Phil 340: What is a Human Being?
Prof. Patrick Frierson
My Office hours are
1:20–2:20 pm on Tuesday, 11-12 am on Wednesday, and 9–10 am on
Thursday
“The greatest concern of the human
being is to know how to properly fulfill his station in creation and to rightly
understand what one must do in order to be a human being.” (Immanuel
Kant, from a set of handwritten notes written in 1764 in his personal copy of Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime,
Ak. 20:41)
“The field of philosophy . . . can
be reduced to the following questions:
What can I know? What ought
I to do? What may I hope? What is the human being? Metaphysics answers the first question,
morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth.
Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of this as
anthropology.” (from
Kant’s logic lectures, as compiled by his student Jäsche in 1800,
Ak. 9: 25)
Course Description: In
a set of lectures to his students, Kant claimed that all of philosophy could be
reduced to the question, What is the Human Being? This course focuses on that question.
Almost half of the course will be spent exploring Kant’s answer to the question,
which will also provide an opportunity to explore Kant’s philosophy as a
whole. The rest of the course will
look at several contemporary approaches to the problem (including, for example,
existentialism and scientific – especially evolutionary – accounts
of human beings).
Requirements (Seminar
Option):
- Attendance, Reading, and Participation (10%).
You are expected to read and reread the assigned texts for each class with
thoughtfulness and care. Merely passing your eyes over the relevant pages
is not reading. You need to engage with the material, thinking through
passages that you find confusing until you are able to either understand
them or clearly articulate the nature of your confusion. You should
constantly assess how the readings relate to one another and to your own
emerging thoughts about what it means to be a human being. You should
bring this deep understanding of and insightful questions about the texts
to class with you each week, prepared to contribute in substantive ways to
our cooperative class project of coming to a deeper understanding of what
it is to be human. You are required to attend every class and are expected
to participate in a learning community of mutual respect.
- Seminar Paper (20%). For one of
our weekly meetings, you will be expected to write a seminar paper of
approximately 2000-4000 words that engages with the material assigned for
the day but also incorporates at least two additional readings you find on
your own. (I strongly recommend using some of the strategies listed here for finding additional readings.) Your
paper may develop a thesis that answers the assigned prompt for the day,
or you may write on another issue related to the general theme for the
day. You must distribute this paper no later than 5 PM on the Sunday
preceding class, in order to give all of us enough time to read the paper
carefully. A seminar paper that is late will automatically suffer a one
grade point drop (from a B to a C, for instance). If the paper is more
than 24 hours late, it will receive an F. The seminar paper should not be
“exploratory,” but rather a well-reasoned argument that
defends a specific and interesting thesis related to the topic for the
day. Because of the expectations for this seminar paper, you should not
wait until the week that it is due to begin writing it. Although each week’s reading
builds to some extent off of previous weeks, each week’s reading
also stands largely on its own.
You should start the reading for your seminar paper at least three
weeks before it is due and have started writing (at least brainstorming)
at least two weeks before the paper is due.[1]
By 5 PM on the Wednesday before your paper is due, you must turn in (to
me) a draft of your paper, showing how far you have come. (Students who do
not turn in a draft will suffer at least a one grade point drop on their
paper.) I strongly encourage you to meet with me on Wednesday or Thursday
to discuss this draft and ideas for improving the paper.
- Presentation (20%). For one of our
weekly meetings, you will be expected to give a presentation. The primary
focus of this presentation should be the seminar paper written for that
week’s meeting. You should very
briefly explain what you take to be the central thesis of that seminar
paper and what you take to be the core argument for that thesis. You
should then raise significant objections and/or suggest ways that the
argument of the paper could be fruitfully developed. (You might also use
this opportunity to defend alternative positions that are neglected or
insufficiently treated in the paper.) You should feel free to connect your
comments on the paper with your own interests, but the focus should be on
the arguments and ideas in the seminar paper. Your introductory comments
should not take longer than 10 minutes. In addition, you should come with
specific questions to guide discussion. (This might include passages from
the reading that you want to read closely in the context of the seminar
paper, or passages from the seminar paper that you want to look at more
closely.) Because the oral portion of your presentation will be brief, I
strongly recommend including a handout with your presentation. Your handout might include such
things as: a summary of the thesis and main argument of the seminar paper;
brief bullet points with your central questions, criticisms, extensions,
and observations about the paper; quotes for discussion (from the paper
and/or readings for the day); and/or key questions that you hope we will
discuss as a class.
- Weekly Responses (20%). On weeks that you are neither
writing a paper nor giving a presentation, you are expected to write a
short response to the readings. For each week, I have provided a prompt
for written work, and you may use this to guide your weekly response.
Alternatively, you may simply write up a question about or response to the
readings, the seminar paper, or both. Generally, these responses need be
no longer than 200-400 words. These should be emailed to me no later than
4 PM on the Monday before we discuss the material. Responses will be graded with a
check, check-plus, or check-minus.
Late responses are welcome but will receive a zero. At the end of the semester, I will
drop your lowest 2 scores.
(That means you get two “free passes,” but use these
sparingly. I will not
generally excuse missed or late assignments beyond these two, even if you
have an official excuse through the Dean of Students. The point of the
free passes is precisely to provide for such contingencies.)
- Final Paper (30%). At the end of the semester, you
will be required to turn in a substantive research paper of at least 4500
words. This paper should engage with at least some of the material we
discuss in class and at least some additional material beyond what we read
in class. The topic of these papers is open-ended, but I recommend one of
three general approaches: (1) Expansion of seminar paper or weekly
response. You may substantially expand either your seminar paper or one of
your weekly responses, responding to comments raised during our seminar
and/or developing points that you were unable to develop in the original
version. (2) Answering Kant’s Question: “What is a human
being?” You may write a
sweeping paper that lays out a clear and compelling argument for a
well-articulated response to the question of what a human being is.
Because of the scope of the question and the (relative) brevity of the
paper, this will not be an airtight argument, but it should provide a
compelling overarching account of human beings. (3) Scholarly paper on a specific
topic discussed in class. You might focus your final paper on a specific
question or issue that arose in class. Some examples: How does
Kant’s aesthetics relates to his empirical account of pleasure? Does
Kant adequately solve the problem of radical evil? Is Kant’s
treatment of gender consistent with his moral philosophy? Is the use of
“memes” consistent with a strictly materialism conception of
human beings? (How) can Foucault respond to Sartre’s critique
without conceding the primacy of human freedom? Does Heidegger’s
conception of Being-towards-death as one’s ownmost possibility
provide for human freedom or contradict such freedom (or both, or
neither)? For this option, you should clearly articulate a question and a
thesis that answers/addresses that question, and your paper should clearly
and convincingly defend that thesis while responding to the most important
alternatives/objections.
Texts:
- E-reserves
(e-course-packet): List of texts available here, and links to the actual
materials (for Whitman students) available here
(email me for the password if you forget it).
- Miscellaneous
online resources linked below. (Occasionally, readings are available for
open access on the web, in which case I have provided a link to the
relevant website rather than to ereserves.)
- Patrick
Frierson, What is the Human Being?
(rough draft, 2009). Links under “topic” are to a rough draft
of my forthcoming book.
- Daniel
Dennett, Freedom Evolves (New York: Penguin,
2003, ISBN: 0-14-200384-0)
- Optional:
Christine
Korsgaard, The Sources of
Normativity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN:
0-521-55960-X)
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem
(New York:
Penguin Classics, 2006, ISBN: 0-14-303988-1)
Timeline:
In addition to the readings listed under “readings” for
each week, there is an online reading to which one can link by clicking on the
“topic” link.
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Topic
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Readings
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Written Work
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Week One
(September 1)
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What is the
Question?
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In class handouts
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Give your own best
answer to the question “What is a Human Being?”
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Week Two
(September 8)
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Kant: What Can I Know? (Read pages 1-21.)
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Selections
from Critique of Pure Reason
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Briefly (500 word
max) summarize Kant’s answer to the question, What can I know?
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Week Three
(September 15)
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Kant: What Ought I Do? (This links to the
same reading as last week. For this week, read pp. 21-33.)
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Selections
from Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason
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To what extent does
Kant’s answer to the question “What ought I do?” also
answer the question “What is the human being?”
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Week Four
(September 22)
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Kant: What May I Hope? (This links to the same
reading as last week. For this week, read pp. 33 to the end.) You should also read pp. 1-12 of this link.
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Selections
from Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
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Develop and defend
a key problem with Kant’s transcendental anthropology.
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Week Five
(September 29)
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Kant on History and Difference
(two links).
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“Idea
for a Universal History,” selections from Critique of Judgment, Observations on the Beautiful and
Sublime, “Determination
of the Concept of a Human Race,”
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Does Kant’s
philosophy of history and human difference make his overall answer to
“What is the Human Being?” better or worse?
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Week Six
(October 6)
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Kant’s Empirical and Pragmatic
Anthropology (Note that there are TWO separate hyperlinks)
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Selections
from Anthropology from a Pragmatic
Point of View
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What is missing
from Kant’s answer to the question, “What is a Human
Being?”
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Week Seven
(October 20)
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Naturalism
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Dennett, Freedom Evolves
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Does evolved
freedom sufficiently capture the range of human freedom? Or,
How might Kant respond to Dennett’s naturalist account of human beings?
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Week Eight
(October 27)
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Historicism
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Kuhn,
Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(selections)
Foucault,
“The Subject and Power” and “On the Genealogy of
Ethics” and
debate with Noam Chomsky (available here.)
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Briefly lay out the
most serious historicist challenge to Kant and defend the best Kantian
response to that challenge.
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Week Nine
(November 3)
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Human Diversity
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Ruth
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, pp.
1-20, 130-172.
Clifford
Geertz, “Anti-Anti-Relativism”
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Is it reasonable to
think that there is a single answer to the question “What is the Human
Being?”
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Week Ten
(November 10)
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Existentialism
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Kierkegaard,
selections from “Subjectivity is Truth”
Heidegger,
selections from Being and Time
Sartre, “Existentialism
is a Humanism” (non-reserve link)
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Is existentialism
the best approach to human freedom? If so, defend it against at least one
objection. If not, what is a better approach (and why)?
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Week Eleven
(November 17)
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Normativity
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Rorty,
Contingency,
Irony, Solidarity, selections;
MacIntyre,
After
Virtue, selections;
Habermas,
Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action, selections
Korsgaard,
selections from The Sources of Normativity
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If the question
“What is the human being?” is a normative question, what is the
best answer? (You may focus here on one dimension of human life, such as
epistemology or ethics.)
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Week Twelve
(December 1)
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Evil
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Augustine,
selections from Confessions,
Kant, selections
from Religion
Arendt, selections
from Eichmann in Jerusalem
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Are human beings
evil?
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Week Thirteen
(December 8)
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Catch-up and/or
Review.
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