HCC PHIL1301 Complete Course Latest 2021 July (Full)

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Module 1 Discussion

If you can answer most of these questions for yourself by the end of this Module, you will be in really good shape as far as comprehending the material.

1. What is philosophy? Can you explain, in your own words, one or more of the definitions of philosophy included in this module? Do you find these definitions clear? Why or why not? What do you find most interesting and/or provocative about philosophy as we have defined it so far?

2. Define these important vocabulary terms from Kant in your own words and/or using Kant's text: enlightenment, immaturity, guardians (including an example), public use of reason, private use of reason. Some questions to think about here: Who are examples of guardians today, and how would the public/private distinction apply to those examples?

3. What implications does Kant's view of enlightenment have for how philosophy would be defined in general? (Compare to question 1 above.)

4. Can you think of an objection to or critique of Kant's definition of enlightenment in the opening paragraphs of his essay? Do you find anything false or questionable or one-sided in his view?

5. Can you explain Russell's argument that philosophy has value? What elements of his argument are relevant, or how does he prove this conclusion? Do you find his argument convincing? Why or why not?

6. Can you provide an objection to or critique of some aspect of Russell's view? For example, concerning his definition of science (as opposed to philosophy), to his idea of "seeing as God might see," or to his conception of the freedom from anxiety that philosophy produces? Do you find anything false or questionable in his view?

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Module 2 Discussion

Symposium:

1. Diotima suggests that Socrates was wrong to say that love means "being loved, rather than being a lover" (487; 204c). What does she mean by this? What does it mean that love means "being loved"?

2. What does Diotima mean when she says that lovers "want the good to be theirs forever" (489; 206a)? What does this claim have to do with metaphysics?

3. Diotima says "all of us are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul" (489; 206c). Can you explain the figurative meaning of this idea? What would be an example of being pregnant in soul?

4. Diotima proposes to initiate Socrates into "these rites of love" (492-494). This passage is referred to as Plato's Ladder of Love. Can you give an example of one of the steps of this process, along this metaphorical Ladder? Can you explain how the process ends ("Try to pay attention to me...as best you can. You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving," 493; 210e).

Republic:

1. At the very outset of the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates states that he will discuss "the effect of education and of the lack of it" (1132; 514a). In what sense, then, is the Allegory essentially about education?

2. Pick one or more of the following elements of the Allegory: The cave, the prisoners, the shadows, the puppets, the escaped prisoner, the ascent to the sunlight, the objects above in the world, the sun, the prisoner finding himself initially blinded by the sun, and the escaped prisoner's return to the cave where the other prisoners scorn him. Explain the metaphorical meaning behind these parts of the story for Plato's metaphysical philosophy.

3. After the Allegory, Socrates refers to "the song that dialectic sings" (1147; 532a). What does Plato mean by "dialectic"? And how is this theme connected to the Symposium's Ladder of Love?

4. What does it mean to say that Plato believes in a "two-world metaphysics"? Does two-world metaphysics seem plausible or convincing to you? Why or why not? Do people today believe in the existence of two worlds?

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Module 3 Discussion

Please post in this mandatory discussion thread on Module 3 by Wednesday, July 28. (Please note the earlier due date; this is because an Exam is due at the end of the week.) You may respond to any or multiple of my questions below, raise a question/comment of your own, and/or respond to a contribution by your classmate. Your response to this thread absolutely does NOT need to answer all of my questions!

Remember to post a contribution of at least 200 words.

If you can answer most of these questions for yourself by the end of this Module, you will be in really good shape as far as comprehending the material.

Questions on Plato's Phaedrus:

1. Plato says, "To describe what the soul actually is would require a very long account, altogether a god in every way; but to say what it is like is humanly possible and takes less time" (524; 246a). What difference is Plato pointing to between an account a god could give and what is "humanly possible"?

2. Re-read the so-called Allegory or Metaphor of the Chariot (see pp. 524, 530-531). Outline the three elements of this tripartite (three-part) conception of the human soul, and give an interpretation of what these elements metaphorically represent or symbolize.

3. The two horses in the Allegory/Metaphor are hierarchically organized, that is, one is better than the other (see pp. 527, 532). Which horse is the better part of our nature, for Plato, and why?

4. See Plato's "spectacular vision" on pp. 527-528, and describe what the meaning of this beautiful image is supposed to be.

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Module 4 Discussion

Questions on Augustine:

1. What is the underlying connection or continuity between Plato's metaphysics as we looked at it in the Symposium (the Form of the Beautiful at the end of the "Ladder of Love") and the Republic (Theory of Forms) and the Christian metaphysics we find in St. Augustine? The difference between our world and another world could be best summed up in the long paragraph under number 28 on p. 232, and is the most important connection here.

2. What is the basic (two-premise + conclusion) argument of the long passage from pp. 211-212  that begins with "But what I love when I love my God..."? Reconstructing this argument is an important thing to take away from this week's reading.

3. What does Augustine think is the main distinction or difference between human beings and animals, as this distinction relates to our access to and understanding of God? See p. 213: "The animals, both great and small, are aware of it [the universe], but they cannot inquire into its meaning because they are not guided by reason"; and p. 230: "When I remind myself of you [God] I go beyond those functions of the memory which I share with the beasts..."

4. Why does Augustine suggest that it is memory, alone among all the functions and capacities of the soul and mind, that allow us access to God? See pp. 230-231. Answering this question might require thinking outside the text a bit and thinking about what would motivate this argument, in other words, what is it about memory that is a compelling tool to get us toward God.

5. Do you find Augustine's version of Christian faith (a God in another world, totally separate from us) recognizable as a form of religious belief? Is this a persuasive or convincing way to think about God? Why or why not? Think here of developing an objection to or critique of Augustine on God.

Questions on Nietzsche:

1. Nietzsche, we could say, even though he represents an atheistic point of view, agrees with Plato and Augustine in the basic characterization of a two-world metaphysics. In what way does Nietzsche follow their characterization of this form of thought? How does he also represent a critique of two-world metaphysics?

2. Explain the metaphorical meaning of the three main symbols in section 1 (pp. 121-122) of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, especially as these symbols relate to metaphysics, Plato, and Christianity: The cave, going under, and the sun.

3. Zarathustra encounters an "old saint" in section 2 (pp. 124). What point of view does the old saint represent, and how does Zarathustra depart from or dispute that point of view? And, most importantly, what does Zarathustra mean when he says, with reference to his conversation with the old saint, "God is dead!" (p. 124)?

4. What does the "overman" (see pp. 125 and 132 especially) represent (Übermensch, also translated as "superman")? What way of life does this figure signal and try to teach us about today? How would the overman's point of view represent a difference from Platonism and Christianity? Why can we call the point of view of the overman, his adherence to "the meaning of the earth" (p. 125), something like what is sometimes referred to as existentialism?

5. Do you agree with Nietzsche's basic characterization of Christianity as implying hatred of life (old saint)? Why or why not?

6. Compare Plato's account of the soul with Nietzsche's: "By my honor friend...all that of which you speak does not exist: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even before your body; fear nothing further" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 132). As a departure from Plato's understanding of the soul, do you find this passage convincing? Why or why not?

 

 

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Module 5 Discussion

Remember to post a contribution of at least 200 words.

If you can answer most of these questions for yourself by the end of this Module, you will be in really good shape as far as comprehending the material.

Questions about Martin Luther King:

1. What is King's definition of justice, in your own words? See p. 3 especially. What imperative or demand does this definition of justice imply? What actions would have to be undertaken to create and live by this definition of justice?

2. Explain (some of) King's argument on behalf of nonviolent direct protest and action. I think there are at least four elements that I discuss in the video lecture and that can be found in the reading in support of nonviolent direct action.

3. How, exactly, does King distinguish between just and unjust laws? Offer his definitions of these categories of laws. What is the connection, furthermore, between his definition of a just law and authors we have looked at in our class like Plato and Augustine?

4. What is the definition of civil disobedience? See p. 7. Can you think of any criticisms of or possible shortcomings in civil disobedience, either conceptually or as a practical political tactic?

5. Why does King claim moral means have to be the only way toward moral ends? See p. 13. Provide an example of moral means for moral ends; or immoral means for moral ends; or moral means for immoral ends; or immoral means for immoral ends. (That's a mouthful!)

6. Finally, since this is our last module, do you have any concluding questions or comments about the course as a whole? Anything leftover from earlier modules?

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Critical Paper

FORMAT: 2-2.5 pages, double-spaced, 12-size font, 1-inch margins. Please adhere to these guidelines or your paper’s grade will be automatically lowered. This Paper is worth 25% of your final grade.

ASSIGNMENT: Write a three-paragraph essay that (a) reconstructs a philosophical argument from one our readings this semester (see paper topics below), and (b) presents a cogent critique/objection of that argument. In order to complete these objectives, follow the guidelines explained below as precisely as possible.

Paragraph 1: Introduction. After briefly stating the theme or topic of paper, here you will present a thesis statement that specifies (a) the philosophical argument you will be discussing as well as (b) the critique of that argument you will be making. Your thesis statement shows that your argument makes a consistent overall point. An adequate thesis statement might take the following form: Against philosopher P’s argument that X, I will raise the objection Y. The introduction MUST, to receive full credit, include a thesis statement. 10 points.

Paragraph 2: Reconstruction. In this section, you will explain a philosophical argument from one of the paper topics below. Your task is to summarize a philosophical view in your own words while, at the same time, also providing ample textual evidence and citations for your discussion. Thus, while it is essential for success on this section that you provide textual support for your explanation of a philosopher’s view, it is not enough that you simply quote the philosopher. You must also explain the view in your own words, demonstrating your understanding of their position. Here your overall task is to show you understand the philosophical position and that you can explain the reasoning of another philosopher. 20 points.

Paragraph 3: Objection. Here you will object to the philosopher’s argument. After you’ve shown that you understand what this philosopher is claiming, now it is your turn to present one objection to or critique of that argument. Recall that an objection is either (a) a challenge to the truth of a premise, or (b) a challenge to the overall inference from premises to conclusion. In other words, this is an objection to the philosopher’s reasoning. Your objection must be connected to the argument given by the philosopher as you have previously reconstructed their claims. Here you show you understand how to argue against another point of view. After the second paragraph where you showed you can understand another argument, now you are showing you can effectively argue against someone else. This paragraph should include one well-developed objection. Present a real problem with the philosopher’s argument! What flaws are in their reasoning? In what way is their conclusion not well-supported?20 points. Here you are showing your critical thinking skills.

Do not do any additional research for this paper. The only things you should be quoting from and drawing on should be the readings that are addressed in the paper topic and the lectures and discussions we had in class.

PLEASE NOTE: If you plagiarize, i.e., if you use another person’s words or ideas without attribution, you will receive a 0 and may be subject to academic discipline from HCC. Think and write your own thoughts!

TOPICS: Your Term Paper, in which you complete all the tasks outlined above, should respond to one of the following topics, each of which below contains the argument you should reconstruct as well as hints toward formulating an objection to that argument:

1. Explain Russell’s claim that philosophical objectivity produces a life that is “calm and free,” that is, unbothered by anxiety (“The Value of Philosophy,” paragraph 8). Could someone alternatively interpret the objectivity of philosophy as producing rather profound anxiety or worry?

2. What does Kant mean by the “guardians” and why does he think enlightenment requires liberating ourselves from them (“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” 58)? Next, explain why someone might defend the legitimacy of at least some of the guardians in our society.

3. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato claims that the prisoner who sees the sun and surface must return back to the cave (Republic, 519d). Explain what these images in the Allegory precisely represent, and why Plato thinks the return of the prisoner (including what this symbol means). Why might somebody think the prisoner is in fact not obligated to return to the cave, and could justifiably remain on the surface?

4. Augustine claims of God that, “If I am to reach him, it must be through my soul”—specifically, he will go on to argue, through memory (Confessions, 213). Explain Augustine’s argument for this conclusion. Is it possible we could access God through other means?

5. Nietzsche presents a critique of Christian morals and values, saying, “do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoning themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 125). Explain Nietzsche’s argument for why Christianity makes one into a “despiser of life,” and then argue how Christianity could possibly be understood in other ways.

6. Plato claims in the Phaedrus that a life that stands “outside human concerns” is a superior kind of life (249d). He justifies this claim with his so-called Allegory or Metaphor of the Chariot. Describe his account of the structure of the soul, including its main metaphors or symbols, and argue why he may illegitimately or unfairly downgrade the Black Horse.

7. In the Symposium, Plato develops an incredibly vivid and intense metaphysical conception of love. Specifically, he connects love to his doctrine of Intelligible Forms, and describes love as eternal, as outside of time: “love is wanting to possess the good forever” (206b). Explain this argument, and state a more “human,” less metaphysical conception of love that could plausibly rival Plato’s.

3. Rubric

Guidelines for how to achieve full credit for each section:

Introduction: Clearly states problem; contains a thesis that takes a recognizable stance on the issue by indicating a concrete objection

Reconstruction: Contains all the premises of the argument and shows what motivates or drives the argument; the conclusion is stated in the student’s own words with clarity and precision; and contains references to the text

Objection: States an appreciable problem for the philosopher’s argument that challenges the truth of a premise or the overall inference from premises to conclusion

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Exam 1

1. Imagine a fictional Texas state public health official named Haley. Using Kant’s terminology, explain why Kant thinks Haley should be allowed to criticize the state’s response to coronavirus on her personal Twitter account. Define the terms you borrow from Kant to answer this question. See “What Is Enlightenment?” 59–60.
2. Explain, specifically why Russell argues that the uncertainty that philosophy produces is valuable (see “The Value of Philosophy,” 2-3). This would involve explaining how, for Russell, philosophy is uncertain and why he thinks this uncertainty is valuable.
3.  Explain how Plato’s definition of love in the Symposium is metaphysical. This would involve, first, defining metaphysics and then explaining how the view of love offered in the so-called “Ladder of Love” (see 492-494) moves from a physical to a metaphysical understanding of love.
4.  Explain what the sun is supposed to represent in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (see especially Republic, 1135). This would mean referencing and explaining the specific feature of Plato’s metaphysics at issue in this image.
5.  Outline the three elements of this tripartite (three-part) conception of the human soul from the so-called Allegory or Metaphor of the Chariot in Plato’s Phaedrus (see 524, 530-531). Next, provide an interpretation of what each of these elements metaphorically represents or symbolize.

 

PHIL1301 Introduction to Philosophy

Exam 2

Topics: St. Augustine’s Confessions, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” and finally a question that connects themes from throughout the semester

Question types: 5 short essay questions. Graded out of 100 points.

Topics and themes:

Augustine: The Christian God is the source of all truth, understanding, and happiness for human beings. We only ever access God by means of the soul, not through the body. (Either through the body or the soul; not the body; therefore, the soul. God is distinct from all the things in our world, so we cannot find Him through anything physical. Ultimately, we only ever find God in our memory, since our souls have been implanted with a memory of God from before our birth. Memory provides us with innate knowledge of God, which solves the problem of accessing a transcendent and immaterial and perfect God whom we love. Since animals also have minds and consciousness, and even memories, it has to be this specific form of memory that affords knowledge of God. Memory, then, is our most godlike faculty, because it is immaterial, transcends the body and immediate experience, and allows for immediate knowledge of God.

Nietzsche: Christianity makes people into “despisers of life,” misanthropes who hate mortal and fallible life and the world we inhabit in comparison to a divine and perfect God from another world that we yearn for instead of the one we actually have (e.g., the “old saint” Zarathustra encounters). In contrast to these “otherworldly values” that make us hate the world because they drain us of our ability to love our own world, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaims, “I love man.” For Nietzsche, we have to transcend the mode of human life that has been stuck with otherworldly values and instead drive ourselves to become “overmen” who create a new system of values that teaches love for this world and the humans who inhabit it (“meaning of the earth”). The overman embraces the “death” of God: Not an ontological claim, but rather a suggestion that the cultural foundation or meaning of faith in God has been lost and that we live without a center or purpose. After the death of God, unless we are the “last men” who are too lazy to change, we will focus instead on loving the earth and giving it meaning (existentialism). Nietzsche as the critically negative inversion of Plato and of Christianity (sun, going under, cave).

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Justice means equality, where everyone is treated the same and no one is excluded from equal consideration (opposite of oppression). A just law is one that treats everyone equally, which means such a law is in accordance with a metaphysically higher law, the law of God, or the moral law; such laws demand our respect. Unjust laws, meanwhile, must be broken and fixed because, in treating people unequally, they are out of harmony with the law of God. The proper method in our society today for achieving this sense of justice is in terms of nonviolent protest and direct action, which produces creative tension, takes equality forcefully from those who would deny it, is done out love, and refuses to wait. This method is understood as civil disobedience, that is, breaking unjust laws in the interest of getting the moral law in accordance with the higher law—and, crucially, accepting the punishment in the process. Only moral means should be used to achieve moral ends.

Next, there is a question about what Russell means by “seeing as God might see.” The passage at issue in that question is as follows:

“The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.”—paragraph 11

Russell’s point has to do with not being satisfied with things as they appear to us in ordinary experience. Philosophy seeks a level of understanding that transcends the way we normally see things—that is, to see things metaphysically, in their essence, which means beyond what we can perceive with the body or the senses. This ideal, then, refers to a form of perfect or divine knowledge. Russell is describing perfect, complete, objective vision, as if God were looking at our world from above. Examples I suggest using (and explaining) here to clarify Russell from earlier in our semester: Plato’s idea of Forms (in the Republic and Symposium) or of the immortal soul (Phaedrus), Augustine’s memory theory of God, Nietzsche’s ideal of the superman (Übermensch), King’s understanding of justice. All of these have to do with a form of objectivity or truth that is not something we can ordinarily achieve or attain but that inspires greater understanding.

Finally, I’ll ask you to reflect on the significance of this course to your life in general. There I would encourage you just to be honest and reflective, as there is really no wrong answer to this question.