Advanced Topics in Philosophy I

Topic for Fall 2024: The Nature of Tomorrow. This is a course about tomorrow. Like today it will be about things you ignore, things you love, long-standing global issues, new threats, puzzles, and questions that are both intensely personal and alien. It is a course that aims to challenge your assumptions and offer alternatives to familiar narratives. Here we examine everything from why consistency of belief-sets and revision matter, the value of a tree, ecological coherence, geopolitics, being and nothingness, and plural reality, to free will, post-capitalist models, and cosmic collapse theories. In addition to historical iconoclasts like Arendt and Freud, we will read recent works on the politics of debt, the origin of eukaryotes, secrets in spacetime, and examine unexplained cinema. Using your interests, too, we survey the prospects of tomorrow and explore specific solutions to problems so that you don't meet it empty handed.