Freedom, Morality and Rationality in Contemporary Philosophy
This course was available in the past and may be presented again as part of the Open Enrollment curriculum.
Over roughly the last 50 years, philosophers writing in English have made groundbreaking contributions to conversations in ethics and the philosophy of action that stretch back to Plato and Aristotle. In this course we will discuss eight such contributions, papers that attempt to define and resolve some of the core problems in these areas of philosophy: how to understand the relationship between causal determinism and human freedom, how to account for features of our practical lives that seem morally significant even though they aren’t up to us, and how to explain personal decisions that fundamentally transform who we are, producing values and motivations that we cannot possess at the moment of decision. These papers are challenging enough to have drawn vigorous responses from academic philosophers. But the writing in them is exceptionally clear, and they are accessible to anyone who reads them carefully. We will work through their arguments, testing them against our own intuitions and mapping their connections to one another. Authors will include Galen Strawson, Harry Frankfurt, Susan Wolf, Bernard Williams and Agnes Callard.
Course syllabus
Notes
Online registration deadline: Thursday, June 16 at 5 pm CT
Remote courses require you to login to Canvas to access the Zoom Classroom. You will receive an invitation to join Canvas about a week before your course begins. Please visit the Liberal Arts Student Resources page to find step by step instructions for Canvas and Zoom: Online Learning Resources