Philosophy 290-4

This is a graduate philosophy seminar on the world. For the philosophers for whom the concept of the world figures prominently, “the world” is not another name for the earth, or the physical universe, or even for reality. What is the world, then, and why has its concept proved to be so indispensable to philosophical reflection?

Our focus in this class will be on the writing of Merleau-Ponty and Jonathan Lear, but we will also read Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, and Murdoch, among others.

Among the questions we will ask are: Do people share a world? Can they? Is the world something we can change? Can one lose the world (or one’s world)? Is there a link between the very idea of the world and mysticism (or religious standpoints or insights)? What does the world have to do with the mind, with consciousness, with experience, and with what is sometimes called the given? How does the world bear on the problem of freedom?

Although this is a class for graduate students of philosophy, where appropriate the instructor will welcome students and researchers with different backgrounds.