Course Description
Summary
What is the difference between belief and knowledge? What is it to have a mind? What is really real? Are our actions free? These are some of the questions this first course in philosophy asks. Our investigation will center on the 17th-19th c., a watershed period in Western Europe marked by major political, scientific, religious, and intellectual revolutions. This course has two main aims: To introduce you to the methods and procedures of philosophical argument, and to engage you in a critical dialogue with central problems in philosophy. We will read works in the Western philosophical tradition by canonical and non-canonical thinkers, such as: Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, and Mary Astell. We will engage with these thinkers on questions concerning knowledge, reality, minds, religious belief, and free will.
