Philosophy

This course will introduce the student to the main themes of Western philosophy and the various approaches within philosophy. It will acquaint the students with the major thinkers of the philosophical tradition by analyzing and discussing challenging texts of the history of philosophy.

This course examines major philosophical approaches to ethics. The course includes Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Confucian, Taoist and Existentialist approaches, among others. Issues that pose ethical dilemmas are examined. The purpose of the course is to teach the skills of critical reflection especially as they apply to understanding the foundations of ethics.

This course will introduce students to the methodology of philosophical thinking and the grand topics that have engaged philosophers over the ages including the problem of evil, the existence of the Deity and the problem of human life. Students will be introduced to the general sub-disciplines of philosophy, including the history of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, normative ethics, applied ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. They will study select contemporary periods. They will also be introduced to meta-philosophy, different styles of philosophy; e.g., analytic, system building, existentialism and phenomenology.

Anthropogenic climate change, increasing planetary destruction and the consequences for distributive justice for future generations have been defined as the most crucial problems of the 21st century. 60% of the world’s population live in cities that are impacted. How can students become aware of the knowledge of their agency in addressing these issues? How can SUA students develop knowledge and pragmatic application toward positively affecting the outcome of these issues. This is a seminal course in the pro-active, ethical relationships of human beings to the universe. It amplifies the SUA principle of ‘the creative co-existence of nature and humanity’. It analyzes the concept of how we relate to the natural environment is a foundational, philosophical, moral issue. Career minded students can choose from many M. A. and Ph. D. programs in environmental ethics. The uniqueness of SUA’s course is that it examines the ethical dimensions of human relationships to the natural world, cities and the cosmopolitan world from a variety of multi-cultural perspectives including East, West and South, Anthropocentrism, Humanism, Aristotelianism, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Transcendentalism, Indigenous perspectives, Marxism and Deep Ecology. Ethical topics discussed include the relationship between Normative Ethics and Environmental ethics, Ethical Reasoning, Ethical Issues, Urban Issues, Human nature, Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Public Health Ethics, Animal Rights, Reverence for Life, and the Ethical Relevance of Corporate Practices to Sentient and Non-Sentient Nature. The guiding thread of the course is human responsibility for being the caretaker of the universe. Cross-listed as ES 285.

This course examines philosophical viewpoints as manifested within selected literary texts. The relationship between the literary form of the text and the philosophical content, as well as the relationship between philosophy and literature, will be explored and conceptualized.

This course chooses essential, primary philosophical texts from the East, the West and the Global South with an eye to comparing the methods of thinking and the philosophical goals to be achieved. The overall objective of this course is to improve the thinking abilities of the student, to learn the cultural differences between the philosophers from different civilizations and to pivot toward a global philosophy that integrates and distills the essential human values and wisdom that a world philosophy can offer to our students.

This course introduces students to the philosophy of existentialism through both its classic and contemporary expressions. Existentialism is both distinguished from other styles of philosophy and at the same time explicated as a core of traditional philosophy. An important dimension of existentialism that is to be explored is the application of existentialist philosophy to the real life of the student. The course is designed to cover four areas of existentialist thought: (i) the classical canon; (ii) the Post-War period; (iii) Holocaust related; (iv) contemporary expressions. Themes to be considered are attitudes toward death, angst, despair and joy, the search for meaning, existential freedom, responsibility, pessimism, fatalism and optimism, the relation to artistic expression, the tragic and the comic, theism and atheism, the religious and the secular, rationality and irrationality, truth and ambiguity, reason and emotion, ethics, faith, bad faith, authenticity, feminism, choice and commitment. Classic films will also be shown that explore these themes.

This is an extensive course on how and why corporations make the decisions that they do regarding what constitutes the private good, the public good, both nationally and internationally. In what ways does the capitalist profit motive affect ethical decision making? What are the consequences? What constitutes good management, destructive management? What is an accident? A tragedy? A disaster? Who should ultimately be responsible? A philosophical examination of intensive case studies will analyze what responsibility corporations have for risk management, social welfare and environmental sustainability in the global interface of the 21st century.