Course Requirements
Seminar participation. One in-class presentation (approximately 15 minutes for
presentation and 15 minutes for discussion). One final paper (approximately 15–20
pages), due Tuesday, June 9.
In addition our common readings from Kant, each student will be
responsible to look into one other philosophical text and to use it in some way,
along with our Kant reading, in the presentation and final paper (and
with luck in class discussion generally). Note that “look into” doesn’t
necessarily mean “read from cover to cover” (in some cases the text is short
and that will seem advisable; in others, it might be better to skim for
relevant passages). I will assign these, based partly on student preferences, in
the first class meeting, from more or less the following list: (1) Aristotle,
Categories,
Metaphysics 7, and
De Anima 2 and 3; (2) Avicenna,
The
Metaphysics of the Healing, ch. 1–3; (3) St. Thomas Aquinas,
On Truth,
especially qq. 1–3 and q. 8, (4) St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica I
q. 30 a. 3, John Duns Scotus,
Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle,
especially 4.1 and 4.2, and William of Ockham,
Summa logicae part 1 (tr. as
Ockham’s Theory of Terms), especially §§40–48; (5) Locke,
An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, especially ch. 1–3 (and some other
parts are relevant, e.g. I.2.4; (6) the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence; (8)
Hume, the First Enquiry; (9) Baumgarten,
Metaphysics. (If there are more
than nine students I will likely ask some to be responsible for sections of
the First Critique we are not reading toghether, e.g. the Transcendental
Aesthetic.)