Philosophy

Through a close reading and analysis of several representative Platonic dialogues, this course introduces the philosophy of Plato and Socrates and prepares students for Aristotle’s philosophy and Greek Thinkers. The course also include materials on earlier Philosophy forming the background to Socrates and Plato.

This course examines the philosophical worldview of nature and analyzes the philosophical foundations of scientific worldviews. It discusses the works of various philosophical thinkers including Aristotle, Kant, and Schrodinger.

This course examines the human being as a philosophical problem. It analyzes the most important anthropological models of Western thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, from the distinction between philosophy and science. This course explores the debate on the present and future of the human creature in the thinking and trends of the 21st century.

This course offers a study of modern philosophy including the main authors and philosophical movements, the fundamental works, and the concepts and problems of the era.

This course introduces students to three major ethical theories' utilitarianism, Kant's deontology, and virtue ethics. Additional topics include the ethical principles underlying academic integrity, research ethics, and intellectual property. Students examine issues related to the ethics of environmental sustainability and conservation and are challenged apply the ethical theories learned to concrete moral problems, including world poverty, corporate accountability and whistleblowing, and workplace discrimination. This course is graded on a pass/fail basis only.

This interactive lecture-based course seeks to identify what it is people mean when they invoke the term "culture." It critiques "culture" in different contexts to examine whether it is a defensible position to justify the activities of different actors, while examining our own position, critique it, then develop a defensible stance that defines and understands culture/s. Students consider how culture is transmitted, how it evolves, the different values it promotes, whether culture has boundaries, and critique the concepts of gender and nationality in culture.

The course focuses on: 1) Identity, considering how culture/s use tools to create and maintain individual and group identity; (2) Cultural Legitimacy, where the ideas of cultural relativism, consumerism (Pop v Mass) are addressed; (3) Language, examining how cultures utilize the media and discourse to reinforce values; (4) Taboo, wherein the class critiques real world contemporary examples that may challenge one's values, ethics and morality; (5) Reflection on the way human brains process and make sense of the information in the worlds society creates, and (6) technologies, through application to contemporary and future societies.

We use language all the time to express our thoughts and understand others. But how does language work? Key questions covered in this course include: how do names refer to an object? Do words mean whatever we intend or use them to mean? What role does convention play in fixing meanings? Are our terms vague, or precise? Can a person have a private language? How do we communicate beyond the literal? What are speech acts and are they available to everyone in our society? All of these questions are of interest in their own right, and also have applications to further issues in philosophy and beyond.

In this course, students explore ten of the “big questions”: What do I know? What is consciousness? Who am I, and do I exist? Do I have free will? Does God exist? What are space and time? What are numbers? What should I do? What is justice? What is the meaning of life? To find answers to these questions, students learn essential skills of a philosopher: first, reading philosophical texts, focusing on how to extract and present a philosophical thesis and argument in a clear, logical way; and second, practicing creative, critical thinking and impromptu discussions by participating in philosophical discourse with peers. Students also learn to write philosophical arguments of their own in essay-form.

This course examines how the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) became Europe's philosophical center, tracing its evolution from its revolutionary founding in 1810 through its various transformations. By exploring the dynamic relationship between the university's philosophers and Berlin's cultural and political life, this course follows how philosophical ideas developed within its walls and resonated beyond them. The course examines key figures who taught, studied, or lectured at the university—from Hegel's influential tenure and the Young Hegelians, through Dilthey's establishment of the human sciences and Cohen's Neo-Kantianism, to the philosophical responses to war, division, and reunification. Furthermore, students explore how the University of Berlin shaped major philosophical movements while being shaped by Berlin's dramatic historical transformations: from Prussian reform era through imperial expansion, from Weimar culture through Nazi persecution, from Cold War division through reunification. By examining philosophical texts alongside historical documents and cultural materials, students understand how the University of Berlin fostered philosophical innovations that responded to and influenced some of the most significant political and cultural developments of modern Europe.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. In Spring 2025, the main topic of this course was Soul and Body: Metaphysics of the Person in Plato and Aristotle. The aim of the course is to verify these attributions through the “slow reading” of an anthology of passages taken from the works of the two Greek philosophers, also in light of the most recent critical literature on this topic.

At the end of the course the student has acquired (1) the in-depth knowledge of a philosophical topic or problem typical of Greek and Roman antiquity and (2) three types of skills: (a) philological – he/she knows how to analyze an ancient text using the advanced philological tools needed for the study of Greek and Roman philosophy; (b) dialectical – he/she is trained to discuss a philosophical problem in a synchronic and diachronic way, through the comparison between ancient and modern philosophers; (c) rhetorical – he/she is capable of arguing exegetical and philosophical theses in oral and written form.