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For classes in philosophy and religion

Be sure to read this before undertaking any project: Grading standards, projects, logic, writing, and presentations

Academic Dishonesty: Cheating and Plagiarism

Introduction to Philosophy

Introduction to Ethics

The sophists

PLATO (427-347 BCE).  A brief introduction to Plato, including some summaries.  Here's Socrates' famous dilemma for religious ethics: The Euthyphro dilemma: explanation and reply.  Socrates had to defend himself in court for (among other things) challenging conventional religious thought: The Apology.  Convicted and in prison Socrates reasoned that he should not escape: The Crito; contrast Frantz Fanon theory of counterviolence; here's a written assignment to help you think how to resolve the clash between Socrates and Fanon.  Now you are ready for Plato's teaching on the forms.  The Phaedo is Socrates' last dialogue--on the immortality of soul--just before he died.  The Symposium explores eros and beauty; see here also notes on the critique of Plato's concept of love by theologian Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros.  Plato's main dialogue on justice, political order, education, psychology, goodness (the form or idea of the good) is The Republic.  Here's an epistemological adventure with the Ion.

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BCE) NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

DESCARTES (1596-1650).  Susan Bordo's feminist critique of dualism and other cultural contributions to pathology

KANT (1724-1804).  Kant's ethics.  Kant's Idea of history. 

MILL and Utilitarianism

HEGEL (1770-1831).  Here's a summary of Hegel's Encyclopedia Logic.  Here's a summary of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. 

WILLIAM JAMES (1842 -1910).  Notes and questions on several chapters of William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. ub 

The project on positive attitude

Nikolai Berdiaev (1874-1948) on personality

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).  "The Question Concerning Technology"

Emmanuel Levinas

Jacques Derrida

Theodicy.  This is the attempted answer to the "problem of evil": how can one consistent affirm the existence of a perfectly good, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator God and at the same time honestly acknowledge the variety and extent of evils in our world?

The Feminist ethics of  Nel Noddings

Notes on Garrett Thomson, On the Meaning of Life

Creation and evolution: notes on an anthology of articles and a synthetic perspective on the cluster of problems.

Aesthetics and selected student project reports; Philosophy of Expression; Aesthetics class notes; Arts Project; Aesthetics Practices and Excellences Questionnaire; Beauty in Goodness exercise 

2002 Comparative Religious Thought I  website.  (In case you would like a peek at last semester: Comparative Religious Thought I.) 

Project reports, Spring 2009