USA Boston
Course Title: Philosophy of the Person I
Fall 2001-2003
Course Number: PL07003 Lubos Rojka, S.J.
Class location: Carney 203
MWF 9:00-9:50 Office: Campanella Way, 360E
A GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The course is intended to provide a historical introduction into philosophy, esp. ethics, through the reading of a number of influential works in Western culture. The purpose is an attempt to explicate several questions related to human life and evaluate different opinions related to these questions. We shall emphasize reading, recognition and reconstruction of important ideas and reasons embraced in the texts.
Hopefully, we will acquire a more critical approach to the opinions one meets in ordinary life and learn how to explore, develop and reasonably justify our own convictions. Several ideas and methods from the History of Philosophy and Philosophical Methodology shall be provided to facilitate our progress.
READINGS:
Plato. Five Dialogues. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1981. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. M. Ostwald. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962. Augustine. Confessions. Trans. F.J. Sheed. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Aquinas, Thomas. A Shorter Summa. Ed. Peter Kreeft. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.
Course Title: Philosophy of the Person II
Spring 2002-2004
Course Number: PL070 03 Lubos Rojka, S.J.
Class location: Carney 203 Office: St. Mary’s
MWF 9:00-9:50 Hours: (by appointment)
A SHORT COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The course is intended to extend and deepen our understanding of the classical explanations of philosophical problems related to personal life, mainly as presented in some later (“modern” and “post-modern”) works of the Western tradition. Several related topics from the previous semester, such as the problem of the concept of God, the proofs of the existence of God, and the mind/body problem will be re-introduced in order to enrich our endeavor.
We shall emphasize reading, recognition, and reconstruction of important ideas and arguments presented in the texts. Students are expected to have basic skills in philosophical argumentation and knowledge of the works we read in the first semester, viz., those of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas.
Several advanced techniques from Philosophical Methodology will be provided to improve the writing of philosophical papers.
READINGS:
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Grand Inquisitor. Ed. B. Charles. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Ed. James Strachey. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1961. Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On The Genealogy of Morals (Ecce Homo). Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Swinburne, Richard. Is There a God? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.