SYLLABUS
Courses: PPE Philosophy Seminar
and Philosophy Tutorial
Seminar Time: Thursday (and
sometimes on Tuesday) 1:15-4:00
Seminar Place: Kravis 100 (when
not online or outside)
Tutorial Time: Designated Tuesdays,
by appointment
Professor: Paul Hurley
Contact Info: paul.hurley@cmc.edu
Office Hours: W 2:00-4:00, F 3:00-4:30
(with occasional rescheduling to accommodate faculty and committee meetings),
ABA.
INTRODUCTION
This is the syllabus for both the PPE Philosophy Tutorial
and the PPE Philosophy Seminar. Our
focus will be on areas of philosophy of particular relevance to economics and
politics – ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and the
philosophy of law. It is helpful to keep
one distinctive contribution of philosophy in view throughout these
courses. Economics and political science
are disciplines that are by their own methodological assumptions descriptive rather than prescriptive
(political theory and jurisprudence are outliers here). They present themselves as inquiries into
what is and will be the case
with respect to market interactions and political interactions. Ethics and political philosophy, by contrast,
are primarily prescriptive. They inquire into what we ought to do individually and
collectively – into which institutions are legitimate and which actions are
justified. Economics determines which
interactions are more efficient, but not, by its own admission, which are more
just or fair, whether and to what extent efficiency (as economists understand
it) is a value, or if it is, how it weighs against competing values. The primary focus of political science is
upon questions such as which coercive political structures are more stable; the
primary focus of political philosophy is upon which ones are more or less
legitimate and when coercive use of force by the state is justified. When we ask not just whether a group can
succeed in seceding, but whether it is justified in doing so, we have moved
beyond empirical inquiry into ethics and political philosophy. When we ask not just whether we can win a
war, but whether the war is just, we are engaged not just in political science,
but in political philosophy. Such
inquiry is important; indeed, much of the point of inquiry into what we ought
to believe is to inform our decisions about what we ought to do.
We will focus in particular this term upon the complex
interactions among Property, Freedom, Reason/Rationality, Ideology, Democracy,
and the Rule of Law.
Reason/Rationality: Is reason best understood as a tool or
instrument for determining the most effective means for satisfying our desires/
preferences for outcomes, as suggested by rational choice theory (Econ 50), or
is it best understood as itself a source of substantive motives for acting and
interacting in some ways rather than others (“be reasonable!”), e.g. the
Constitution’s ‘self-evident’ rights, reasons that determine which actions on
our part are justified and which preferences we can justifiably act upon (Gov
20)?
Ideology: To what extent do prevailing beliefs about
property, freedom, reason, democracy, justice, etc. arise out of and serve to
rationalize pernicious social conditions?
Democracy: What are the legitimating conditions for the exercise
of democratic institutions, and why? Do we have compelling reasons to
participate in them, in particular to vote?
Property: To come to have a property – an entitlement to
exclusive control -- in something previously unowned is to limit the freedom of
every other person to use that thing.
What conditions, if any, could justify such exclusive control, and such
denial of prior freedom to every other person?
Do we each have a property right in ourselves? If so, is it more fundamental than our property
rights to things, including to land?
Freedom: Is freedom non-interference (negative
freedom)? Is freedom formal or
substantive access to a rich set of options (positive freedom)? Is freedom independence from the arbitrary
will of others in the setting and pursuit of our ends (republican freedom)? Test cases:
I am stranded on a deserted island, so I have virtually no options, but no
one interferes with me. (Complete negative freedom, but no positive freedom) Am I in the relevant sense free? I have an extremely rich set of substantive
options, but the state and other individuals constantly interfere with and
structure my pursuit of them (Positive freedom but strong limits on negative
freedom). Am I free? Alternatively, no one interferes with me, and
I have a rich set of options (lots of negative and positive freedom), but only
because I am a slave with an extremely permissive master who nonetheless can
interfere dramatically whenever she wants. (no republican freedom) How can this be freedom? We appeal to freedom constantly, but do we
understand it at all? Is one of these kinds
of freedom somehow more fundamental than the others? Does freedom properly understood integrate
all three?
Rule of Law: Requirement that “people in positions of
authority…exercise their power under the authority, and within a constraining
framework, of public norms (laws) rather than on the basis of their own
preferences or ideology.” It also
requires “that the laws be the same for all and that they be accessible to the
people in a clear, stable, and prospective form.” (Waldron, 3) Is adherence to the rule of law a
precondition of democratic legitimacy?
Does it dictate qualified adherence to precedent?
TUTORIAL
The tutorial component of this course is loosely modeled upon
the traditional Oxbridge tutorial. Each
of you will be expected to produce 6 five page tutorial papers during the
course of the term, and 6 1-2 page (or the equivalent) comments on the tutorial
papers of your peers. I will divide you
into two groups, a and b.
Each group will have a tutorial paper due roughly every other week
(consult the syllabus), initially on a designated topic (the designated topics
will all be written in the final syllabus), and will have a comment due on the
paper of a designated member of the alternative group roughly every other
week. Tutorial days are always Tuesdays. Papers must be emailed to your commentator and to me by 3:00 PM on Monday (as a
word doc); the commentator must come to the tutorial with copies of her
comments for me and for the author. We
will have 60 minute tutorials, scheduled on the hour, throughout the day on
Tuesday. Your paper and comments will
provide the basis for a three-way discussion of the assigned text for the first
45 minutes; the final 15 minutes are reserved for questions that I might have
for the author and commentator.
If you are the writer, you are expected during the tutorial
to expound upon and defend your written answer to the tutorial question,
including your exposition of the relevant arguments in the original text and,
when appropriate, the structure and content of your own arguments and
criticisms. Your paper should include an
introductory paragraph clearly outlining the contours of your argument for
readers.
If you are the commentator, you are expected to evaluate the
writer’s arguments, the extent to which he or she does justice to the relevant
arguments in the assigned text, and the extent to which he or she answers the
Tutorial Question effectively. In
particular, if there are important mistakes, lacuna, irrelevant tangents,
flawed arguments, and/or unsupported claims in the paper, it is the
commentator’s job to point them out in writing, and to elaborate upon these
points in discussion.
The quality of the tutorial discussion, including your demonstrated
mastery of the arguments you present and those in the text, is incorporated
into my overall evaluation of your papers and comments. Each tutorial paper (including discussion)
will be worth 1/8 of your overall tutorial grade; your 6 comments (including
discussion) will together be worth 1/4 of your tutorial grade.
SEMINAR
Although some of the meetings of our seminar will be
on Tuesdays (particularly at the beginning and the end of term), our primary
seminar day and time is Thursday, from 1:15 to 4:00.
THE BLOG
Each
of you will be expected to post on the blog most weeks, with a few self-selected
bye weeks. In these discussion posts, you must
demonstrate careful engagement with the readings and generate productive class
discussion. Each post should accurately represent the text's key ideas and aim
to spark discussion by going beyond analysis to critically engage with the
text. For example, you might demonstrate the significance of an important
concept or argument, challenge a key claim or defend it against criticism,
connect to previous readings or discussions, or explore the broader implications
of the author's arguments.
- Original posts should be
approximately 250 words and should be posted on blog site by midnight the
night before seminar. You are required to write at least 7 original
posts over the course of the semester, with at least 3 of
these appearing before Spring Break. You may be required to post when we
have authors coming to discuss their work.
- The remaining contributions may
be comments on other students' posts, written and posted by 11am the day
of seminar.
- You may skip posting or
commenting for a maximum of two seminars. This includes excused
absences (such as unavoidable absences for documented competitions or
illness) and unexcused absences. Beyond the two permitted skips, each late
or missing post/comment will reduce your Discussion Posts Grade by a third
(A to A-, A- to B+, etc).
- Your Blog Post Grade is
cumulative across the semester and is based on what you post, how
effectively you present and develop the points in your posts during
discussion, and how well you respond to objections or other issues that
arise in seminar discussion. I will provide you with feedback in writing
about your performance on the Blog shortly after the midterm break (an in
progress evaluation), and you should feel free to come talk to me about
your posts and comments at any point during the semester.
These posts will account for 1/3 of your seminar grade.
PARTICIPATION
1/3 of your grade will be determined by the quality of your
participation.
In-class
The bulk of your participation grade (3/4) will reflect the
quality of your in-class participation. I will provide you with in-progress
reports at the middle of the semester on your in-class participation.
Poster Session
Your performance in a poster session will be included as a
component (1/4) of your participation grade. The
session will take place near the end of the semester, when we will join (again)
with the Murty sophomores, in this case to present and discuss posters based on
one of your best tutorial papers (to be selected in consultation with yours
truly).
Half of your in-class participation grade will be determined
by me, the other half (confidentially) by your peers.
IN-CLASS WRITING OPPORTUNITIES:
1/6 of your grade will be determined by your performance on
an in-class midterm essay exam.
1/6 of your grade will be based upon your performance on an
in-class writing assignment during finals week.
Alternatively, you can elect to take a 40 minute oral exam in my office
that we schedule together for some other time on the day of the in-class
writing assignment.
POLICIES
Attendance: Come, come on time, come prepared, and come to
class with a hard copy in hand of the text to be discussed in
seminar/tutorial. Lack of attendance
(and chronic lateness) will adversely impact your grade, quite dramatically at
the extremes. Class time takes priority
over other commitments. When we are in
person, class is a screen free zone.
More on Attendance: If
at any point in the semester you are under mandated quarantine/isolation, I
will make arrangements with you to continue your instruction on Zoom during
that period. These arrangements will be
adjusted to fit the circumstances, and what constitute appropriate adjustments
in the circumstances will be at my discretion.
Video Etiquette: Please observe the following policies so that we can collectively work to
build a productive classroom when online:
§ Arrive
at class on time, as per usual, one person per screen.
§ Videos
must be turned on and kept on for the duration of class. Much of communication,
even on Zoom, is non-verbal.
§ Mute
yourself when not speaking if you are in an environment with distracting
background noise.
§ Minimize disruptions (inform your
cohabitants when you have class time and not to interrupt). Put other
applications in “Do Not Disturb” or “Downtime”.
Academic Integrity: I REALLY hate cheating, among other
reasons because it violates the fundamental purpose of pursuing an education,
and because to cheat is to unfairly benefit at the expense of your
classmates. Possible violations of
standards for academic integrity will be reported to the Academic Standards
Committee and prosecuted most aggressively.
If in doubt, cite!!
More generally, I expect you both to know and to follow the college’s
guidelines for academic honesty. Academic misconduct can occur in a variety of
ways, including (but not limited to) cheating, fabrication, and plagiarism.
Please note that the College’s statement of academic integrity specifies that
“all rules and standards of academic integrity apply equally to all electronic
media … [which] is especially true for any form of plagiarism, ranging from
submission of all or part of a paper obtained from an internet source to
failure to cite properly an internet source.” Accordingly, you are prohibited
from submitting papers that include text generated from a large-scale language
model (LLM) such as ChatGPT. I expect you to know and respect the boundary
between using these technologies to generate text, and using them for editing
or polishing original text that you have personally authored. When in doubt
about whether some academic practice is acceptable, ask me. Always err on the
side of avoiding misconduct. But as a
useful rule of thumb, if it isn’t OK to ask another person to do something, it
isn’t OK for you to use an LLM to do that thing.
Extensions: Because of the cooperative, synchronized nature
of this academic enterprise, it is not possible to grant individual extensions
for tutorial papers. You need to arrange your respective schedules such that
your papers and comments are turned in to me and to your peers on time – the
tutorial approach will not work otherwise.
Mutual respect: Much of what we read is likely to make some
among us uncomfortable, perhaps even to cause offense. Some of these readings certainly make me
uncomfortable, and I find some of the views expressed within them
offensive. But they engage with
important and often extremely influential ideas, and if these influential ideas
have uncomfortable and even offensive implications, it is vital to explore how
and why this is true; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so. These classes will not work as spaces of
shared inquiry unless we are prepared to challenge each other’s claims and
arguments and to explore controversial ideas.
But they also will not work effectively as such spaces if we fail to
treat each other with consideration and respect. Let us proceed accordingly.
Visiting Authors: We are making arrangements for some of the
authors we will be reading this term to meet with us during our seminar time to
discuss their work, some in person and some online. These direct, student driven discussions with
the authors are an extraordinary opportunity; be prepared to make the most of
them! Unless otherwise specified, plan
to post on the blog for these meetings, and proceed on the assumption that the
authors will have access to your blog posts.
In particular cases some of our authors may prefer written questions to
blog posts (I have offered them the option); we will adjust accordingly. See again the rules for video etiquette.
TEXTS
You are required to obtain hard copies of certain texts for
the course, and I will distribute excerpts from many others as handouts.
The texts that you are required to obtain for the two
courses are John Locke’s 2nd
Treatise, Karl Marx’s The Marx-Engels
Reader, Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos,
Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom,
Antonin Scalia’s A Matter of Interpretation, and Elizabeth Anderson’s Hijacked. Please keep in mind that the original purpose
of the PPE stipend was to defer costs of the purchase of these books.
Among the texts from which I will provide excerpts as
handouts are my own Against the Tyranny of Outcomes, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Suzie Love’s “Freedom,
Democracy, and Economic Rights: A Kantian View,” John Rawls’ Theory of Justice
and Briefer Restatement, Cheryl
Harris’s “Whiteness as Property,” Corey Brettschneider’s Democratic Rights, Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom, Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia,
Simon Blackburn’s Ruling Passions, Elizabeth Anderson’s “Unstrapping the
Straightjacket of Preference…,” Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, Richard
Posner’s The Problems of Jurisprudence, Jeremy Waldron’s “Stare Decisis
and the Rule of Law…,” and Seana Shiffrin’s “Unfit to Print…”.
SCHEDULE
Jan. 20: Seminar. Introduction, a (very!) brief excerpt from
Paul Hurley, Against the Tyranny of Outcomes (handout), and a brief
excerpt from Hobbes’s Leviathan, chs. XIII thru XVII (handout).
Jan. 22: Seminar. Locke 2nd
Treatise, chs. I-V (with a particular focus on V)
Jan. 27: Tutorial. John Locke, 2nd Treatise,
chs. VI-XIII; excerpt from Adam Smith’s Lectures
on Jurisprudence (Handout), a writes
Tutorial Question: Locke defends a social contract account
with consent as the foundation of political legitimacy. What are Smith’s arguments against such an
account? What, on your view, is Locke’s
best response to such arguments?
Jan. 29: Seminar. Elizabeth Anderson, Hijacked, pp.
20-62 and 127-155, and a brief excerpt from Adam Smith’s “A Theory of Moral
Sentiments.”
February 3: Tutorial. Nozick, excerpt from Anarchy,
State, and Utopia (handout), b writes
Tutorial Question: What is Nozick’s “Lockean” argument that
nothing beyond the minimal state can be justified? Be sure to discuss the role
of the ‘Lockean Proviso’ in his argument. Upon what grounds does Anderson
challenge such a libertarian reading of Locke?
February 5: Seminar. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in
The Marx-Engels Reader.
February 10: Tutorial. Karl Marx, “The German Ideology,” in The
Marx-Engels Reader, a writes.
Tutorial Question: For Marx, political societies such as
ours are a natural development within which “activity is not voluntarily, but
naturally, divided,” and in which “man’s own deed becomes an alien power
opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him.” (160)
The question then is whether, and if so how, we can or will overcome this natural
enslavement within political society.
What is Marx’s account of history as inevitably producing such
enslavement within political society by natural forces, and in particular what
role does ideology play in facilitating such enslavement?
February 12: Seminar. John Rawls, excerpt from A Theory
of Justice (handout)
February 17: Tutorial. John Rawls. Excerpts from an
unpublished draft of his Political Liberalism (handout), b writes
Tutorial Question: Rawls argues, against views like
Nozick’s, that his theory is an entitlement theory, a theory of
procedural justice, and that the respects in which it differs from Nozick’s
‘Lockean’ alternative result in its being a more defensible form of entitlement
theory. What is his argument?
February 19: Seminar. Corey Brettschneider, excerpts from Democratic
Rights (handout)
February 24: Tutorial. Excerpt from Arthur Ripstein’s Force
and Freedom (handout), a writes
Tutorial Question: Libertarians argue that a commitment to
equal liberty justifies our rights to private property in land and other
physical things independently of the state, justifies our entering into a state
to protect this property, and limits justification of the state to a minimal
state protecting individual property rights.
Ripstein’s Kant argues, by contrast, that a commitment to equal freedom 1)undermines
any justification for private property rights to land independently of the
state, 2)demonstrates that freedom, in requiring us to secure such private
property rights, requires us to enter a state, thereby securing the conditions
of equal individual freedom necessary for legitimate rights to private property
in land and other physical things beyond ourselves, 3)requires a state
significantly more robust than the minimal state, and 4)explains why we are obligated
to do our part in the legitimate operation of such a state. How does Ripstein’s Kant argue for these 4
claims?
February 26: Suzie Love, “Freedom, Democracy, and Economic
Rights: A Kantian View,” Love visiting by Zoom.
March 3: Tutorial. Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos,
Introduction and Chs. 1 and 2, b writes (with sophomore Murtys)
Tutorial Question: TBD
March 5: Seminar. Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos cont’d,
ch. 8, and excerpt from The Idea of Prison Abolition, (handout) Shelby
visiting by zoom.
March 10: Tutorial. Amartya Sen and Robert Frank, excerpts
from Ethics and Economics and What Price the Moral High Ground?
(handout), a writes
Tutorial Question: TBD
March 12: Seminar. Richard Posner, excerpt from Economic
Analysis of Law (handout) and “Wealth Maximization Revisited” (handout)
March 17: BREAK!!!
March 19: BREAK!!!
March 24: Seminar. Midterm
March 26: Anderson, Hijacked, Anderson visiting by
Zoom
March 31: Tutorial. Simon Blackburn, excerpt from Ruling
Passions (handout), b writes
Tutorial Question: TBD
April 2: Seminar. Alasdair MacIntyre, excerpt from After
Virtue (handout),
April 7: Tutorial. Anderson, “Unstrapping the Straightjacket
of Preferences.” (handout), a writes
Tutorial Question: TBD
April 9: Seminar. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom,
with junior Murtys
April 14: Tutorial. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom,
with junior Murtys, b writes
Tutorial Question: TBD
April 16: Seminar. Antonin Scalia, A Matter of
Interpretation, pp. 1-47
April 21: Tutorial. A Matter of Interpretation cont’d,
pp. 115-27 (Dworkin), 65-83 (Tribe), and 144-49 (Scalia response to Dworkin and
Tribe), a writes
Tutorial Question:
TBD
April 23: Seminar. Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property.”
(handout) Before break, 1709-1750; after break, 1750-1791.
April 28: Tutorial. Jeremy Waldron, “Stare Decisis and the
Rule of Law” (handout), b writes.
Tutorial Question:
TBD
April 30: Seminar. Seana Shiffrin, “Unfit to Print: Government
Speech and the First Amendment.” Shiffrin visiting by zoom
May 5: Seminar. Elizabeth Anderson, excerpt from Private
Government (handout)
May 13: Final Writing Opportunity or Oral Exam
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