Philosophy

Improves the ability to analyse and evaluate arguments and assertions met with in everyday life, and hence sharpens skills of reasoning to sound conclusions from available evidence. Does this by studying the classic fallacies that people often commit and using elementary formal logic to explore differences between deductive and inductive reasoning.

Introduces various ethical theories and examines moral problems including abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.

This course offers a general survey of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to Scholasticism. It will concentrate upon issues central to ancient and medieval philosophy through a look at such figures as Parmenides, Plato, Augustine and Aquinas.

This course offers a general survey of philosophy from Rationalism to German Idealism. It will concentrate upon the concerns of modern philosophy by looking at the philosophies of such figures as Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Marx. Designed to bridge the gap for upper year students. 

This course provides an introduction to three important, interconnected issues in metaphysics. Questions concerning the definition and existence of free will, the nature of the mind and its relation to the brain, as well as whether or not there are good reasons to believe in God, will be explored.

As a category, Monsters challenge our understanding of the normal, the natural, the intelligible and the ethical. In so doing, the study of monsters provides an opportunity to explore the perennial questions of philosophy in a new and interesting way. This course will use monsters as a tool to explore aspects of the three main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics and epistemology. Some of the topics to be discussed will include human nature, the conditions of knowledge, the mind-body problem, artificial intelligence, ethical dilemmas and theories, the metaphysics of identity, and good and evil.

This course investigates core problems and key authors in ethical theory. The main focus of the course is to treat the rival theories of eudaimonism, deontology and utilitarianism as they are expressed both in contemporary ethical literature and in their historical context by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill. We also give some attention to those figures that have influenced their development, such as Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the last part of the course, we turn to another alternative--the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and his influential critique of much of the Western ethical tradition that preceded him.

An introduction to moral problems arising in business. The course is designed to introduce the student to ethical theory and its relevance for business decision making.

The course is directed at individuals who are currently qualified engineers, or to those who have permission of the instructor. It provides a problem-centred approach to engineering ethics, as well as the conceptual and theoretical tools basic to developing the skills for recognizing and addressing ethical issues in the engineering field. Topics include: engineering as a profession, design safety and risk, accidents, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, intellectual property, professional conscience, whistle-blowing, engineering and the environment, computer ethics, and the ethics of engineering research.  These concerns are developed in part through analysis of wide ranging, real-life scenarios. PHIL 2207 cannot be used for any credit in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New Brunswick.

Film is an incredible medium. Many issues in Philosophy can be explored and explained through the medium of film. This course will examine some philosophical problems occasioned by great films. Some of the topics to be discussed might include free will and determinism, the mind-body problem, just war theory, human nature, and/or ethical theories.

The techniques of natural deduction, including conditional proof, indirect proof and separation of cases. Emphasizes applications in sentence logic and in the logic of quantification up to the logic of relations.

An examination of the ethical issues raised by problems in Bioethics, such as experimentation with human subjects, euthanasia, assisted suicide and cessation of medical treatment, patients' rights, informed consent, and tissue transplantation. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Administrators can be found in for-profit businesses, NGOs, schools and universities, hospitals, the armed forces, government, etc. The course strives to address two key questions: "What responsibilities do decision makers in organizations have to others?" and "Why do they have such responsibilities?" Analytical tools presented in the course to help answer these questions will include such approaches as Rawls’ distributive justice, Harsanyi's utilitarianism, and Gauthier’s morals by agreement, among many others. Students will be expected to understand the justification for each of these tools, apply them to cases discussed in class, and ultimately be able to recommend and defend what actions administrators ought to take according to each method of analysis. In conjunction with the above analytical tools, the course will also introduce a variety of “thinking methods,” such as formal logic, thought experiments, and game theory, which underlie the tools. Prerequisite: 3ch in Philosophy, or permission of the instructor.

The period of philosophy beginning with Thales and culminating with Plato. Stresses the development of certain key themes and problems in this period and their influence on later philosophical thought. Half the course is devoted to examining philosophical thought prior to Plato; the other half focuses on Plato's thought.

Focuses on Aristotle and subsequent developments in Greek philosophy. Half the course examines different aspects of Aristotle's thought, the other half considers post-Aristotelian schools of thought. 

Introduction to some of the philosophical issues of 17th-century philosophy, such as: philosophical method; the nature, scope and limits of knowledge; the nature of reality; the question of the nature and existence of God. Reference is made to selections from some of the important philosophers of the era--e.g., Descartes, Locke. 

Introduction to some of the philosophical issues of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, such as: philosophical method; the nature, scope and limits of knowledge; the nature of reality; the question of the nature and existence of God. Reference is made to selections from some of the important philosophers of the era--e.g., Leibniz, Hume. 

This course focuses primarily on the philosophical works of Adam Smith, a founder of capitalism, and Karl Marx, a founder of communism. The socio-political-economic structures they envisioned for society are defined, and the justificatory arguments they provide for their structures are examined. The philosophical foundations of anarchism, feudalism, Leninism, libertarianism, mercantilism, and socialism may also be studied for comparison purposes, time permitting. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Examines the major themes of existential philosophy developed in the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries such as the self, existence, freedom, relationships with others, etc.. References are made to selections from some of the important existential thinkers -- e.g. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Simon Weil, Camus, Arendt, Heidegger.

This course provides an in-depth study of Plato's most important and influential dialogue--his masterpiece on justice, the Republic. We shall cover all of its major philosophical problems through a close reading of the whole dialogue, also taking account the role of the dramatic element of the dialogue for understanding those problems. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw the beginning of western philosophy as the birth of a cultural death-wish glorified in the suicide of Socrates. This course looks at Nietzsche’s portrait of Socrates in order to access his perception of ancient Greek philosophy, tragic poetry and culture. In so doing, the course will clarify Nietzsche’s attacks on Christianity and Modernity as sources of the nihilism he believed would promote the death-wish of “Socratism.” The course will also give some consideration to Nietzsche’s confrontation with nihilism in terms of his conceptions of the Will to Power, the Ubermensche, the Revaluation of all Values, the Master Race, and Eternal Recurrence. Open to 2nd year students and above.

This course will concentrate on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Initially influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas’ philosophical path diverged in the direction of Ethics as a radical critique of the traditional view of human beings as “knowing” or “rational” subjects. This course will look at Levinas’ ethics both as a critique of traditional and contemporary theories of knowledge and existence, as well as a post-modern critique of western philosophy. These concerns are developed through Levinas’ descriptions of our encounter with the “Other” in terms of his investigations into the human face, desire, gift, language, the concern for justice, and God. Open to 2nd year students and above.

This course approaches Kierkegaard’s philosophy through his text Philosophical Fragments. Written by one of the foremost of continental philosophers, this text explores the possibility of something we rarely hear spoken of these days–namely, the possibility of a relationship with absolute, eternal truth. This text will serve as a means to clarifying some of the central features of Kierkegaard’s thinking such as: the relationship between reason and faith, the status of the self as a rational identity, the significance of human life within history, the aesthetic, ethical and religious modes of existence, and indirect communication. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Considered one of the founding thinkers of what would eventually be called “existential philosophy,” Friedrich Nietzsche’s attempt to destroy the tradition of philosophy anticipates not only many themes in post - WW II Continental thought, but also those now flourishing in postmodern philosophy. This course will concentrate on one of the better known and central features of his philosophy, namely, his critique of Christianity. This approach allows us access to his criticism of Western Philosophy; the basis for his attack on modernity. Some of the central concerns will be Nietzsche’s portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, view of Plato’s philosophy as symptomatic of a cultural illness that would become manifest in Christianity, and how ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity constitute the basis of cultural Nihilism. Open to 2nd year students and above.

This course examines Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity. Through a close reading of these texts, the class will look at how both Arendt and de Beauvoir explore the politics of hate. Coming to their investigations via the European experience of mechanized mass murder and the routine events of terror and evil during World War II, these philosophers attempt to speak not only to their own generation but to ours as well. Prerequisite: Open to students 2^nd year and above.

Among the most influential of contemporary philosophers, Foucault stood directly opposed to the thinking of the “existentialist.” Critical of the humanism of post-WW II French philosophy, Foucault, largely influenced by Nietzsche, pursued what would in his early work become known as an “archeology” of knowledge and later as “genealogy.” The course will follow a close reading of The History of Sexuality in order to concentrate on his investigation into the construction of “human sexuality” as an object of “knowledge.” This investigation will be used to clarify Foucault’s recognition of the conditions of power that function in “discourse,” and how his philosophy serves as a critique of the origins and methods of the social sciences. Open to 2nd year students and above.

The popular view of the “existentialist” owes much to Jean-Paul Sartre–the most well known philosopher of post WW II Europe. Having studied with Edmund Husserl, who exposed him to the method of “pure phenomenology,” Sartre would apply this method in his descriptions of human freedom as “dread,” “bad-faith,” “the look,” and “desire,” to mention just a few of the themes found in his philosophical texts, plays, and novels. The course will concentrate primarily on his Being and Nothingness, to explore how Sartre recognizes the intentional structure of human consciousness in relation to ourselves, our bodies, human relationships, atheism, and the world. Open to 2nd year students and above.

This course introduces students to the philosophy of one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th Century, Martin Heidegger. Through an investigation into the seminal themes of his text, Being and Time, we will look at Heidegger’s descriptions of ourselves as “Dasein,” (Being There”) in terms of his analyses of “possibility,” “facticity,” “authenticity,” “dread,”, “fallenness,” and “Being-Toward-Death.” Lectures will initially concentrate on three introductory concerns: 1) the early influences upon Heidegger’s thinking (Nietzsche, Kierkegaard); 2) Husserl’s method of pure phenomenology; and 3) how 1 and 2 provide the foundations for what would emerge as “existential philosophy” after WW II. Open to 2nd year students and above

This course concentrates on two central themes: the first is Foucault’s perception of the "genealogy" of the social sciences in relation to the practices of incarceration and punishment in mid-eighteenth century Europe. The second follows his perception of contemporary interpretations of self-identity as they have been generated by: the continued growth of penal institutions, the social sciences as disciplines of “subjectivity”, the distinction between torture and punishment, and subjective vs. objective surveillance. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Beginning with Aquinas's reflections on the nature of God this course will trace Aquinas's thought as it progresses in the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles in order to examine the philosophical problems that perplexed Aquinas and his solutions to these problems. Open to 2nd year students and above.

What is a human being? Are human beings simply material objects? Are they a combination of matter and soul? What is consciousness and how can it be explained? In this class students will be introduced to these questions and will explore various answers to these questions from the history of philosophy and from contemporary discussions. Students will engage the answers provided in class as a means of formulating their own understanding of the connection between mind and brain and mind and body. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, challenged traditional conceptions of science and scientific progress and precipitated much of contemporary discussions in philosophy of science. Focusing on the history of science, Kuhn argued that logical reconstructions of science were inadequate. His argument encouraged philosophers of science to construct relativistic accounts of science and scientific progress. Beginning with the Logical Positivists, this course will trace different accounts of science, with special attention to the debate between realist and anti-realist conceptions of science. Open to 2nd year students and above.

One of your main objectives as a student, is to learn–that is, to acquire knowledge. This is true whether you pursue knowledge for its own sake or for its “value” in terms of earning a university degree. But do you ever wonder whether knowledge is really worth pursuing? And if it is, what makes it valuable? And do you ever wonder whether it is even possible to know anything with certainty? In this course, we will explore these questions by focusing on three problems: the Gettier Problem, the Value Problem, and the Problem of Skepticism. Some readings will be drawn from classical sources (Plato and Descartes), but most will come from contemporary texts. Open to 2nd year students and above. 

What is meaning? How does language relate to speakers, their thoughts, and the world? How do we understand one another? Are the truth and falsehood of our statements determined by the world or by our linguistic conventions? Attempts at answering these fundamental questions about language have given rise to a number of important issues within contemporary philosophy. This course will be an overview of these issues as well as their bearing on broader debates within metaphysics, such as realism and anti-realism. Readings will come from authors of the 20th century analytic tradition, such as Frege, Russell, Ayer, Quine, Kripke, Putnam, Grice, and others. Open to 2nd year students and above. 

Explores some of the traditional issues associated with belief in God, including: the arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil, the meaningfulness of religious language, and how the divine attributes are to be understood.

This course provides a contemporary treatment of key themes in liberal political theory, especially the work of John Rawls. We will pay special attention to his conception of freedom (both its worth and extent) and equality, as well as their compatibility and role in justice. The second half of the course considers some important communitarian critics of liberal political theory, including Alisdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor. Open to 2nd year students and above.

Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was the favourite of his own books, about which he nevertheless said, “For everyone else, it is obscure, mysterious, and ridiculous.” This course will investigate Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as a means to excavating exactly what Nietzsche said is expressed by this book; namely, the central themes of his philosophy. The course will look into why Nietzsche wrote this book in the style of the Old Testament, and how it articulates his perception of the “Will to Power,” “The Overman,” “The Master Race,” and the “Revaluation of all Values.”

This course examines the relationship between science and religious belief. Questions of whether design is a legitimate scientific concept, whether methodological naturalism is a prerequisite of scientific inquiry, and whether ‘God of the gaps’ arguments are ever legitimate will be examined, as will be various models of how God is conceived as working within nature.

This course introduces students to the philosophical method of phenomenology. Developed by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, the method of what he called “pure phenomenology” has determined the character of Continental Philosophy throughout the 20th century. Emerging as a radical break with the philosophical tradition, Husserl’s thought provided the method that would determine the course of 20th century existential philosophy and serve as the point of departure for postmodernism. The course will be concerned with the main features of Husserl’s thought, particularly his theory of the intentional structure of consciousness, his critique of traditional epistemology, and the foundations and crises of the sciences, as well as his views on the “natural attitude,” the “irreality” of “the world,” and the “life-world.” 

Courses of independent study of specified texts or topics in Philosophy under the supervision of a member of the Department. These courses will normally be given only between May and August inclusive and with the agreement of the supervisor. They require the approval of the Chair of the Department and the Dean of the student's Faculty, and are subject to the regulations for individual Studies published in the Intersession/Summer Session Calendar.