(x12) – Fall 2025; Fall 2024; Fall and Winter 2022; Winter, Summer and Fall 2021. In Person and Online-Asynchronous sections.
The course begins by exploring the difference between information, knowledge and wisdom. It then charts the evolution of the idea of reason in the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with the ancient Greeks’ notion of rationality as a “way of life” aimed at participation in a universal Logos (the rational pattern undergirding the flux and fragmentation of the perceived world), and culminating in Descartes’ notion of reason as a universal method. A unifying thread of this course is a sustained exploration of the historic rise and fall of the ideal of philosophy as a practice aimed at unifying the mind to achieve a rational grasp of the unity of being. This overarching theme is explored through topics such as: the problem of universals, whether ultimate human values (e.g. justice, truth, beauty) have an objective or subjective basis, the nature and possibility of knowledge, rationalism and empiricism as responses to skepticism, the nature of the mind and its relation to matter and to ultimate reality, and arguments for the existence of God. Some years, the course also explores the possibility of artificial rationality and the distinction between human and artificial reasoning. It does so by exploring whether wisdom (understood as a transformative understanding of one’s participation in Logos) could be reduced to computation and realized by a sophisticated enough information processing system. Some semesters, the course also explores the different accounts of human nature and of the sources of value in human life provided by distinct ethical systems, such as Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and consequentialism. These topics are explored through an in-depth study of excerpts from philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Mill and Pierre Hadot. The course is also designed to introduce the basics of argumentative essay writing.
Syllabus for Introduction to Philosophy
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F21 A
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F21 B
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F24