Philosophy

This course examines major intellectual, aesthetic, and philosophical trends in East Asian history. By reading translations of original source material, students will be able to see the principal modes of East Asian cultural and literary thought from their origins to the modern period. Cross-cultural issues will also be discussed. 

This course examines basic philosophical and theoretical problems about law in constitutional democracies—its origins, its nature, its grounds for legitimacy, and its scope and force. The course introduces theories of law from the natural rights tradition, social contract theory, legal positivism, and legal realism. It concludes by examining theories of law influenced by interpretive theories (hermeneutics), by various schools of critical theory, including critical race theory and feminist theory, and by scholars working in law and society. The course examines several influential theorists and philosophers from the Western legal tradition, although it pays some attention to contemporary Korean legal theorists and philosophers. Students read important works by Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, H.L.A. Hart, John Rawls, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hannah Arendt, Brian Tamahana, Jurgen Habermas, Jeremy Waldron, Roberto Unger, Mari Matsuda, Derrick Bell, and Mark Tushnet. 

This course analyzes and discusses core concepts of the philosophy of sociality by focusing on contributions from classical and contemporary phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Topics include empathy, collective intentionality, varieties of groups, varieties of being together, online sociality, and social (in)visibility.