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Read the Classics: Philosophy

Join "the Great Conversation" of the literary imagination by participating in a four-part reading, lecture and discussion series focused on classics works in philosophy. Paul Hovda, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College, will give short lectures providing background and then will lead the discussions.

At Central Library

Second Sundays, September–December, 2–4 p.m.

The titles for the Philosophy series

A limited supply of these titles will become available at the preceding book discussion.

Registration is required for each session; register online (select the link after each title below), in the library or by calling 503.988.5234.

Republic by Plato · September 14, 2008 · past
A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume · October 12, 2008 · past
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant · November 9, 2008 · past
Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings by René Descartes · ~~December 14, 2008~~ rescheduled to January 31, 2009, due to snow · registration is now open

Printable Read the Classics: Philosophy flyer (pdf)

Meet your professor

Paul Hovda, Reed College Paul Hovda is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College. He teaches Western humanities, and teaches and works in logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. He shares a birthday with the logician Kurt Gödel, whose work he greatly admires, but this coincidence does not in the least tempt him to believe in astrology.

Overview

We will read selections from four of the greatest Western philosophers: Plato, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Among other things, our discussions will consider the approaches of these different philosophers to the same basic philosophical questions: what is human nature, and how does human nature fit into nature as a whole?

Plato's Republic

The 20th century philosopher A.N. Whitehead famously said that "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato," and among Plato's works, the Republic (ca. 380 BCE) stands out as the most all–encompassing: within its 10 books, Plato addresses just about every area of philosophy. It's all here: justice, poetry and art, education, religion, the soul, pleasure, desire, love, sex, marriage, death, mathematics, truth, knowledge, appearance vs. reality, political and social systems, and more. Plato's discussion not only represents the fundamentals of major competing philosophical ideas on these topics, it evaluates these ideas, suggesting a brilliant and challenging and all–encompassing philosophical view. The work is in the literary form of a dialog, leaving room for controversy over exactly how Plato might have intended it to be interpreted. Even if Whitehead's quip is an exaggeration, it is certainly true that countless philosophers have read, struggled with, and written about the Republic.

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature

Written when its author was in his early twenties, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) boldly undertakes to found a "science of human nature," in much the way that Newton was supposed to have recently done for the science of physics. Taking up many of Descartes' questions, Hume intended to discern the fundamental parts and forces of the mind, and was led to answers radically different from Descartes'. Despite the flaws in his approach, there is no doubt that Hume's arguments are brilliant, fascinating, and unsettling, for he seems to find compelling considerations for deflating conclusions about us: our most deep–seated concepts are not rationally attributable to the world in the way many philosophers have thought — for example, the relation of causation is not a "force" in the world, but a kind of projection of the mind; our most deep–seated moral convictions are not rationally justifiable. In certain ways, Hume's philosophy is decisively "modern," not least in its more disturbing moments.

A note from Professor Hovda about the Hume reading:
"Here is a suggestion for taking some manageable pieces from Hume's vast and difficult Treatise. I suggest you read these in the order presented here, and don't worry if you're only able to get through the first group of readings."

READ FIRST:
-Book I, Part 1, all sections
-Book I, Part 3, sections 1 - 7, section 14
-Book I, Part 4, section 6
-Appendix - pp. 671 – 678 (not in table of contents)
-Book II, Part 1, section 1
-Book II, Part 3, sections 1 - 3
-Book III, Part 1, both sections
-Book III, Part 2, sections 1, 2
-Book III, Part 3, section 1

READ IF YOU HAVE TIME:
-Book I, Part 2, section 6
-Book I, Part 3, sections 8 - 10, 15 - 16
-Book I, Part 4, (all sections)
-Book II, Part 1, sections 2-5, 11
-Book III, Part 2, sections 3 - 7

"Also, I can recommend the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a good, free source. Here is a link to the main article about Hume; there are additional articles on special topics related to Hume." http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

"Finally, I recommend that you pace yourself in your reading of Hume; don't try to take in too much at once. And write down your thoughts now and then, even if they are just questions like "What does Hume mean when he says that ..." or "How does Hume come to the conclusion that ..."

Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Prolegomena and Groundwork The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) are a kind of condensed version of Kant's immense Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant tells us that it was his reading Hume that awakened him from "dogmatic slumber" and led him to a novel approach to philosophical questions, yielding novel answers. Kant's leading idea (called "transcendental idealism) is roughly that the objects that we experience are subject to conditions imposed upon them by the mind. Because the world is, as it were, (partially) constructed by the mind, it is subject to universal rules that the mind can know. The effect is simultaneously to justify and to limit the applicability of our concepts.

Somewhat independently, Kant is widely regarded as having given the most influential account of morality in the Western tradition. The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) lays out the fundamentals of Kant's account, on which reason plays the central role (rather than, as on Hume's account, non–rational emotion and feeling, or, as on the dominant accounts of his day, God).

Rene Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy

Meditations on First Philosophy Many of us have heard that Descartes said "I think therefore I am," but what's the point? The Meditations (1641), in which Descartes put this forward, seek a foundation for what we might now call "scientific" knowledge. They also seek to answer the question "What am I?"; and "I think therefore I am" is relevant to both projects. The Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings are usually categorized as among the very first post–medieval philosophical works, and they are often thought of as among the cornerstones of modern science, as well as setting the agenda for modern philosophy. There is no doubt that Descartes was asking revolutionary questions, and he was one of the greatest minds ever to address them; yet God seems to play a central role in Descartes' answers to these questions, which, to many of us, makes the work seem more medieval than modern in spirit. The Meditations thus bridge the medieval and the modern, and constitute a self-contained philosophical work of genius.