Capstone Seminar: Anarchism (PHIL 4901/03)
Co-taught with Prof. Whitney Kelting
Anarchism is one of the least well understood and most repressed political currents of the past century and a half. Anarchism is also a political philosophy, centered on the ideal of freedom and skeptical of the justification of authority, and an ethic and a way of life, which has inspired radical experiments in living and the establishment of utopian communities. Many contemporary social and political movements have strong anarchist currents, such as the Occupy Movement (2011-12), Greece’s anti-austerity movement (2010-2012), and the current crypto-anarcho-capitalist movement. Anarchism suffuses resistant practices such as the occupation of “autonomous zones” or “zones to defend” in France since the early 2010s and during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the USA, antifa tactics of collective self-defense, and environmental direct action such as “ecotage.” Central to anarchist praxis is building decentralized alternatives to the state as seen in community defense, mutual aid networks, street medicking, skill shares, and anti-carceral responses to harm such as transformative justice. In this course, we will read foundational texts of anarchist thought from the 19th and 20th centuries and put these in conversation with later and contemporary anarchist, socialist, postcolonial, and libertarian thinkers and critical theorists. Property, work, freedom, revolution, direct action, free love, and abolition (of the family, the prison, the police), are among the topics covered. Assignments include a semester-long engagement with anarchist praxis.
Syllabus here & Handbook here.
Anarchism is one of the least well understood and most repressed political currents of the past century and a half. Anarchism is also a political philosophy, centered on the ideal of freedom and skeptical of the justification of authority, and an ethic and a way of life, which has inspired radical experiments in living and the establishment of utopian communities. Many contemporary social and political movements have strong anarchist currents, such as the Occupy Movement (2011-12), Greece’s anti-austerity movement (2010-2012), and the current crypto-anarcho-capitalist movement. Anarchism suffuses resistant practices such as the occupation of “autonomous zones” or “zones to defend” in France since the early 2010s and during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the USA, antifa tactics of collective self-defense, and environmental direct action such as “ecotage.” Central to anarchist praxis is building decentralized alternatives to the state as seen in community defense, mutual aid networks, street medicking, skill shares, and anti-carceral responses to harm such as transformative justice. In this course, we will read foundational texts of anarchist thought from the 19th and 20th centuries and put these in conversation with later and contemporary anarchist, socialist, postcolonial, and libertarian thinkers and critical theorists. Property, work, freedom, revolution, direct action, free love, and abolition (of the family, the prison, the police), are among the topics covered. Assignments include a semester-long engagement with anarchist praxis.
Syllabus here & Handbook here.
Capstone Seminar: The Ethics of Resistance (PHIL 4901)
This seminar addresses some of the ethical and political issues that arise from individuals’ and groups’ practices of political resistance. These issues concern, among others: political legitimacy (the state’s authority toward its subjects), individuals’ moral duties and role-related responsibilities toward themselves and each other, strategic efficacy, and representation (perceptions and distortions of movements, their actors, means, and goals). We tackle these issues through different focuses corresponding to the seminar’s three interrelated units. In the first unit on civil disobedience, we address questions such as: Do we have a moral duty to obey the law? What makes an illegal act an instance of civil disobedience? Should civil disobedients accept punishment? In the second unit on (non)violence, we explore the nature and power of nonviolence and the moral and strategic issues surrounding the use of violence in decolonization movements. Does the end justify the means? How should we assess political movements that resort to illegal and violent tactics? The third unit is devoted to direct action and the political ethics of self-defense: How should we think about resistance to officials? What is direct action and under what conditions is it normatively permissible or called for? Throughout the course, we will answer these questions and more by relating philosophical debates to historical and contemporary cases of resistance, including decolonization movements, the Black freedom struggle, labor movements, anti-war resistance, and anarchist politics.
Syllabus here & Handbook here.
Syllabus here & Handbook here.
Social and Political Philosophy (PHIL 2303)
Justice, liberty, and oppression are the central topics of this class. What does justice require? What is freedom and what are the social, political, and material conditions necessary for everyone to be free? What economic arrangements best promote individual autonomy? What is the role of the state? What forms do racial, gender, and ableist oppression take? How do they affect people’s lives? How should we theorize about them and think about their intersections? What principles should guide emancipation movements? Should we abolish prisons? Defund the police? How do systems of power produce and rigidify our social identities? What responsibilities do states have toward displaced populations, especially during the current global health crisis? This course addresses these and other questions of social and political morality, through the lens of some of the major theories of Western philosophy, including those of Karl Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, and John Rawls. Through formal in-class debates, we explore the ethics surrounding many current policy issues, including universal basic income, civil disobedience, and immigration.
Syllabus here & debate instructions here.
Syllabus here & debate instructions here.
Philosophy of Law (PHIL 2301)
In this course, we will examine some of the major philosophical issues surrounding law and legal practice, by reading not only theoretical essays about law, but also actual legal decisions. The goal is to develop a toolbox to think critically about the role of law in our societies and the relationship responsible citizens might entertain toward it—both as subjects to and participants in the legal system. We will begin by inquiring into the nature of law itself. Is law a branch of morality, discoverable by reason and necessarily conducive to the common good; or is it nothing more than the commands issued by the sovereign? When judges interpret the Constitution, do they discover the law or do they, in effect, make it up as they go along? What is the character of legal interpretation and legal reasoning? We will then investigate the political morality of law, focusing on the relation between law and individual liberty. What principles should/do guide law’s protection and restriction of our rights? When, if ever, is paternalistic interference by the state into the lives of its citizens justified? We will consider in particular the legal issues surrounding pornography and free speech. The third part of the course, which is devoted to crime and punishment, addresses these questions and more: What is criminal intent? What, if anything, justifies punishment by the state? What is wrong with mass incarceration?
Syllabus here & Moot Court Instructions here.
Syllabus here & Moot Court Instructions here.
Contemporary Political Thought (POLS 2332)
The goal of this course is to equip you with the tools to understand today’s pressing political issues, through a survey of contemporary political thought. The course is divided into 4 broad, interrelated units that subsume sets of issues under the following political verbs: speaking, getting, being, and doing.
(1) Speaking. Democracy is in crisis and we are said to live in a “post-truth” age. How are these two crises—of democracy and of truth—connected? What is the effect of organized lying on democracy’s health and stability? What is propaganda? How can words cause violence? We begin the course with questions like these, as we investigate the role of truth in politics and the mechanisms through which propaganda and hateful speech can enable violence.
(2) Getting. What is justice? What economic arrangements does it require? How (if at all) should we distribute the goods produced by social cooperation? What does it mean to say that workers are exploited? What is the proper role and function of government? How do factors beyond our control influence our life prospects and what should we do about it? We explore prominent philosophical approaches to political authority and accounts of economic justice, including Marxism, John Rawls’s “justice as fairness,” Robert Nozick’s libertarian theory of justice, and conservatism.
(3) Being. Next, we will be thinking broadly about democratic citizenship and identity, through the lenses of radical democratic theory, intersectional feminism, and post-structural and post-colonial theory. The goal is to understand the meaning and politics of certain categories of social identity, how oppression works, how society produces gender and race and enforces social hierarchies; and, more basically, underneath or beyond identity politics, how we are constituted into subjects through social practices.
(4) Acting. The final unit of the class is devoted to political praxis, or what people can do outside institutional channels to change their society. We will think through the normative and pragmatic issues at the heart of liberation movements by reading Frantz Fanon’s post-colonial radical existential humanist defense of violence in decolonization and Karuna Mantena’s account of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arguments for nonviolence in the Black freedom struggle. These texts, and all that precede, will equip us to think about the Black Lives Matter protests—as well as the most recent U.S. Capitol riots.
Syllabus here & course handbook here. Spring 2024 syllabus here.
(1) Speaking. Democracy is in crisis and we are said to live in a “post-truth” age. How are these two crises—of democracy and of truth—connected? What is the effect of organized lying on democracy’s health and stability? What is propaganda? How can words cause violence? We begin the course with questions like these, as we investigate the role of truth in politics and the mechanisms through which propaganda and hateful speech can enable violence.
(2) Getting. What is justice? What economic arrangements does it require? How (if at all) should we distribute the goods produced by social cooperation? What does it mean to say that workers are exploited? What is the proper role and function of government? How do factors beyond our control influence our life prospects and what should we do about it? We explore prominent philosophical approaches to political authority and accounts of economic justice, including Marxism, John Rawls’s “justice as fairness,” Robert Nozick’s libertarian theory of justice, and conservatism.
(3) Being. Next, we will be thinking broadly about democratic citizenship and identity, through the lenses of radical democratic theory, intersectional feminism, and post-structural and post-colonial theory. The goal is to understand the meaning and politics of certain categories of social identity, how oppression works, how society produces gender and race and enforces social hierarchies; and, more basically, underneath or beyond identity politics, how we are constituted into subjects through social practices.
(4) Acting. The final unit of the class is devoted to political praxis, or what people can do outside institutional channels to change their society. We will think through the normative and pragmatic issues at the heart of liberation movements by reading Frantz Fanon’s post-colonial radical existential humanist defense of violence in decolonization and Karuna Mantena’s account of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s arguments for nonviolence in the Black freedom struggle. These texts, and all that precede, will equip us to think about the Black Lives Matter protests—as well as the most recent U.S. Capitol riots.
Syllabus here & course handbook here. Spring 2024 syllabus here.
Philosophy for Beginners
Some guidelines for doing well in a philosophy course.