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General description of the Senior Seminar Format
Intended for students with a specific interest in advanced research and an eye towards post-graduate studies in philosophy, this course is designed to meet the needs of students who wish to develop greater depth in their philosophical studies.
The course consists of rotating content based on the expertise of philosophy teachers at University College. It is organized thematically, and requires students to follow three seminars of five weeks each treating main categories of philosophical investigation, such as metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, philosophy of mind, language, religion and science.
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Topic for the Spring semester of 2015:
Footnotes to Plato: through 2400 years of philosophy
Content
‘The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.’
Thus A.N. Whitehead in 1929. Still, in an important study of Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (2012), John M. Cooper (Princeton), editor of the standard translation of Plato’s works, omits Plato because he has written dialogues in the voices of others, with ‘unresolved conflicts and contradictions’ between the various dialogues.
In our seminar we trace the impact, direct or indirect, of this visionary but elusive, inspiring yet tantalizing thinker on both followers and opponents or sympathetic critics, from the first criticisms — by Plato himself — all the way down to modern thinkers accused of ‘Platonism’ even without any reference to the historical Plato, raising the question: Was Plato a Platonist? Central to his legacy are conceptions of an ‘Idea’ or ‘Form’ (to be traced down to Locke, Kant and Frege) and the opposite of form known as matter (Aristotle, Nishida), sustaining a dialectic between Many and One (Plotinus, Shankara, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer) implying notions of Reason or Mind and Spirit or Soul (Plotinus) to be transformed by Christians (Augustine, Aquinas), Muslims (Avicenna, Averroes), Jews (Maimonides) and modern western thinkers (Descartes to Nietzsche and beyond).
Aims
After completing this course students are able to:
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discern and critically assess philosophical assumptions about reality at large and the place of human beings within it;
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analyze and critically discuss primary texts of philosophy with the help of secondary texts;
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articulate a considered and balanced philosophical view on the topics dealt with in this seminar.
Format
Lectures by the teachers and presentations by students.
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