Philosophy

Trust is a central part of our daily lives as social and rational animals: we trust friends and partners, experts, and our devices; sometimes we even say that our devices trust other devices. But what is trust? What is it good for, and under what conditions? When is trust warranted? How is trusting agents different from trusting artifacts or institutions? Our readings and discussions will range widely, covering the significance of trust for our lives in general but especially for inquiry, drawing from psychological literature on trust, extending to applied questions, and comparing trust with similar things such as faith, reliance, and the ancient Greek concept of pistis (together with a discussion in Plato of misology as a disease of trust).

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The topics for this course differ each term. In spring 2024, the course focused on a close reading of selections from Niccolò Machiavelli’s major works. This course focuses on the major topics, ideas, problems, and authors of Western Political Philosophy and its history. The course introduces an advanced level of reading, analyzing, and deep understanding of key themes and concepts in the Western tradition of political philosophy. The course develops strong skills in critical reading, including describing and analyzing the conceptual framework of and the specific historiographical debates on some of the major texts in the field, in their historical and cultural context. The course also focuses on Machiavelli's historical background and influence. The course pays particularly detailed attention to the questions of power, violence, ontology’s relationship with politics, and Machiavelli’s reading of his classical and medieval sources.

The course begins with a simple system called sentential or propositional logic, which despite its simplicity captures a significant range of important arguments. The course then focuses on (first-order) predicate logic, which is much more powerful and provides the logical basis for analysing a great variety of arguments and theories.

This course traces the conception of authentic existence in the works of thinkers from the Existentialist tradition, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, and Copenhagen’s own Søren Kierkegaard. Among other things, the course observes how ethical thinking has moved from the language of duty to that of personal answerability, and how the search for meaningful personal existence has increasingly become the responsibility of the individual. The unique vocabulary of these authors appears not only in works of philosophy, theology, and psychology, but also literature and theater, which illustrates that we understand ourselves via the stories we tell, and that these narratives are necessarily told in dialogue with “the Other,” our fellow human beings.

The technological advances associated with Virtual Reality (VR), as well as its close cousins such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR), represent a fundamental shift in how humans experience the digital realm. Using devices such as VR-headsets, we can now access digital environments full of computer-generated simulations in a way that allows for a more intuitive kind of interactive experience than is typically afforded by more familiar uses of computers. In recent years, via devices such as the Oculus Rift, VR-technology has become increasingly accessible in the home and it is anticipated to become even more ubiquitous in the near future.

This class aims to examine a range of philosophical questions associatedwith VR. As we shall see, VR gives us new ways to both articulate classic philosophical problems and also to sharpen those problems. The relevant philosophical questions are wide-ranging, encompassing topics in epistemology (“Can you know you are not in a virtual world?”), metaphysics (“Are virtual worlds real?”), and value theory (“Can you live a good life in a virtual world?”). In examining these issues, we will focus on David Chalmers’ (2022) treatment of VR in his pioneering book Reality+, where Chalmers argues for a range of bold answers to these questions (and others): that we cannot know that we are not in a virtual world, that virtual worlds are just as real as non-virtual worlds, and that it is possible to lead a meaningful and valuable life in a virtual reality. By the end of the class, students will not only have been introduced to many of the most central philosophical problems, but will have further evaluated both the ways in which technology can shed light on old problems in philosophy and the ways in which philosophy can shed light on new problems about technology.

This seminar seeks to provide an overview of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. It starts by looking at Schopenhauer’s central work – The World as Will and Representation (1819), touching upon each of the central themes found therein: epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, and ethics. Subsequently, we will partially mirror the themes covered in studying Schopenhauer, this time providing Nietzsche’s take on these. We will approach Nietzsche’s work initially by looking at his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – one of his clearest and most systematically argued work. We will find that this not only provides insight on morality but will provide a good foundation for exploring Nietzsche on topics such as art, truth or the will to power. The final part of the seminar will be student driven. Three alternative options have been prepared, covering either A. Nietzsche on Knowledge, Causality and Truth; B. Nietzsche on Art; or C. Nietzsche on Nihilism and The Will to Power. Students will be asked to make a joint decision as to which one of these three topics they will choose for us to cover. This way, in addition to the topic of morality we will be able to cover in some detail Nietzsche’s take on one of the other topics that we explored at the beginning of the seminar from Schopenhauer’s perspective.

Depression is a painful existential situation that seems to be quite widespread in our contemporary capitalist, ultra-individualistic societies. Recent and current interrelated crises, as for example the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the threat of a global war, seem to have exacerbated the phenomenon. But what does it mean exactly to be depressed, or to live with depression? How could we better conceive of it: as mental and bodily disorder, condition, disposition, mode of experience, habit, …? What kind of relations – to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to the world – does depression foster and is fed by? If one agrees to consider it as a pathology, is it just an individual or also a social, collective pathology? What does constitute its ‘pathological’ (i.e. ‘wrong’) character? Does depression also entail ‘positive’ aspects? This course follows various paths for developing a critical philosophy of depression, an undertaking that finds itself, in the current philosophical landscape, at its outset. Note that the preposition “of” has a double meaning: on the one hand, we will study and articulate philosophical, conceptual and also nonconceptual tools for understanding what depression is; on the other hand, we will explore the cognitive (and affective) resources that the depressive experience disclose and unleash, what their epistemological, ethical and political values can be. The seminar aims at addressing and discussing the topic by drawing upon a vast range of theoretical and literary resources, from psychoanalysis to philosophy, from sociology to literature.

This seminar introduces the concept of epistemic injustice, when one is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The class starts by introducing the foundations for epistemic injustice as long described in feminist and critical race theory documents and continues by discussing three different interpretations. Then, newer concepts, such as testimonial smothering, wilful hermeneutical ignorance, gaslighting, and epistemic exploitation, are considered before conducting application case studies.

This course considers how we understand and explain the difference between things with minds and things without. This is the central question of the metaphysics of mind. Increasingly, philosophers who engage with this question aim to give a naturalist account of the mind: one that fits into the picture of the world offered to us by the sciences. But many features of the mind – including, in particular, conscious experience – fit uneasily into this naturalistic world view. This course familiarizes students with the key debates in this area.

This course focuses on three German-language thinkers of global influence: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Students encounter some of the main ideas of each thinker, including the understanding of history as class struggle (Marx), the philosophy of language and the death of God (Nietzsche), and the idea of the unconscious (Freud). Further thinkers working in these traditions (for example: Rosa Luxemburg, Sarah Kofman, Herbert Marcuse, Melanie Klein, Erich Fromm) may also be considered. German studies students study the German-language texts in the original language.