Office
hours: Tuesdays
and Wednesdays, 2:00-3:00pm, in
my office, 145 Baker Hall. I would also
be happy to meet with you at another time, to be arranged in advance. If you would like to schedule a meeting, just
send me an e-mail at edgar.boedeker@uni.edu
or give me a call at 273-7487.
Required
texts (available at
University Book & Supply):
- Steven M.
Cahn (ed.), Classics of Western Philosophy, 7th Edition.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (New York: Bantam, 1988; ISBN:
0-553-21406-3; Please note: make sure that you receive this edition, which was
the only one ordered for the course).
Required course packet of photocopied materials from Plato,
John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche (soon available at Copyworks,
located at the corner of College and 23rd Streets).
Course
description: This
course will introduce you to philosophical thinking by surveying some of the
great texts in the history of Western philosophy. Among the topics we will cover are ethics,
knowledge, God, religion, and the nature of reality.
We will read each philosopher with a critical eye toward
identifying basic assumptions that they make.
Sometimes these assumptions are right on the surface of the texts; more
often, however, they will become clear only after some “digging” on our
part. We will see that a philosopher’s
basic assumptions tend to center around his or her interpretation of what being
is – that is, what it means for
something or someone to be at all.
This sounds like a very abstract question, and in a way it is. But it is also intimately connected with our
everyday experience. After all, whenever
we relate to anything in our daily lives – ourselves, other people, cars,
computers, nature, etc. – we experience it as being in some way or
other. It is just this everyday sense of
being that philosophers try to articulate in their concepts and theories. In the words of former President Bill Clinton
(in a very different context!), “It depends on what the meaning of the word
‘is’ is.”
Our focus on being will allow us to ask a number of
questions throughout the semester. How
have Westerners in the past (say, in ancient Greece or medieval Europe)
experienced being? How is this
experience of being evident in philosophical texts and views from these
periods? How are these past ways of
experiencing being related to social, economic, and political arrangements of
the time? How do we experience being now? How are our current ways of experiencing
being related to past ways? How is our
experience of being evident in our relation to religion, technology, and the
natural environment? How are our
current ways of experiencing being related to social, economic, and political
arrangements of our time? Are
there problems with, or alternatives to, these current ways of experiencing
being? If so, what might these be like?
Course
goals: This course
has three main goals:
(1) to introduce you to
some of the most important figures and topics in Western philosophy;
(2) to help you recognize,
analyze, and evaluate arguments; and
(3) to give you practice
in writing cogently and persuasively.
Course format: Class meetings will consist of a mixture of lecture,
discussion, and group work. In order to benefit from this, it is essential that
you do all of the reading for each class.
Evaluation: The grade you receive for this course
will be computed as follows:
1. Worksheets: 25% of your final grade
will come from the worksheets you complete on the reading assignments. The purpose of the worksheets is to encourage
you to do each reading assignment, and to come to class prepared to discuss
them. I will drop your three lowest
scores (including those for missing worksheets) on the worksheets. Note that completing the worksheets will help
you greatly in doing well on the quizzes, papers, and the final
examination. For purposes of review,
make sure you keep all of your worksheets.
Generally, your answers to each
worksheet question should be between 2 and 5 sentences. You may answer the worksheet questions in any
way that is complete and legible. The best
way to do this, and the way that I prefer, is to open the worksheet document
from our online syllabus, save them on a disk or your computer hard-drive, type
in your answer below each question, and then print out the whole document when
you're done. Following this method will save you paper and
printing. It will also be easiest for me to read, and most convenient for
you for purposes of review. Please staple together all the pages that go
with a single worksheet.
2. Quizzes: There will be about 12 brief, in-class quizzes,
each worth about 2.5% of your final grade.
I will drop your 2 lowest quiz scores, counting only about 10 (and fewer
if we get behind on our class discussions of the readings), for a total of 25%
of your final grade. The quizzes will generally cover both material discussed
in class since the last quiz. Note that
although no individual quiz is worth a very large percentage of your final
grade, the quizzes combined are quite important. If you miss a quiz day for any reason except
an illness explained by a doctor’s note or funeral announcement – in which case
you may request to retake it – you will receive a 0 for that quiz.
3. Final examination: There will be a cumulative final
examination (about 100 multiple-choice questions on Thursday, December 18, from 3:00 to 4:50 p.m., in our regular classroom), worth 25%
of your final grade.
4. Class participation: I expect that
all students will participate actively and constructively in classroom
discussions. Asking questions and responding
to what I or fellow students say are excellent ways for you to learn. Doing so regularly will boost your final
grade by one third of a letter grade, for example, from a B+ to an A-. On the other hand, if your presence in class
contributes to a negative learning environment (for example, repeatedly coming
to class late, treating fellow students with disrespect, obviously not paying
attention, passing notes, whispering, etc.), this can reduce your final grade
by one third of a letter grade.
5. Attendance: Attendance will be
taken at the beginning of each class period.
You are permitted two unexplained absences during the semester. For each unexplained absence beyond these
three, your final grade will be reduced by one third of a letter grade. For example, someone with a B+ average with 5
unexplained absences (i.e., 3 more than the 2 allowed) will receive a C+ in the
course. The only explanations I will
accept are a doctor’s note or a funeral announcement.
I realize that this is a fairly strict
attendance policy. I have instituted it
mainly because much of the learning that you will do in this course will take
place in class. Asking good questions,
raising objections, and listening to others are important skills that you will
get to practice in class discussions. In
addition, coming to class is necessary to doing well in this course. After all, anything discussed in class
could appear on the quizzes or final examination; and (virtually) nothing
will appear on the final examination that was not discussed in
class.
6. Paper: One paper on an important
aspect of one or more of the texts we read.
I will give you topics in advance.
Depending on the topic you choose, your paper will be due either on
Thursday, October 23; or Thursday, December 18
(at the time of the final exam). The
paper should be at least 5 double-spaced pages (1500 words) in length and will
be worth 25% of your final grade. I
don’t require – and don’t recommend – that you use any secondary sources, i.e.,
anything but the texts assigned in class, but if you do use any you must cite
them.
I strongly encourage you to co-write your paper with (just) one other member of the class.
Co-writing is an increasingly important skill in such fields as
business, science, teaching, law, etc. Since I will hold a co-written paper to exactly the same standards as a
single-authored paper, it is definitely to your advantage to co-write a
paper. After all, two heads are better
than one! If you co-write a paper,
however, please make sure that you and
your co-author both check it for
consistency in style, verb tense, coherence, etc.
Criteria for writing and evaluating a paper:
I. Thesis (20 points).
A. Does your
essay have a clear, informative, and compelling thesis that appears at the end
of an interesting introduction that explains why your thesis matters, why it is
important?
B. Is your
thesis new, an original, creative and compelling insight into the text and
issue under consideration? Do you set
the historical and cultural context for this thesis, explaining why this thesis
is important and therefore giving the reader a reason to take interest in your
essay?
II. Support of thesis (60 points).
A. Thesis
defense. Does your
essay have a consecutive argument that defends your thesis, carefully moving
the reader from one point to the next (or does it simply run in place)? Your aim is not to prove to the reader
that your thesis is iron-clad, but to show that it is reasonable, that what
you see in the text is there to be seen.
So do you cite and quote evidence from the text (a good rule of thumb
is to use three examples), and do you explain how that evidence supports
your thesis? Do you lead the reader
through your argument, one step at a time, explicitly telling me how that step
supports your thesis?
Remember that
the reasons you give for or against an argument should be more than
simply your beliefs or opinions. Rather,
they should be potentially convincing to someone else, even if this person may
not initially share your beliefs or opinions.
After all, are you convinced that something is true just
because someone else happens to believe it?
Thus in trying to bring your reader over to your side, make sure to meet
him or her in the middle by appealing to reasons that they might accept.
B. Evidence
and reasoning. Does your essay have adequate citation and quotations from
relevant texts that support the argument of the paper, and do you explain how
those citations and quotations in fact support the argument?
C. Consistency.
Does your essay demonstrate internal consistency or ways of handling
contradiction and paradox as they emerge in the argument?
D. Addressing
an objection. Does your essay show an awareness of a possible objection to
your thesis? Does your essay address
this objection?
III. Style
and presentation (20
points).
A. Does your
essay
1. avoid
grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors?
(This is very important,
since the reader can’t help but take these factors as indicating the
author’s care in writing the paper.)
2. have
clear and well-structured sentences, paragraphs, and arguments?
3. have
properly defined key terms?
4. have
properly documented quotes? Page numbers
in parentheses placed after the quote are sufficient if you are dealing with
just one text.
B. Succinctness. Is every paragraph, sentence, and even every word
absolutely necessary to your argument (or do you have irrelevant material and
rambling discussion)?
Notes on the papers:
One thing that a philosophy paper
should not be is a “book report”, i.e., an attempt to summarize an
entire philosophical text. Instead, a
good philosophy paper should give a close analysis of a single key argument
in a text. An “argument” in this sense
isn’t a verbal fight (this isn’t the Jerry Springer Show, after all!). Rather, an argument is a chain of reasoning
from certain statements (called the “premises”) to another statement (called
the “conclusion”) that the argument claims is supported by the
premises.
A good philosophy paper
contains both an analysis of such an argument and some criticism of
it. A good criticism generally consists
of either (1) reasons why one or more of the premises of the argument is
false, or (2) reasons why the premises in fact do not support
the conclusion (in which case the conclusion still might be false even
if the premises were true). You may or
may not agree with the argument; and you may or may not agree with your
criticism of it. This doesn’t matter for
the purposes of this course. Remember
that the reasons you give for or against an argument should be more than
simply your beliefs or opinions. Rather,
they should be potentially convincing to someone else, even if this person may
not initially share your beliefs or opinions.
After all, are you convinced that something is true just
because someone else happens to believe it?
So don’t just state whether or not you agree with the author’s
conclusion. Instead, try to give reasons
for or against the author’s argument for this conclusion.
In my experience, the most common way for paper grades to suffer is due to a lack of documentation in the texts. You should use direct citations sparingly –
generally only if the exact wording of the passage is either directly relevant
to the argument you’re making, or particularly clear and concise. (Short direct citations should be placed in
quotation-marks; direct citations over 3 lines long should be offset, indented,
single-space, and without quotation-marks.)
In other cases, use indirect citation – paraphrasing in your own words
what the author says, and telling the reader where s/he says it.
Further note: Each semester, I teach almost 100 students. Although I give each as much individual time
and attention as I possibly can during the semester, I will not be able to send
you your individual grade for the course at the end of the semester. I submit the grades to the Registrar as soon
as I can during the week of final exams, and ask you to kindly wait see your
grade until it has been reported electronically.
Website: The Department of Philosophy and World Religions has relatively few
funds available for photocopying (or for anything else, for that matter!). The great majority of our course materials
will therefore be placed on our website: http://www.uni.edu/boedeker. There you will find the following:
- our syllabus (i.e., this document),
- worksheets for you to fill out and hand in on the readings and videos,
- handouts (which are for you to keep) outlining lectures,
- materials for use in in-class group projects,
and
- suggested paper
topics.
Please check the website frequently for updates.
MAILSERV: From time to time, I will send announcements pertaining to the class
via e-mail. To facilitate our electronic
communication, a MAILSERV distribution list has been created for this class
using your UNI e-mail addresses. The list members include myself
and the students who were registered for the class when the list was
created. It is a private list (i.e., only the list members may post to
it), but has open subscription. To send to the list, use 650-021-04-FALL@uni.edu.
If you registered late, or if you wish
to be able to send and receive e-mails at an e-mail address other than your UNI
one, then please add your e-mail address to this list by sending a
message to
where the body (not the
subject heading) contains these two lines:
SUB 650-021-04-FALL
END
In a similar manner, if you drop this course, you may
remove yourself from the list by sending a message to
where the body (not the
subject heading) contains these two lines:
UNSUB 650-021-04-FALL
END
It will be your responsibility to make sure you are
subscribed to the MAILSERV right away, check your e-mail regularly, and read
the announcements. I strongly recommend
that you purchase a 3-ring binder to
organize and store the various handouts for this class.
Cheating and plagiarism (from UNI’s academic ethics policy):
“Students at UNI are required to observe the commonly accepted standards of
academic honesty and integrity. Except in those instances in which group work
is specifically authorized by the instructor of the class, no work which is not
solely the student's is to be submitted to a professor in the form of an
examination paper, a term paper, class project, research project, or thesis
project.
“Cheating of any kind on examinations
and/or plagiarism of papers or projects is strictly prohibited. Also
unacceptable are the purchase of papers from commercial sources, using a single
paper to meet the requirement of more than one class (except in instances
authorized and considered appropriate by the professors of the two classes),
and submission of a term paper or project completed by any individual other
than the student submitting the work. Students are cautioned that plagiarism is
defined as the process of stealing or passing off as one's own the ideas or
words of another, or presenting as one's own an idea or product which is
derived from an existing source.
“It is not acceptable for the work or
ideas of another scholar to be presented as a student's own or to be utilized
in a paper or project without proper citation. To avoid any appearance of
plagiarism or accidental plagiarism, it is important that all students become
fully cognizant of the citation procedures utilized in their own discipline and
in the classes they take. The plea of ignorance regarding citation procedures
or of carelessness in citation is not a compelling defense against allegations
of plagiarism. A college student, by the fact that he or she holds that status,
is expected to understand the distinction between proper scholarly use of
others’ work and plagiarism.”
Any student who is found
to have cheated or plagiarized will receive the grade of “F” for the class.
In addition, if you are found to have copied anything from an
Internet website without proper documentation, or to have engaged in other particularly flagrant forms of cheating or
plagiarism, the instructor reserves the right to “recommend suspension from
UNI for a period ranging from the term in which the infraction occurs (with a
loss of all credit earned during that term) to permanent suspension from the
University.” The instructor will also report this
“action in writing to the instructor’s department head (and, if the student is
from a different department, to the head of the student’s department), and to
the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The Provost
and Vice President for Academic Affairs will notify the student in writing that
such action has been taken, and will maintain a file for each student so
disciplined.”
Disabilities: I will make every reasonable effort to accommodate
disabilities. Please contact me if I can
be of assistance in this area. All
qualified students with disabilities are protected under the provisions of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C.A., Section
12101. The ADA states that “no qualified
individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded
from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs or
activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such
entity.” Students who desire or need
instructional accommodations or assistance because of their disability should
contact the Office of Disability Services located in 213 Student Services
Center (273-2676 Voice, or 273-3011 TTY).
Academic Learning Center: I
encourage you to utilize the Academic Learning Center's free assistance with
writing, reading, and learning strategies:
1. The
Writing Center offers one-on-one writing assistance open to all UNI
undergraduates. Writing Assistants offer
strategies for getting started, citing and documenting, and editing your
work. Visit the Online Writing Guide at www.uni.edu/unialc/writingcenter/
and schedule an appointment at 008 ITTC or 319-273-2361.
2. The
Reading and Learning Center provides the Ask-a-Tutor program, consultations
with the reading specialist, and free, four-week, non-credit courses in Speed
Reading, [and] Effective Study Strategies.
Visit http://www.uni.edu/unialc/,
008 ITTC, or call 319-273-2361.
I imagine
that these services might be very helpful
to you as you think about, organize, and write your papers. Why not give them a try? It certainly can’t hurt!
Tentative course schedule:
NOTE: The assignments are due in class on the date indicated. For example, the assignment from Plato’s “Meno” (70a-80d) is due in class on Wednesday, August 26.
All reading assignments, unless they
are specifically noted as in our course packs, are from Cahn’s Classics of
Western Philosophy.
24 Aug.: Introduction Handout.
26 Aug.: Plato (c.428-348 B.C.E.), “Meno”
(70a-80d) Worksheet.
28 Aug.: Plato, “Meno”
(80c–100b) Handout Worksheet.
31 Aug.: start Plato, Plato, “Apology” Handout
2 Sept.: finish Plato, “Apology” Worksheet.
4 Sept.: in-class group work on Socrates’ trial (no new readings).
9 Sept.: Plato, “Republic”, 475b-480a (from Book V, in course packet) and 504b-511c (from Book VI, in Cahn textbook) Handout Worksheet.
11 Sept.: Plato, “Republic”, 514a-521b
(from Book VII) Handout Worksheet.
16 Sept.: Plato, “Phaedo”, 88c-91c and 100b-118a (lightly skimming 107e
through the last full paragraph at 114b) Worksheet. (More on the “Phaedo”)
18 Sept.: catch-up day on Socrates and Plato.
21 Sept.: Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.),
“Categories”, Chapters 1-5, especially 4-5; Handout Worksheet; and Aristotle,
“Physics”, 192b1-195a27; Worksheet. (In-class group work on the 4 “causes”.)
23 Sept.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, Book I, Chapters 1-10 Worksheet.
25 Sept.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, Book I, Chapter 13; and Book II. Handout Worksheet
28 Sept.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, Book III, Chapters 1-5 Worksheet.
30 Sept.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, Book VI Worksheet. (In-class group work on Aristotle’s ethics.)
2 Oct.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean
Ethics”, Book VII, Chapters 1-3 Worksheet.
5 Oct.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean
Ethics,” Book VIII, Chapters 1-3, 9; and Book IX, Chapters 4, 7, 8, 9, and 12 Worksheet.
7 Oct.: Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, Book X Worksheet.
9 Oct.: Catch-up day on Aristotle (no new
reading).
(We won’t be reading any Roman philosophy
[c. 250BCE-359CE]
or “neo-Platnonism” in this course)
II. Medieval philosophy (c. 360-1400 CE): free will, and being as
exerting “efficient” causality
12 Oct.: Augustine (354-430 CE) on God
as creator; read “Confessions” (398 CE), Book XI (pp. 353-365) Handout Worksheet.
14 Oct.: Augustine
on God and the good; read “On Free Choice of the Will” (395 CE), Book I (pp.
338-341) Worksheet.
16 Oct.: St.
Augustine on free will; read “On Free Choice of the Will”, Book II (pp.
341-343) Worksheet Handout. (In-class
group work on the Andrea Yeats case.)
19 Oct.: Augustine
on divine providence; read “On Free Choice of the Will”, Book III (pp. 344-352)
Worksheet. First paper due.
(We
won’t be reading any Renaissance philosophy [c. 1400-1600] in this course.)
III. Early modern (or
“Enlightenment”) philosophy (c. 1600-1830 CE):
being as what can be legitimately thought by the individual
21 Oct.: René Descartes
(1596-1650), “Meditations on First Philosophy” (1641), Meditation One Handout Worksheet.
23 Oct.: Descartes, “Meditation Two” Worksheet.
(Since
we spent considerably longer on Augustine, Descartes, and Mill than I had originally
anticipated, this version of the syllabus picks up on November 16.)
16 Nov.: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), On Liberty (1859), pp. 1091-1097; Worksheet.
IV. Critiques of some aspects of Western philosophical and religious
traditions (c. 1830-present)
18 Nov.: Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich
Engels (1820-1895), The Communist Manifesto (1848), pp. 1-32; Handout Worksheet.
20 Nov.: The Communist Manifesto, pp.
32-43, 56-58 Worksheet.
30 Nov.: Film: The Corporation (no new
reading); Worksheet.
2 Dec.: more on Marx and Engels.
4 Dec.: read Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900),
“Twilight of the Idols” (1888), pp. 1080-1087 Handout Worksheet.
7 Dec.: Nietzsche, “Twilight of the
Idols”, pp. 1087-1094 Handout
Worksheet.
9 Dec.: Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888), pp. 570-599 (in course packet) Worksheet. In class: John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934) video of 2000 UNI lecture on the historical Jesus (no new reading). Please bring this worksheet with you to fill out in class; it will count as a regular worksheet).
11 Dec.: Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pp. 599-628 (in course packet) Handout Worksheet.
Tuesday, December 15, 1:00-2:50pm: second paper due and final examination in our
regular classroom.