Philosophy Courses at Hamline University
Content: Selected important philosophic works; the main problems of philosophy, the natures of reality, valuing, and knowing.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Formal and informal reasoning, deductive and inductive; traditional and symbolic techniques for distinguishing correct from incorrect reasoning.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The concepts of goodness, right, duty, obligation, responsibility, and freedom; important moral theories of the Western tradition; contemporary moral issues in light of these theories.
Credits: 4 credits
Goals: This course examines ethical issues related to “third world” or “developing” nations.
Content: After a week of study on campus, we will travel to rural Jamaica on an Operation Classroom work team, living and working with locals on a school construction project. Students will study and directly experience ethical issues connected to development, combining service learning with academic reflection. We return to campus for the last week of the term to complete independent research, writing, and presentation of work.
Taught: Alternate years, winter term.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Definitions of African Philosophy, discussions of ethnophilosophy, problems of language in Africa, and connections with African American and feminist philosophies.
Taught: Annually.
Credits: 4 credits
Crosslisted
Also listed as ENG 3100.
Goals: To develop an understanding of several key issues in African American Studies emphasizing close textural reading and analysis. Additionally, students participate in academic service learning to synthesize textual and experimental learning.
Content: The course materials will focus on critical readings about construction of race as a concept; intersections of race, class and gender; Afrocentrism; pan-africanism; diasporic connections; nationalism; religious dimension; literary theory and popular culture.
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or consent of instructor.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The main problems of philosophy, the natures of reality, valuing and knowing, through the works of important ancient Greek philosophers, especially the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The main problems of philosophy, the natures of reality, valuing, and knowing, through the works of influential European philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, especially Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, and Kant.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The main problems of philosophy, the natures of reality, valuing, and knowing, through the works of influential 19th century thinkers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, and selected Pragmatists.
Taught: Alternate years.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The main problems of philosophy, the natures of reality, valuing, and knowing, through the study of analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and deconstruction.
Taught: Alternate years.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: An examination of major areas of contemporary feminist philosophy, with special attention to the interaction between multiple forms of oppression, including racism, homophobia, and class-based oppression.
Taught: Alternate years.
Prerequisites: WSTD 1010 or PHIL 1120 or PHIL 1140.
Credits: 4 credits
Crosslisted
Also listed as REL 3320.
Content: The nature and problems of religious thought including the existence of God, religious experience, faith, and reason.
Taught: Alternate years.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Philosophical issues in social, political, and legal systems, including problems such as the justification of power and the development of the concept of human rights.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Aesthetic issues from the point of view of the creator as well as appreciator, including questions of artistic truth, meaning, beauty, value, criticism, and judgment applied to the range of art media.
Credits: 4 credits
Goals: To understand the concepts, principles, and practices of nonviolence.
Content: Focus on understanding the concepts, principles, and practices of nonviolence emphasizing theorists and practitioners of nonviolent direct action including Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Tich Nhat Hanh, and others, attentive to the contexts in which they emerge. Course participants will pursue independent research on nonviolence for presentation to the seminar.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Philosophical issues of the sciences, including questions of scientific progress and rationality, our understanding of the physical world, and values and objectivity in the sciences.
Taught: Alternate years.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: An examination of some of the different ways people have thought about the natural world and our relationship to it. Some of the views discussed will be: nature as a mechanism, a divine creation, and a source of values. We will consider multicultural, feminist, and postmodern challenges to the modern scientific conception of nature.
Taught: Alternate years.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Questions of epistemology, including the nature of knowledge, the role of experience in knowing, the role of reason, the limits of knowledge, and the concept of meaning.
Prerequisite: PHIL 3160 or consent of the instructor.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: The concepts of being, reality, existence, essence, nature, causation, and reason together with their implications for knowledge and values.
Prerequisites: PHIL 3150 and PHIL 5550, or, PHIL 3160 and PHIL 5550, or consent of the instructor.
Credits: 4 credits
Content: Advanced value theory, broadly conceived, studied through selected classical and contemporary sources.
Prerequisite: Philosophy major or minor, or consent of the instructor.
Credits: 4 credits