PHIL 356 18th Century Philosophy

Spring Semester 2012 | Day | Burnaby

INSTRUCTOR  Dai Heide, WMC 5655

REQUIRED TEXTS

• Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. Edited by Robson. OUP
• Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Edited by Guyer and Wood, CUP
• Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Edited by Hatfield
• Leibniz, Philosophical Essays. Edited by Ariew and Garber, Hackett Publishing

RECOMMENDED TEXTS

• Buroker, Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason': An Introduction. CUP
• Jolley, Leibniz. Routledge
• Fogelin, The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Berkeley and The Principles of Human Knowledge. Routledge

COURSE DESCRIPTION

One of the most intriguing features of early modern philosophy is the trend toward idealism, which is the counterintuitive position that what fundamentally exists are just minds and ideas.  This course shall focus on the idealisms and associated doctrines of Leibniz, Berkeley and Kant. It would be easy to get the impression from the standard recounting of early modern philosophy that the three great idealists held similar positions for similar reasons. Our goal in this course will be to understand the considerably more complex truth about the idealisms of Leibniz, Berkeley and Kant.

We shall do so by considering in detail the positions of each of these philosophers both individually and comparatively. Crucial to each philosopher's argument for idealism is a commitment to phenomenalism: the position that the spatiotemporal objects of ordinary perception are dependent upon the act of perception itself and thus not fully real. Accordingly, we shall spend a good deal of our time considering how each philosopher argues for phenomenalism and precisely what each takes the nature of this perceptual dependence to be. We shall find a great deal of divergence among them. The view that will emerge is that, despite some genuine overlap, these philosophers held significantly different positions on the fundamental nature of reality. One hypothesis we will take seriously is that these differences are owed in a significant way to radically differing accounts of the nature of perception.

 COURSE REQUIREMENTS

• Two medium-length papers (1400-1600 words) - 30% each
• One final paper (2000 words minimum) - 40%

Note: Prerequisite: PHIL 100 or 151. Students who have completed PHIL 355 prior to Fall 2006 may not take this course for further credit.