PHIL 350—Aristotle

This course is an introduction to the philosophy of Aristotle, who is perhaps the single most influential thinker in the European intellectual tradition. For two millennia after his death, Aristotle’s thought was foundational in virtually every theoretical discipline. Even today, long after many of his specific theories have been abandoned, Aristotelian ideas and assumptions continue to operate (often invisibly) within contemporary philosophy and science.

In order to appreciate Aristotle’s enduring influence, in this course my students and I focus our attention on his concept of nature (phusis). For Aristotle, to comprehend the nature of a thing is to understand it in the deepest and most meaningful way possible. As such, the idea of nature is crucial not only for his natural science, but also more generally for his metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory. In this way, thematizing what “nature” and “natural” mean for Aristotle serves as our gateway to a broader appreciation of his philosophy as a whole. In particular, we examine Aristotle’s theories of natural causation and change, the nature of bodies as matter and form, the nature of living things as body and soul, essence as the nature of a substance, knowledge as the grasping of something’s essential nature, the structure and limits of the natural world and its relationship to the divine (i.e., the supernatural), the nature of animal life, and Aristotle’s vision of human nature as the foundation for his ethics.

To enhance our understanding of these topics, we read selected secondary sources in addition to the primary Aristotelian texts. Throughout the course we discuss the nuances of the Ancient Greek terminology that Aristotle uses and compare various translations of his texts (no former knowledge of Greek is required).

PHIL 426—What is Life? Ancient Greek Perspectives

What is life? How do living things differ from non-living things? Is it possible to define life? In this course, my students and I address these perennial philosophical and scientific questions by returning to their origins in Ancient Greek philosophy. Plato and Aristotle were some of the first in the European tradition to ask—and try to answer—the question of life. To understand why we are still struggling to answer these questions today we need to appreciate how Greek concepts continue to shape, inform, and perhaps limit our contemporary debates about life. Moreover, we need to examine whether and how Greek insights about life may still prove vital for answering pressing questions today. In particular, my students and I bring Greek perspectives to bear on issues in contemporary philosophy of biology concerning:

• the limits of life (e.g., whether viruses and prions are living, inanimate, or some third category altogether)

• the possibility of artificial life (such as artificial general intelligence)

• the search for extraterrestrial life and the possibility of “shadow biospheres” already present on Earth

PHIL 216—Indian Philosophy

This course is a survey of South Asian philosophy from the Vedic period to the present day. My students and I examine philosophical texts from both the Vedic tradition and a variety of śramaṇic traditions (especially Buddhism, with a focus on early Buddhism and Madhyamaka). We read selections from the Ṛgveda, the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad-Gītā, texts from the āstika traditions (with a focus on Vedānta), as well as selections from the Buddhist Pāli canon, the Milinda Pañha, and Nāgārjuna. The final unit of the course concerns colonialism in South Asia and its effects on both Indian and European thought. Here we read selections from European philosophers such as Hegel who were influenced by Indian ideas, as well as from contemporary Indian philosophers such as A. C. Mukerji who were trained in European philosophy. We conclude by reading post-colonial theorists such as Said and Spivak to explore the epistemic dimensions of colonialism in India.

Tying the themes of the course together is a question about the status of Indian thought: is it really “philosophy”? In the first sessions of our class, we read contemporary perspectives on this question which reveal how this question directly concerns issues of inclusion and exclusion in the philosophy classroom. Throughout the course, and especially during the final unit on colonial and post-colonial Indian thought, we return these questions about inclusion. By examining the ways the European intellectual tradition has distinguished itself from—and yet has also been deeply indebted to—the Indian tradition, this course challenges students to think critically about the categories of the “West” vs. the “East”. By focusing attention on the role of colonialism in constructing knowledge systems, the course also invites students to consider how such perspectives can occlude and delegitimize other worldviews. These specific explorations of issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Indian philosophical context open up a broader question for my students: what really is philosophy, anyways? Ultimately the course aims to broaden students’ philosophical horizons by showing how Indian philosophical perspectives can enrich our understanding of perennial and universal questions of the human experience.

I developed this course for the Philosophy department at Sewanee specifically to help diversify their offerings in underrepresented philosophies, and was awarded a pedagogy grant by the Office of the Dean to support its development and its focus on DEI issues. This course fulfills Sewanee’s G7 General Education requirement “Encountering Perspectives: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”.

During Spring 2021, Dr. Arudra Burra (IIT Delhi) visited our class to speak on the topic of decolonizing philosophy in the contemporary Indian context.

PHIL 232—Business Ethics: The Philosophy of Work

This course fulfills a requirement for the Business minor at Sewanee.

In this course, my students and I examine the role of work in a fulfilling human life. The average American spends more than half of their waking life at work. Is spending so much time and energy at work an impediment to our happiness? Or can work be a means to fulfillment? How exactly does work figure in a good life? These are questions that everyone who works for a living can benefit from asking. But answering these questions requires us to think about the nature of work: what is work? How does work differ from leisure? Is work an intrinsic feature of human life, or is it imposed from outside? What makes some kinds of work fulfilling and others unfulfilling and alienating?

These questions may seem abstract, but how we answer them will directly affect our decision-making about concrete, practical issues in the real world: for example, how we think managers should treat their subordinates, how business owners should treat their employees, or how representatives should shape policy to serve their constituents. These ‘abstract’ philosophical questions thus show themselves to be practically important, while the ‘real world’ issues show themselves to be philosophically grounded.

My students and I draw together these two kinds of concerns—the abstract and the concrete, the theoretical and the practical—and examine how they are connected. To do so, we divide our time between (1) discussing philosophical texts about work and (2) discussing real-world case studies of business ethics scenarios. Through in-class discussions and out of class writing assignments, we reflect on how the ideas from these texts and the examples from those case studies mutually inform one another.

PHIL 205—Freedom, Justice, and Commerce

This course fulfills a requirement for the Business minor at Sewanee.

In this course my students and I examine key philosophical writings that have shaped our contemporary understanding of justice, equality, and freedom, tracing the development of these concepts from the ancient period to the present day. In particular, we will examine the relationship between social justice and economic justice, asking whether and how it is possible to pursue justice within a capitalist system that promotes competition and economic inequality. Answering those questions requires us to think about the foundational ideas that underpin capitalism, including private property, labor, the origins of exchange value, self-interest, and the free market. My students and I read both proponents and critics of capitalism who thematize the questions of justice, equality, and freedom. We also assess several case studies about topics such as price gouging and Universal Basic Income that highlight the practical ramifications of our theoretical readings. Through class discussions and writing assignments, students develop and refine their own perspectives on how these theories and business practice can mutually inform one another.

PHIL 101—Introduction to Philosophy: Know Thyself

In this course, my students and I explore how philosophers across diverse intellectual traditions have posed questions about the nature of the self and about the value of self-knowledge. The topic of the self serves as our entry point into a variety of domains of philosophic inquiry, including ethics, political theory, epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics. Here we address a network of related questions about the self. What is the self? Is there a stable self that underlies our shifting perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs? What is our nature as human beings? Is it even possible to know ourselves? If so, how do we arrive at such knowledge? And what are the stakes of self-knowledge, or the consequences of ignorance of ourselves? How does our knowledge of ourselves affect our actions? How do art and artifice form, or distort, our conceptions of ourselves? How do different facets of our identity, such as race, gender, and sexual orientation, constitute our self-understanding and our ways of being in the world?

My students and I raise these questions through our engagement with primary sources in the history of European and South Asian philosophy, as well as with contemporary philosophy of the Black experience. Readings have included texts by Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, David Hume, John Locke, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, the authors of the Upaniṣads, the authors of the Buddhist Pāli canon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Berger, Nancy Tuana, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde.