PHI448ArabMuslim Thought in the Middle Ages
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI210
The course of ArabMuslim philosophy is envisaged in the form of problems: the theory of Knowledge - the topic of Reason in ArabMuslim philosophy and the question of the compatibility of Reason and Faith (Mu‘tazila, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd); God - the traditional proofs of his existence and attributes (Ibn Sina); the Universe - the hierarchy of beings, creation or noncreation of the world (Ibn Sina, Ghazali, Ibn Rushd); morality and politics (AlFarabi); sociology and history (Ibn Khaldûn); and the Mystique (Ibn ‘Arabi, Al Hallaj).
PHI458Contemporary Philosophy I: Phenomenology
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI455
The main objective of this course is to study phenomenological thought in two particular ways. The first one analyzes the principles of phenomenology, in the manner elaborated by Edmund Husserl. The second one brings to light the numerous manifestations of the phenomenological practice and its particular development by the French phenomenological school, which is essentially represented by M. MerleauPonty, J. Derrida, E. Levinas, M. Henry and J.L. Marion.
PHI459Contemporary Philosophy II: Existentialism
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI458
Starting with the knowledge of Existentialism,”Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre”, the course initially questions their take on existential and “existentiale” philosophy, on contemporary thought, as well as on the distinction between Heidegger’s philosophy and that of Sartre. Secondly, the course discusses major ontological questions raised by Existentialism such as freedom, anxiety, responsibility, death, and God. Finally, the course examines how structuralism in its foundations (LéviStrauss, Michel Foucault), presents itself as a critique of Existentialism.
PHI455German Idealism
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI333
This course aims to analyze the truth systems constructed by Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and the great fundamental institutions that structure all idealist comprehension of the truth. This course will be divided into three parts. Firstly we will study Fichte and his vision of the fundamental task of philosophy. In this manner, we will look at the themes of the self-awareness, the Being and the Apparition according to his masterpiece “The Science of Knowledge” of 1812, and we will also examine Fichte’s three images of the Absolute and philosophy of religion, as they are developed in “Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder auch die Religionslehre”. Secondly, we will read “The Phenomenology of Spirit” of Hegel, which is based on the major philosophical orientations that form the systematical structure of the truth. The main analysis is over the dialectic of knowledge and the three moments of the autorealisation of the Spirit: Art, Religion and Philosophy. Lastly, we will study the evolution of Schellingian thought from 1801, with the emergence of the philosophy of absolute identity - until Schelling’s intermediate philosophy in Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen.
PHI210Greek Philosophy
3 credits
This course is divided into two parts: the first part examines preSocratic sources that give students the proper tools to acquire philosophical thinking in their quest for the nature of things, and in their attempt to unveil both natural and human phenomena. It thus includes the main schools of thought such as the School of Miletus (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes), the Pythagorean school (Pythagoras), the Ionian school (Heraclitus), the Eleatic school (Parmenides), as well as the Sophists. The second part deals with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
PHI453Hermeneutics
3 credits
Having originated within the context of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics was freed from its dogmatic and institutional limits to become a discipline that mediated and reconciled stylistics, translinguistics, wordforword linguistics and dissertation analysis, as well as a reading of the world as text. It is the restoration and disclosure of meaning that interprets and identifies the significance of the written and spoken word. The course traces the journey that this discipline has made from Schleiermacher to Ricoeur, as well as Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Szondi, Jaussand and Appel.
PHI420Logic and Philosophy of Knowledge
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI333
This course initially outlines a perspective of language as an object of study that shows how much of the philosophy of the twentieth century developed as a "philosophy of language" (Analytic Philosophy). Secondly it deals with the general theoretical framework of the argument as a discursive act, based on the theory of acts of language (speech acts), that the two philosophers Longshaw John Austin and, later, John Searle paved the way for. Thirdly, general issues related to logic are discussed, and are treated by the induction and deduction master concepts - truth and validity. A brief discussion is given on the methods and endorsements of formalization. The formal approach is exemplified, when it comes to conducting the analysis and evaluation of simple deductive arguments, called syllogism.
PHI301Medieval Philosophy
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI210
This course is designed to analyze the highlights of the thought of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart. We seek, from the analysis of the Augustinian singular experience of truth, to understand in depth the issues relating to the problem of knowledge, the metaphysics of inner experience, the selfcertainty based on the truth of God inherent in our interiority, temporality and eternity and the unitive and tripartite constitution of the same soul to the constitution of the Trinitarian life in God. We will study, starting from a critical reading of the writings of St. Thomas, the themes related to the receipt of Thomistic Aristotelian heritage, the question of creation and the evidence of the existence of God, the question of analogy and the problem of knowledge. A contemporary reading of the mystic Meister Eckhart, which largely contributed to the emergence of German philosophical speculation, will be analyzed as well. The research will, at this level, tackle Eckhart’s unitive structure of knowledge and life, that animates the vital relationship between God and man.
PHI445Metaphysics
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI210
The purpose of this course is to present a reflection on metaphysics and its relation to primitive philosophy, which discusses, for example, "The science of Being as Being." It is divided into three areas. The first focuses on Aristotelian metaphysics. The second reflects upon the problems of the world, the soul and God, from the analysis of two antithetical philosophers, Leibniz and Spinoza. The third examines the different theories of the nineteenth and twentieth century, taking an indepth look into the philosophies which were eager to put an end to metaphysics; philosophies which are attributed to Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Habermas.
PHI333Modern Philosophy
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI301 or PHI210
The students will be introduced to two great philosophical currents, both stemming from the works of Francis Bacon, rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza) and empiricism (Locke, Condillac, Hume), leading to Kant’s philosophy of knowledge critical rationalism.
PHI447Moral and Political Philosophy
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI210
The course aims to consider a reflection on the foundations and the meaning of democracy, in order to find the place of morality in politics; knowing that the two concepts "moral" and "politics" are written mostly in separation rather than in conjunction. This is how we can understand the great debates relative to moral and political philosophy, from the ancient Greeks particularly those of Plato and Aristotle until modern or contemporary times. Starting with an approach to these two concepts, the course is essentially questioning, on one hand, the need for the interaction of these two areas of morality and politics, and also that of their separation. Students will analyze in-depth the answer to these questions by drawing on texts of classical and modern philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt and Julien Freund, who have pondered this topical issue.
PHI327Philosophical Anthropology
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI210
The question “What Is Man?” is at the heart of philosophical questioning. Starting from the anthropocentrism need of philosophy, the course firstly explores the meaning of the question about the essence of man through its history, the challenges imposed by the cyborg, the computational world or gender theory (Gehlen, Leach, Butler, Blumenberg, etc.). The course questions the difficulties of defining the human being through current changes by building on the thinkers of classical humanism and posthumanism. Secondly, the course presents the basic categories of philosophical anthropology and offers a thorough analysis of the beinginrelation (or the human being-inrelationships) and discussion of political, social and cultural implications, with reference to contemporary thinkers of otherness (Levinas, Buber, Marion, etc.)
PHI325Philosophical Reading
3 credits
An analytical and critical reading of a philosophical text in its entirety is a necessary and formative exercise. After an introduction to the author and his work, and in context of the work in question, a reading workshop, directed and supervised by the teacher, will develop around the statements of work, comments and thematic overviews, for the establishment of a reference file. The workshop will be provided each semester by a different teacher, for a greater variety of approach. The work chosen by the teacher in charge of the course generally will correspond to its competences. It must, however, be a major and referential work in the history of thought. A list of authors will be established for this purpose, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Arendt, Derrida, MerleauPonty, etc. The work chosen will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
PHI419Philosophy and Sciences
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI333
This epistemology course centers around a double axis: firstly it tackles the gnoseological question with an inquiry into the genesis of knowledge or the basic stages of the transition from anthropomorphism to anthropocentrism (Kepler, Galileo, Newton). Secondly it tackles methodology in reference to exact sciences and deals with the requirements of the elaboration of a scientific method: its different stages, the means it uses, in order to avoid, overcome or circumvent all sorts of epistemological conundrums that stand in the way of an objective scientific progress (Bachelard, Popper), with a thorough critical study of the validity of its founding criteria (Wittgenstein).
PHI485Philosophy and Societies
3 credits | Pre-requisite: PHI447
This course introduces students to a philosophical reflection upon the concept of society. Firstly, it attempts to identify the origin of society, through the problem related to the two corollary concepts of nature and culture. Secondly, the course tackles factors maintaining a social link, explaining the relationship between the state as artifact according to Aristotle, and political societies. There are thus different possible societies such as the individualistic society, communitarian society, holistic society, closed society, open society, etc. Finally, starting from a general approach to social institutions, the course questions the concept of distributive justice and what follows as a dilemma between procedural justice and communitarian justice; which leads ipso facto to a topical problem, that of justice as a social, political and legal recognition.