Dan Bonevac

Ethical Theories

How should I live? What kind of person should I try to become? What should I do? How do I decide? Those questions about how to live—what to be, what to do, how to decide—form the subject matter of ethics. This course examines classic texts of several different approaches to answering them.

PHL 325K

We will read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, selections from Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism—classic statements of important approaches to ethical theory. All are available for download on Canvas.

This course carries the Ethics flag. Ethics courses are designed to equip you with skills necessary for making ethical decisions in your adult and professional life. Your grade will come from assignments involving ethical issues. It also carries the Writing flag.

History of Christian Philosophy

PHL 356D / CTI 335C

Philosophy courses often jump from Aristotle to Descartes—a two-thousand-year gap—with hardly a word about what went on in between. This course fills in the gap.

From its beginnings in the words of Jesus and the letters of Paul, Christian thought has struggled with fundamental philosophical questions concerning the nature of God, the self, the world, and the good life. Christianity arose from Judaism in a Hellenistic world. Christian thinkers immediately began developing their theological views in the context of Greek philosophical thought.  Starting with Paul, and continuing through the Reformation, we’ll look at philosophical contributions of central thinkers of the Christian tradition. Among the thinkers we’ll discuss are Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin. 

We’ll focus on a variety of philosophical issues, falling into three main categories:

Ethics: What is virtue? How do we tell right from wrong? What does the Fall imply about ethical knowledge and conduct?  What is sin? What is weakness of will, and why do Christian thinkers from Paul onward consider it central?

Epistemology: How is it possible to know anything about God? How does epistemic authority arise in religious matters, and how can it be transferred? Are religious experience and testimony legitimate sources of religious knowledge? What is the relationship between faith and reason?  To what extent are we capable of understanding God?

Metaphysics: Are there arguments for God’s existence? What is God’s nature? How can God be both three and one?  What is substance? What are essences?  Are there forms or universals?  If so, what are they?  Did God create the universe?  If so, how?  Do human beings have free will?  Is freedom compatible with divine foreknowledge?

Patricio A. Fernandez

HISTORY OF ETHICS

PHL 322K 

Aristotle holds that ethical inquiry, the discipline that he cultivates in his writings dealing with human action, is a distinctively practical science (practical philosophy). It is practical not only because it concerns action-related matters, but also because action is its proper end. Inquiry into the human good should ultimately contribute to one’s acting in a certain way and thus becoming a certain kind of person. In this course we will study Aristotle’s ethics as it is presented in his masterpiece, the Nicomachean Ethics. We shall consider Aristotle’s conception of agency and the good, his theory of the virtues, and his overall picture of an ethical character and an ethical life—all of which have exercised, and continue to exercise, an enormous influence upon subsequent thought about human action and morality. We will also explore the enduring influence of Aristotle’s ethical theory examining how it has been received by some medieval and contemporary thinkers.

Philosophy and the Dystopian Novel

UGS 303 

We will examine recent work in philosophy that is written from a Christian point of view or that examines philosophical questions that arise within the framework of the Christian faith. The issues to be covered include the relationship between faith and reason, the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God, the problem of evil, the problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge and sovereignty with human responsibility, and the relation of God to time. Special emphasis will be placed on the relevance of Christian philosophy to foundational questions concerning reality, knowledge and ethics.

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Contemporary Christian Philosophy

PHL 356C  

We will examine recent work in philosophy that is written from a Christian point of view or that examines philosophical questions that arise within the framework of the Christian faith. The issues to be covered include the relationship between faith and reason, the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God, the problem of evil, the problem of reconciling divine foreknowledge and sovereignty with human responsibility, and the relation of God to time. Special emphasis will be placed on the relevance of Christian philosophy to foundational questions concerning reality, knowledge and ethics.

Sam Mead

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES: CORE TEXTS

GOV 312P

Citizens of American liberal democracy live under the oldest codified constitution in use today.  Yet the age of a constitution does not permit us to take its principles for granted.  Far from it.  Each of us, in one way or another, is deeply shaped by these principles – in what we admire and detest, praise and blame, fear and love, in our opinions on the mundane and the lofty alike.  Therefore, if we wish not to take our opinions for granted, if we wish to achieve genuine self-knowledge, and if we are to be responsible democratic citizens, we must engage in a searching and thoughtful analysis of the theoretical basis for the American Constitution and the ways of life it fosters and requires.  Such an analysis is all the more necessary today; liberal democracy now draws criticism not only from abroad but also from home on both sides of the political spectrum.  If we are to meet those criticisms adequately, we owe it to ourselves to recover the original intention of those who shaped our regime.  This course is designed to help students begin such a recovery.  

We will focus on the fundamental principles of American political life: democracy, equality, and liberty.  Our guides – a select few authors of the American political tradition’s foundational texts – will show us how these principles took hold in the US and what arguments were made for and against them.  Our authors will not always agree with each other – they will even vehemently disagree.  But from their agreements and disagreements alike, we can begin to recover for ourselves those crucial questions informing our country, and hopefully start on the path towards genuine intellectual liberation. 

We will read Aristotle, John Locke, The Federalist Papers, select Anti-Federalists, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Abraham Lincoln, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Dima Shamoun

BEHAVIOR, GAME THEORY, & TEAM MANAGEMENT

FIN 397 

Team production, e.g., a firm, is by nature hierarchical. To be successful a hierarchy must have efficiently structured decision-making—that is, leadership, cooperation, and execution. A good leader can set a vision, gain cooperation, and coordinate action toward a goal, all while managing the tradeoffs that come with centralizing and decentralizing decision-making throughout the organization. 

We will take an economic approach to the use of tools from decision science, game theory, behavioral and evolutionary psychology. The course will employ a combination of lecture, classroom experiments, Socratic discussion of case studies, a team project, as well as a host of guest speakers who are leaders in their fields of business and research.  

We begin by learning the science of decision-making and the elements of decision quality. With this grounding we move on to an economic analysis of human nature when engaged in team production. There are two types of “games” relevant to the team production problem: games with Nature and games with Others. Against Nature, the team shares a common vision and goal; however, cognitive biases still obscure sound decisions. When dealing with each other, team members have their own perspective and preferences, which may deviate somewhat from the goal of the organization. 

Students will become familiarized with some of the major behavioral biases that plague individual and team decision-making. Such biases include anchoring, confirmation bias, denominator blindness, loss aversion, overconfidence, and groupthink, to name a few. A team leader must be able to navigate these opportunities amongst obstacles. 

A team leader also needs to be able to align the interests and incentives of the individuals and coordinate the teams within the firm. To that end, you will learn to apply the science of strategic behavior so you can design and better predict the consequences of different incentive structures.

Finally, you will be introduced to the evolutionary basis of heuristics, and learn which biases can be mitigated or aggravated by group decision-making, and which heuristics can play an important role in maintaining hierarchical order. 

Devin Stauffer

The Classical Quest for Justice 

GOV 351C

The questions at the heart of classical political philosophy are simple, even if the treatments of them by the ancient philosophers are extremely complex. What is justice? What does it ask of us as individuals? What does it demand of political communities in their internal structures and in their interactions with other communities? Are the demands of political life in harmony with the radical questioning of philosophy? In this course, we will consider these and other such questions through a careful study of three masterpieces of classical antiquity: Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Plato’s Republic,and Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. These works will be approached not only as crucial documents for our understanding of a distant age, but as works that speak directly to permanent questions of moral and political life.   

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The Theoretical Foundations of Modern Politics  

GOV 351D

This course examines the philosophic origins of modern politics and culture by looking at the works of several authors whose writings played decisive roles in the rise and development of modern political philosophy. In our study of Machiavelli’s Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and selected political writings of Rousseau and Nietzsche, we will consider the ways in which modern political thought broke with the past and offered a new set of political visions. We will consider the differing views of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Nietzsche on issues such as the aims and limits of politics, the role of morality in the harsh world of political necessity, the proper place of religion and reason in political life, and the nature and basis of justice. Throughout the course, we will reflect of the impact that the revolutionary doctrines of modern political philosophy have had on the political world in which we live.