Weekly Class Work Space for Proseminar Fall 2015

Return to Philosophy Proseminar

SEP 1

• Course Introductions:

• Introductions, Course goals, Course websites: alfino.org and wiki, Grading Schemes, Peerceptive, Google forms, Philosophical Research Tools
• Assignment for Friday: Choose your pseudonym (google form), then write a short reconstruction and critical response to the McGinn article.
• Explication of "reconstruction" and "critical response"
• Break
• Having a philosophical life --
• Recent Books:

• Matthew Crawford, The World Outside Your Head
• Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage
• Pope Francis, LAUDATO SI’
• David Sloan Wilson, Does Altruism Exist
• Peter Singer, The Most Good you Can Do (appear on the West side soon!)

• Course Topics

• Historiography in Philosophy/What is Philosophy? (Who were the Ancients?)
• Science and Philosophy -- Problem of Induction
• Philosophy vs. Non-Philosophy
• Obligations to Aid and Globalization of Ethics
• Thought Experiments / Genetic Engineering and Transhumanism
• Kant as Turning Point
• Faith and Reason / Contemporary study of Religion
• Introduction to Continental and Analytic Divide
• Philosophy of Law - Felony Murder
• Naturalism, Evolution, and Epistemology
• Buddhism and Personal Identity
• Food and Philosophy
• Free Will

SEP 8

• Notes from the Readings for September 8 (contributed by Michael Barbarossa)

• Hadot's "Philosophy as a Way of Life"

• Hadot's Notion of Philosophy:

• Philosophy is teleological; it may seem obvious, but all the thinking is oriented towards a specific and measurable end
• That end is the betterment of the individual in the present moment
• As Hadot quotes from Philo of Alexandria,

• When pursuing philosophy a person “is in training for wisdom”
• Philosophy’s “goal is a life of peace and serenity”
• Sometimes it involves disregarding exterior evils and discomforts

• All of these traits are components of wisdom, and “real wisdom does not merely cause us to know; it makes us be in a different way” (265).

• Thesis about the Period of Hellenistic Philosophy:

• Stoics separated “philosophical discourse” and the “act of philosophy itself”

• A theory of logic, ethics, and physics must be set forth when teaching, but philosophy is really about putting those into practice and living them

• Both Stoics and Epicureans advised us to live in the present, not the past or future
• Philosophy was not elitist, because everyone who worked to implement the lifestyle of the philosophical masters was himself a philosopher

• Christianity as a Philosophy:

• Christianity was a philosophy, in this sense of a practical and presently-lived worldview

• If philosophy meant living in accord with reason, then the Christian lived in accord with the Logos (Divine Reason)

• A shift occurred with Scholasticism in the Middle Ages: professionals began training professionals at universities with no aim for practical use of philosophy
• Philosophy also began to serve as only a foundation for theology.

• Hadot's "Spiritual Exercises"

• Satisfying the Contemporary Spiritual Demands:

• Christianity, Judaism, or Oriental religions are not compatible with currents situation
• Those who desire a “revolution” must prepare for that “revolution”

• The way of preparation requires bettering oneself
• Transcending the self allows one to better the self

• This idea is strongly reminiscent of Greco-Roman philosophies

• Why spiritual exercises? Because the individual replaces his self (spirit) within the presence and vision of the Whole

• Roots in Hellenistic and Roman Schools of Philosophy:

• A switch from the “human” focus on passions and possessions to a “natural” focus of each event within a universal nature
• Groups of the Stoic Spiritual Exercises:

• First Group: Attention, Meditations, Remembrances of Good Things

• Attention allows us to respond immediately to events; to live in the present

• Intellectual Group: Reading, Listening, Research, and Investigation
• Active Group: Self-Mastery, Accomplishment of Duties, and Indifference to Indifferent Things

• Four goals: Learning to Live, Learning to Dialogue, Learning to Die, Learning to Read

• The philosopher must be not a sage and not a non-sage at the same time
• He must have one foot in the world of habitual life and the other in the domain of consciousness and lucidity.

• Gilles Deleuze

• Here's a link to a good philosophical encyclopedia article on the background and significance of Gilles Deleuze for today's reading.