PHIL 180 - FS: First-Year Seminar

FDR: HU
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Offered occasionally. Each first-year seminar topic is approved by the Dean of The College and the Committee on Courses and Degrees. Applicability to FDRs and other requirements varies.

Winter 2014 Topic:

PHIL 180: FS: Philosophers, Sophists and Other Liars (3). First-Year Seminar. Prerequisite: First-year class standing. Plato targets Sophistry as classical philosophy’s most sinister adversary. Our course begins at the crux of this bitter dispute: the problem of the nature of reality and its relationship to appearance. We track this debate as it manifests in pre-Socratic and classical Greek philosophy, right up to its resurgence in contemporary French thought. Throughout, we ask how this problem of reality and appearance might matter for the political, cultural and aesthetic dimensions of our own time? Given that our world is shaped by continually developing virtual possibilities, Plato and the Sophists have laid the groundwork for a discussion that is all the more pressing today. (HU) Renault-Steele. Winter 2014