2010 Fall Proseminar Professor Blog

Return to Philosophy Proseminar

On this page, you'll find my "after class" blogs for the course. I'll send them as email to the class.

1st Class, August 31, 2010

Great start gang. I hope you feel oriented to the course and have a sense of the possibilities for our work. It's great to be underway, and you all seem ready for some kind of philosophical adventure! Thanks for the helpful information about your interests, which I'll be working on.

I hope you found the fist discussion useful for thinking about assumptions we have about philosophy. Definition turns out to be a focus in some of our work on method, so don't stop thinking about how you define philosophy. Consider a "thin" definition, like "evaluation of arguments and points of views on basic questions of reality and existence" as well as "thicker" ones, like "the love of wisdom". Maybe the definition you gravitate toward tells you something about your focus. The article by Hadot for next week should also connect with this issue.

Please start your browsing, along with the reading for next week. It's not too early to rough in your grading scheme on the course website. And feel free to stop by during office hours or by appointment to talk about your interests.