PHIL 310 Topics in Modern Philosophy
A detailed examination of some central philosophical texts from the 17th and 18th centuries. Topics vary by semester.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
This course will consist in a detailed study of selected parts of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason – the most important and influential 18th-century work on philosophical issues about the relationship between mind and world, and an attempt to synthesize and build upon the rationalist and empiricist approaches to those questions. We will also read selections from some of the central figures in the traditions to which Kant is responding (including Rene Descartes as an exemplar of the rationalist tradition, and David Hume as an exemplar of the empiricist tradition), in order to contextualize the motivations for Kant's project, and to frame the issues with which the Critique of Pure Reason is engaged.