Second day questions usually explore broad philosophical issues, with students free to draw on any material in answering them. The department's goal is to give students the chance to tie their major together, reflect on this part of their education, and demonstrate their strengths in the field. One course credit, fall semester. A survey of the pre-Socratics, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and a fairly detailed study of some of Plato's dialogues. Topics include the Greek understanding of the nature of the universe, the possibilities of human reason and the relation of individual and society.
Lectures provide some historical background but concentrate on analysis of assigned readings.
One course credit, fall semester. Readings and discussion of the classical modern philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, focusing on questions such as scientific method and the possibility of knowledge, the nature of reality, ethics and the relation of the individual to society, and the existence of God. Readings from Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. One course credit, spring semester. An introduction to some of the primary existentialist texts of the 19th and 20th centuries, including works of fiction, philosophy, and psychology from such writers as Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Bataille.