| In philosophy it is probably impossible to avoid conflicting views and ongoing debates since philosophy deals with questions about our world that can’t be settled by science, technology, or politics. It asks questions about our most basic assumptions and commitments regarding what is real, what we can know, how we can justify our values, and what place beauty should have in our lives. These questions don’t get settled once and for all, but the debate over them can help us refine our own views and develop a critical perspective on the competing ideas and ideals we face in our experience. This course will cover some of the more interesting debates in modern philosophy and discuss how to understand and evaluate them. And it will connect some of the issues and concepts we study to the ongoing debates over the causes and alternatives to violence as it arises in contemporary societies. So we will try to think about philosophical theory in its own terms and to see how it bears on practical questions. |