: Professor George.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Although film and philosophy appear very different at first glance, a more careful look reveals film to be a medium well-suited to give expression to philosophical ideas. This course will pair films with philosophical texts in order to introduce a wide range of philosophical ideas in such diverse areas of philosophy as ethics and metaphysics, social and political philosophy, and epistemology. The films will be drawn from a variety of cinematic traditions, such as popular narrative film, documentary, and the art film. There will be film screenings.
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-2020.
2023-24: Not offered"All philosophers are wise and Socrates is a philosopher; therefore, Socrates is wise." Our topic is this mysterious "therefore." We shall expose the hidden structure of everyday statements on which the correctness of our reasoning turns. To aid us, we shall develop a logical language that makes this underlying structure more perspicuous. We shall also examine fundamental concepts of logic and use them to explore the logical properties of statements and the logical relations between them. This is a first course in formal logic, the study of correct reasoning; no previous philosophical, mathematical, or logical training needed.
One lecture each week and three discussion sections each limited to 15 students; section one of the discussion is restricted to first-years.
Fall semester. Professor A. George.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024An examination of the origins of Western philosophical thought in Ancient Greece. We will consider the views of the Milesians, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, and the Stoics. Particular attention will be paid to questions about the nature, sources, and limits of human knowledge; about the merits of relativism, subjectivism, and objectivism in science and ethics; about the nature of, and relationship between, obligations to others and self-interest; and about the connection between the body and the mind.
Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Professor Gentzler.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2023A survey of European philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with emphasis on Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Reading and discussion of selected works of the period.
Limited to 30 students. Spring semester. Assistant Professor Leydon-Hardy.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2025(Offered as PHIL 225 and ENST 228) Our impact on the environment has been significant, and in recent decades the pace of change has clearly accelerated. Many species face extinction, forests are disappearing, and toxic wastes and emissions accumulate. The prospect of a general environmental calamity seems all too real.
This sense of crisis has spurred intense and wide-ranging debate over what our proper relationship to nature should be. This is the focus of the course. Among the questions we shall explore will be: What obligations, if any, do we have to non-human animals, to living organisms like trees, to ecosystems as a whole, and to future generations of humans? Do animals have rights we ought to respect? Is nature intrinsically valuable or merely a bundle of utilities for our benefit? Is there even a stable notion of “what is natural” that can be deployed in a workable environmental ethic? Do our answers to these questions result in some way from a culturally contingent “image” we have of nature and our place within it? How might we best go about changing the ways we inhabit the planet?
Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professors Moore.
2023-24: Not offeredWe will be concerned to see whether there is anything to be said in a principled way about right and wrong. The core of the course will be an examination of three central traditions in ethical philosophy in the West, typified by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. We will also look at contemporary discussions of the relation between the demands of morality and those personal obligations that spring from friendships, as well as recent views about the nature of personal welfare.
Requisite: One course in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Priority is given to Amherst College students. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Assistant Professor Hasan.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2014, Fall 2022, Spring 2025A consideration of some basic questions about the nature and scope of our knowledge. What is knowledge? Does knowledge have a structure? What is perception? Can we really know anything at all about the world?
Requisite: One course in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Assistant Professor Leydon-Hardy.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2013, Spring 2017, Fall 2019, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2024Are we free? Do we possess the freedom necessary for moral responsibility? What form of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility? Is this freedom compatible with causal determinism? To be morally responsible for an action, must its agent have been able to act otherwise? Must she have chosen her own character? What is it to be morally responsible for an action? These are the main questions we shall address in this course. To address them, we shall read works by Hume, Reid, Chisholm, Ayer, Strawson, Frankfurt, Nagel, and others.
Requisite: One course in PHIL. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Assistant Professor Leydon-Hardy.
2023-24: Not offeredImmanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy set off a revolution that reverberated throughout nineteenth-century Europe. For Kant, it is our own reason, not God or nature, which is the original source of all moral principles, freedom, and even goodness itself. Human beings are autonomous in that we determine what is morally right.
We will trace the effects of the Kantian revolution and several influential responses to it. We begin with Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), which shows how moral obligations follow from rational reflection on freedom. We then consider Hegel's radicalization of this project in his Philosophy of Right (1820), which seeks to demonstrate that freedom requires a certain form of social and political life. We conclude with an examination of two great critiques of the Kantian/Hegelian project in ethical theory: Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) and Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling (1843).
Our aim in this course will be to understand and evaluate these four ferociously difficult texts, and to write about them in clear and analytical prose. We will also apply these texts’ insights to our own contemporary experience. To this end, we will watch and think about two films: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Rosetta (1999) and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017).
Requisite: One course in PHIL, no exceptions. Priority is given to Amherst College students. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-20. Professor Hasan.
2023-24: Not offeredLanguage and the nature of meaning, the search for a philosophical method, and the limits of logic and intelligibility—these are central concerns that drove the pioneers of analytic philosophy. We shall explore these themes through classic readings by some of the seminal figures of the tradition: Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, and W. V. Quine.
Requisite: One course in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professor George.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course will focus on a careful reading of two principal texts by Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals. Our goal is to understand and evaluate Nietzsche’s critique of the idea of morality, based on the concepts of obligation, guilt, and responsibility, and to investigate Nietzsche’s own positive vision of ethics. We will consider sections from Nietzsche’s other works, including Daybreak, Ecce Homo, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as important secondary literature, including engagements with Nietzsche from a feminist and philosophy of race perspective.
Requisite: One course in PHIL. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professor Hasan.
2023-24: Not offeredAn examination of the central metaphysical and epistemological doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason, including both the historical significance of Kant's work and its implications for contemporary philosophy.
Requisite: Phil 218 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 students. Fall semester. Professor Vogel.
2023-24: Not offeredWe will intensively discuss a dozen of the most influential, thought-expanding, and exciting contributions to philosophy of the last century. These works focus on many different topics, including language, the mind, ethics, and science. What they have in common is brilliance of conception and power of execution. Each has shaped philosophy in its wake.
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omitted 2019-20. Professors George and Shah.
2023-24: Not offeredThe concept of justice, according to American political philosopher John Rawls, concerns the proper principles for determining who has what rights and what duties with respect to the distribution of “social advantages"—that is, those good things that society has the ability, if it were so inclined, either to grant to or withhold from its members. This seminar is an investigation and evaluation of different conceptions of justice through the lens of human health. Health is an illuminating lens for this inquiry, because nearly everyone agrees that health is a good in itself and is also a precondition for enjoying many other human goods. For this reason, nearly everyone agrees that a just society will prevent its members from harming the health of one another. However, as we now know, whether any individual is healthy is due to many and varied factors, some within and some beyond their own individual control, including access to health care, healthy food, education, loving and respectful relationships, and meaningful work. In a democracy, our collective choices about how to structure our society disadvantage some and advantage others with regard to all of these goods. What do these facts about human health imply about our obligations to, and claims on, others? To what extent does a just society protect, repair, and enhance the health of its current and future members, and at what cost?
Requisite: Two courses in philosophy or the consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Gentzler.
2023-24: Not offeredThe topics change from year to year. Some of the most interesting and most characteristic work in recent philosophy has been concerned with the problem of skepticism and the external world, i.e., roughly, the problem of how you know that your whole life isn't merely a dream. We will critically examine various responses to this problem and, possibly, consider some related issues such as relativism and moral skepticism. There will be readings from authors such as Wittgenstein, Moore, and Austin, and philosophers working today such as Dretske and Putnam.
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Vogel
2023-24: Not offeredIs time real? If so, are the past and the future as real as the present? (How should we even approach such questions?) And what is time, anyway? Does time exist independently of things in time? Could there be time without change? Could time have a beginning or an end? Time seems linear, and also to have an intrinsic direction or “arrow”? But does it have to be this way? It’s often said that time passes, but if so, how fast does it pass? In what sense is time “open” in the future? Is time travel possible? Do causes have to precede their effects? Finally, should we, and can we reconcile our everyday conceptions of time with the sometimes counter-intuitive conceptions of modern physics?
Over the last hundred years, these questions have received a great deal of attention from scientists and philosophers. This seminar will explore these questions and others about the nature of time. It will be run in conjunction with a speaker series in which theorists present and discuss recent work on the philosophy of time.
Required: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the professor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professor Moore.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as PHIL 464 and ENST 464) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice?
In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Fall semester. Professor Moore.
2023-24: Not offeredMany believe that Socrates walked the streets of ancient Athens; that there are infinitely many prime numbers; that a divine being created the universe; that tomorrow day will follow night; that there are minds other than their own. Are all these beliefs justifiable? If so, in the same way or in radically different ways? Or is it a mistake to seek to justify some of these beliefs, for instance, religious beliefs? And if a belief cannot be justified, is it irrational to believe it? We shall explore these questions through discussions of a handful of classics of philosophy, including works by David Hume, William James, Søren Kierkegaard, John Locke, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professor George.
2023-24: Not offeredMusic is sometimes described as a language, but what, if anything, does Charlie Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha” say to us? If music isn’t representational, then how should we understand its connection to the various emotions that it can express and invoke? (Or maybe these aren’t genuine emotions: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is widely described as sad, but what exactly are we—or is it—sad about? And why would we choose to listen to Mozart’s Requiem if it genuinely terrified us?) Perhaps our musical descriptions and experiences are metaphorical in some way—but how, and why?
What exactly is a musical work anyway? Where, when and how do “Summertime,” or “Stairway to Heaven,” or “Shake Ya Tailfeather” exist? And what makes for a performance of one or the other (or of no work at all)?
What, if anything, guides a proper “listening” or understanding of a musical work? Does it require knowledge of relevant musical and cultural conventions, or of the composition’s historical context, or even of the composer’s intentions and guiding aesthetic philosophy? (Think of gamelan music; think of the Sgt. Pepper’s album; think of John Cage.)
What determines whether a work, or a performance of it, is good? What role is played by beauty, grace, intensity and so on? And how objective are these aesthetic properties? Finally, why do we sometimes find music to be not just enjoyable, but intensely moving and even profound?
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2019 -2020. Professor Moore.
2023-24: Not offeredPlato famously argued that only philosophers should rule and that only a few, very exceptional intellects would qualify to be philosophers.
In this course, we will reflect on the role of philosophy in public life. Who, if anyone, would benefit—a few, many, or the majority—from being exposed to philosophy? We will then consider the value of blogs, Amherst’s own AskPhilosophers, articles in national and local newspapers and magazines, book reviews, biographical and philosophical profiles of philosophers (both historical and contemporary), pop-up philosophy workshops/dramas at the college or in the community, and any other strategies that might provide a compelling education in philosophy to an appropriate public audience. By the end of semester, each student will have completed at least six different public philosophical writing projects. Class sessions will be conducted as workshops devoted to analyzing and critiquing our public philosophical writing.
This seminar is designed as a capstone course for senior majors in PHIL. Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2019-2020. Professor Gentzler.
2023-24: Not offeredYour friend wrote a tacky song. Should you believe it's a masterpiece? (She is your friend, after all). You’re about to jump across an icy stream. You’re more likely to make it if you believe you can. Should you believe that? Your resolutions to exercise regularly usually fail. Should you believe you will succeed this time? If we say "yes," what is the relevant sense of "should"? Are these beliefs rational, or merely beneficial? These cases suggest that there can be different sorts of considerations in favor of belief and action. This course is about how to understand these different sorts of reasons and how these might conflict or interact.
This course will be co-taught with Professor Katia Vavova from Mount Holyoke. Half the spaces will be reserved for Amherst College students, and half the spaces will be reserved for Mount Holyoke students. The overall enrollment cap will be 24 students. The enrollment cap for Amherst College students will be 12.
Requisites: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Omitted 2019 - 2020. Professors Shah and Vavova (Mount Holyoke College).
2023-24: Not offeredWhat is racism? Is it in the heart (a feeling), or in the head (a belief)—or both, or neither? Has it always been around? If not, why is there racism now? What is discrimination, and what is wrong with it? Are acts of discrimination and discriminatory institutions sufficient to explain prevailing forms of racial inequality? By what other mechanisms is racial inequality reproduced? Is the modern liberal state itself an institution of racial domination? What is the relation between racism and capitalism?
Given racial injustice, what program of racial justice ought we to pursue? Are reparations for past injustice a necessary part of that program? How might we achieve the fair political representation of racial minorities? What is the connection between racial justice and other egalitarian ideals?
The seminar will be run in conjunction with a visiting-speaker series. Philosophers working on these issues will discuss with us their recent work on racial justice and injustice.
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2019 - 2020. Professors Hasan and Shah.
2023-24: Not offeredIt is widely agreed that the emotions are central to morality. But there is much less agreement about how the relationship between the emotions and morality should be understood. In this seminar, we will investigate the nature of emotion and its role(s) in morality. Some of the topics we will address include: What are emotions? Are they feelings, judgments, perceptions of value, or something else? How do emotions shape our moral talk, thought, and behavior? Are emotions rational or irrational? What does it mean to call a particular emotion "moral" (or immoral), and which emotions count as the distinctively moral (or immoral) ones? Along the way, we'll draw from work in ethical theory and the philosophy of emotion as well as contemporary research in psychology and cognitive science.
Requisite: Two courses in PHIL or consent of the instructor. Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2019-2020.
2023-24: Not offeredIndependent reading course. Reading in an area selected by the student and approved in advance by a member of the Department.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023The senior honors seminar supports the first half of senior thesis work in philosophy. It will provide a hands-on introduction to philosophical research. During the course of the semester, students will fine-tune and develop their initial thesis proposals into detailed thesis plans, and then draft significant chunks of their eventual theses. This will be accomplished through close reading and discussion of central texts, structured writing, and the eventual sharing of student drafts. By the end of the semester, students will be connected with a faculty member who will then direct their research through the second semester of the honors work.
Requisite: Departmental approval of a thesis proposal due the first day of the fall semester. Fall semester. Professor Moore.
2023-24: Not offeredRequired of candidates for Honors in Philosophy. Directed research culminating in a substantial essay on a topic chosen by the student and approved by the Department.
Open to seniors with consent of the Department. Fall semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023Required of candidates for Honors in Philosophy. The continuation of PHIL 498. In special cases, subject to approval of the Department, a double course (499D).
Admission with consent of the instructor. Spring semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2025States are made up of collections of individuals. And yet states have powers that no individuals have. They collect taxes, put us in jail, draft us into the army, tell us what we can and cannot own, etc. In general, states compel us to do things in the name of a ‘common good,’ even when that good conflicts with what we would individually prefer to do. In this course, an introduction to key concepts in Western political philosophy, we seek to understand what, if anything, could justify states in having this power over us. To this end, we examine two philosophical issues raised by the state. (1) The problem of political obligation. Is there any reason why we ought to obey the law? What are the grounds for legitimate civil disobedience? (2) The question of distributive justice. What reasons are there to tax the rich in order to give to the poor? What is the role of the state in securing economic equality?
Readings include: Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Nozick, Rawls, and G.A. Cohen. We will also think about systematic racism and racial exclusion. We will ask how the fact of racism ought to shape our orientation to the state and to the project of political philosophy more generally. Readings here include: Martin Luther King Jr., Tommie Shelby, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Limited to 25 students. Priority is given to Amherst College students. Fall semester. Professor Hasan.
2023-24: Not offeredMetaphysics is the investigation, at the most fundamental level, of the nature of reality. It has been an especially vibrant area of philosophy in recent years, and we will read some of the freshest and most important work in the field. Among the questions to be considered are: What is existence? Is there more than one kind of existence? Are there merely possible things? Could you have been a poached egg (Tichy)? What is possibility anyway? Can things really change, or do they last for no more than a moment, or both? When are several things parts of some greater whole, and why? Is a statue identical to the lump of clay from which it is fashioned? How can you destroy the statue, yet not destroy the clay? Thinking through such basic questions leads to surprising perplexities and surprising insights. Readings by Quine, Kripke, Lewis, Van Inwagen, and others.
Requisite: One course in PHIL. Limited to 25 students. Omitted 2019-2020.
2023-24: Not offered