PHIL 320 - Seminar in the History of Philosophy

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2025/26a: Marx on Justice. In this seminar we study the debate over Karl Marx’s stance on justice and morality. On one hand, Marx is a vociferous critic of capitalism, whose outrage and scorn reflect a deep moral condemnation of capitalist exploitation. On the other hand, Marx’s theory of history seems to commit him to viewing both justice and morality as ideological concepts, tied inextricably to existing relations of production. Scholars of Marx have struggled to explain Marx’s account of justice, with one interpreter concluding that “at least sometimes, Marx mistakenly thought that Marx did not believe that capitalism was unjust, because he was confused about justice” (G.A. Cohen, Mind, vol. 92, no. 367 (1983): p.444). In order to make progress on these issues, we study a broad range of Marx’s works, historical scholarship by G.A. Cohen, Ziyad Husami, Robert Tucker, Allen Wood, and Cornell West, and contemporary treatments by Vanessa Wills, Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter. Jamie Kelly.

Topic for 2025/26a Plato’s Republic. In this seminar we undertake a close study of Plato’s Republic, one of the most influential and puzzling texts in the history of philosophy. We approach the dialogue from various angles, attending to the interplay between theoretical argument, historical context, dramatic irony, poetic allusion, and literary form. One of our goals is to understand how the diverse inquiries pursued in the dialogue—into the virtues of cities and individual souls; the role of art in education; the complexity of human motivation; and the nature and value of philosophical insight—fit together into a unified whole. Christopher Raymond.

Prerequisite(s): One 200-level course in Philosophy or permission of the instructor.

One 3-hour period.

Course Format: CLS