PONDERING THE BIG QUESTIONS
Fall 2009
Exploring Human Nature & the Nature of PHILOSOPHY
This course is an invitation to ponder the really big questions of life,
like: Why are we here? What is our real purpose? Who are we really? Does God
exist and if so then why do pain, evil and ignorance exist? What is the
nature of the universe? What is the nature of happiness, truth, joy,
courage, etc? What is real and what is illusion? The challenge throughout
this course in philosophy is to ask the hard questions that unmask our
presumptions, that force us to face these issues personally and with brutal
honesty, so that we can get beyond the easy answers, the traditional
explanations, and the conventional responses that have been handed down to
us by others. It means finding our own answers no matter what this costs us,
questioning our limited world views, our ignorance, our own prejudice in
order to find authentic wisdom that personally makes sense. This course is
an introduction to the main branches of philosophy which include: logic,
epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and social philosophy. Readings and
assignments will include the perspectives of a variety of sources and not
just the traditional voices of western thought.
EVALUATION for the course work will be as follows:
Knowledge & Understanding 30% This includes tests, quizzes and all exercises
that measure student's knowledge and understanding of the course material.
Thinking & Inquiry 25% This includes reflections, assignments, and homework
that focus on thinking and inquiry.
Application 25% This includes reflections, assignments, and homework that
focus on applications of ideas and concepts learned in the course.
Communication 20% This includes creative assignments, presentations and all
aspects of the student's presence, participation and involvement.
Reflections: Every two weeks students will write a personal reflection on
the assigned issue we are exploring in class. It should be 250 words and
typed.
Home Work: When completed that evening, and ready for the next day's class,
students will receive full grades; one day late homework gets half credit.
Term work will be valued at 70% of the final grade.
The final assessment and exam combine for 30% of the final grade.
RESEARCH PAPER: the FIRST Assignment
Due Friday September 25th, 2009
Using the model of "See- Judge Act" which originated with Brazilian popular
educator Pablo Freire, write a 750 word research paper on any contemporary
issue. The paper should include three sources and must have proper footnote
and bibliography citations. Your job is to research the issue well enough to
describe it in three ways.
First, what is the issue? How do we see or experience it? What does it feel
like? What is really going on?
Second, how should we judge or understand this issue? What are its causes?
How can we make sense of it? how did we get to this point?
Third and finally, what must we do in response to this issue? How should we
act or react to this reality?
Make sure to include quotes and research
throughout the paper.
PAULO FREIRE
By Rich Gibson
Paulo Freire, the radical Brazilian "Vagabond of the Obvious" and the most
widely known educator in the world, died on May 2, 1997 in Sao Paulo,
Brazil. He was 75. Freire drew on humanist and Marxist ideas to forge a
concept of popular literacy education for personal and social liberation. He
suggested that the use of his "see-judge-act" student-centered methods could
lead to critical consciousness, an awareness of the necessity to constantly
unveil appearances designed to protect injustice, and be a foundation for
action toward equality and democracy. To Freire, no form of education could
be neutral. All pedagogy is a call to action. In a society animated by
inequality and authoritarianism, he chose the side of the many, and exposed
the partisanship of those who claimed to stand above it all. Freire became a
world figure after he was briefly jailed for using literacy methods
developed by Catholic-based communities among poor peasants. He was driven
from his native Brazil by a rising dictatorship in 1964. He fled to Chile to
work with the democratically elected Allende government which fell to a CIA-
manufactured coup. He spent the next 15 years in exile, working at Harvard
and for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, organizing and writing
books for social justice. In 1989, shortly after he returned to Brazil as a
leader of the social-democratic Workers Party, Freire was named secretary of
education in Sao Paulo, a city of 13 million people. He served for two
years. In the early 1970s, Freire�s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education
for Critical Consciousness swept the globe. The books, and nearly two dozen
others that followed, proposed that education, though in inequitable
societies predominantly a tool of elite�s, is also a democratic egalitarian
weapon. Freire recommended methods recognizing the experience and dignity of
students and their culture, techniques calling into question the assumptions
which lay at the base of their social systems. Freire�s pedagogy united the
curriculum, grasping that the seamless coat of learning is made alien by
teaching methods that split it into irrational pieces. Freire�s geographic
literacy involved mapping problems, not memorizing borders. Freire
criticized "banking" educational methods that see students as empty accounts
to be filled with deposits of knowledge. He practiced a transformational
style, the student becoming a subject in gaining and experimenting with
knowledge. Truth became an examination of social understandings, not a
doctrine determined by testing services. Motivation came from demonstrations
that education is linked to power. For the process to work, the educator-
leader had to be deeply involved in the daily lives of the students.
Especially in the developing world, Freire was seen as a leader in a
movement which could connect literacy, social insight, revolution, and
national economic development. There are problems with Freire�s work. He
became, against his protests, an icon, idolized by dramatically different
sectors of education and liberation movements. A little publishing industry
evolved from uncritically praising a humble man whose life was social
criticism. But Freire called himself a contradictory person. His politics
were never altogether clear. The Marxist Freire urged the analysis of labor
and production. Like the entire socialist project, Freire was not able to
resolve the incongruity of human liberation and national economic
development. The humanist post-modern Freire denied the centrality of class
and focused on deconstructing culture and language. In both cases, Freire
had to rely on the ethics of the educator-leader to mediate the tensions
between middle class teachers and profoundly exploited students. So, with a
little effort, his works were simultaneously appropriated by capitalist
enterprises like Con Edison, relatively dogmatic Marxist movements in Guinea
Bissau and Grenada, and reformist poverty programs in the United States.
Nevertheless, Freire�s focus on the role of ideology and a utopian vision,
the needs for imaging a better future before it can be achieved, and the
vital necessity of leadership fully at one with the people, deepened the
practices of movements for social change. His grasp of the reciprocal
interactions of class, race, sex, and nationality as simultaneously pivotal
to conscious action for change pre-dated both feminism and post-modernism.
His methods open a process in which students examine both their potential
roles as self-liberators, and the history of people who cease to be
instruments of their own oppression.
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY:
It is not easy to say what philosophy is. Philosophers disagree. In an
unsatisfactory sound-bite, philosophy is a discipline which questions what
is frequently taken for granted.
Socrates, who has become a symbol for philosophy, said "the unexamined life
is not worth living." He meant that a full life must include an examination
of the reasons why we live and think and believe the way we do. This
examination can be called "philosophy."
The word "philosophy" comes from two Greek words: "philo" (love)
and "sophia" (wisdom). Literally, "philosophy" is "philo-sophia" or "the
love of wisdom." If this sounds pretentious (like philosophical hubris) it
may help to remember that philosophy frequently ends with Socrates' humbling
conclusion that we don't or can't know the things we think we know.
In searching for philosophy, it may help to look at a standard reference
book. Here's what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say.
Throughout its long and varied history in the West,
"philosophy" has meant many different things.... [A]n
examination of moral responsibilities and social
obligations; an effort to fathom divine intentions and
[humanity's] place with reference to them; an effort to
ground the enterprise of natural science; a rigourous
examination of the origin, extent and validity of
[people's] ideas; an exploration of the place of will or
consciousness in the universe; an examination of the
values of truth, goodness, beauty; an effort to codify
the rules of human thought in order to promote
rationality and the extension of clear thinking."
As long winded and seemingly unconnected as these topics might seem, they
have a common thread. Philosophy is, they suggest, the act of reflecting on
on the core beliefs that inform our view of the world and our behaviour.
Because our core beliefs are reflected in almost any subject, one can find
philosophers at work on issues that relate to most topics and disciplines.
As new subjects and issues arise and gain importance, philosophers take up
the challenge and continue a long tradition of philosophical inquiry. It is
this tradition which is the basis of the undergraduate philosophy curriculum
at contemporary universities.
In trying to understand philosophy, it may help to divide it in terms of
time periods, movements, individual philosophers, or subject matter.
Studying the history of a group of philosophers or a philosophical movement
tells us what mattered to these thinkers, how they debated, and the
conclusions that they reached. Historically based groups of philosophers are
frequently studied under headings like: Presocratic Philosophy; Ancient
Philosophy, Hellenistic Philosophy; Stoicism; Medieval Philosophy; Early
Modern Philosophy; British Empiricism; Continental Rationalism; Twentieth
Century Philosophy; Logical Positivism, American Pragmatism;
Deconstructionism; Post- Modernism; and so on.
Individual philosophers who are the subject of frequent study include
Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas,
Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Peter Abelard, Dewey, Donald
Davidson, W.V.O. Quine, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Martin
Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and
many, many others.
Subject matters which are commonplace in philosophy today include the
philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, applied ethics, epistemology
(the theory of knowledge), scepticism, metaphysics, philosophy of art,
phenomenology, feminism, social and political philosophy, logic, and the
philosophy of law.
The best way to find out about philosophy is to read and think and discuss
it. One way is by continuing with this invitation to philosophy and by
exploring relevant philosophy links on the web.
WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY?
One might distinguish two reasons for studying philosophy or any other
subject. First, and most importantly, you may study something because it
intrigues or interests you. This is probably the best reason for studying
anything. In the case of philosophy, studying it formally or informally is
for you if you are curious or passionate about questions like:
"What is right and wrong?"
"Why is the Mona Lisa a great work of art?"
"Is religion superstition?"
"How can we distinguish between science and pseudo-science?"
"Is abortion wrong?"
"What can we know?"
"In what sense is 'virtual reality' real?"
"Is morality possible if there is no God?"
"What ultimately exists?"
"Is the human mind just a sophisticated computer?"
"How should we treat animals?"
"What obligations do we have to the poor?"
"Is time travel possible?"
"Are men and women different in ways that go beyond their sexual goals?"
"What is the right way to reason?"
"Does European civilization think too highly of itself?"
If these kinds of questions capture your imagination, then you should find
some time for philosophy. Not everybody is suited to an in depth study of
the discipline, but everybody lives a life that depends on beliefs that
philosophy explores, so most lives can be deepened and enriched by some
study of philosophy.
A second reason for studying something is the possibility that it will
provide a basis for future employment or a career. Such concerns are
legitimate and important, but it might easily be argued that they are over
emphasized in today's education. If you ask sixty year olds what they
studied when they were twenty, you will usually find that the specific job
skills they learned then have little to do with their present occupation (go
ahead and try it!).
There are lots of reasons for this: people's interests change; career
advancement often means that someone's job changes along with the skills
that it requires; individual initiatives and opportunities often take people
in unexpected directions; and job skills frequently change as technology and
the world changes (a forty year old today didn't learn multi- media or how
to use the web twenty years ago).
Looked at from this point of view, philosophy is an excellent preparation
for almost any career. It does not teach job related skills (at least not
directly) but it is one of the most effective -- perhaps the most effective -
- discipline for teaching basic reasoning, writing and thinking skills which
are of use in any occupation. By also teaching students how to think
about "the big picture" and how to think of rationality and morality, it can
provide an excellent basis for a career.
The key point to note about philosophy is its emphasis on active thinking.
Unlike programs which emphasize the memorization and regurgitation of a body
of facts, philosophy encourages the cultivation of analysis, criticism and
communication. The benefits and skills acquired by analyzing philosophical
texts and writing about them include the ability to:
Comprehend complex passages
Assimilate and understand the ideas of others
Develop an ability to research a topic
Criticize the propositions in other people's arguments
Learn to assert your own ideas
Be creative and novel in solving problems
Communicate ideas clearly
Construct rational and persuasive arguments
Work around a deadline
Work under pressure
Formulate articulate, well-constructed essays and presentations
Learn about and appreciate other disciplines (psychology, sociology,
communication studies, english, history, anthropology, etc.)
By learning to effectively comprehend, analyze and criticize texts, and
creatively form solutions or answers to problems, the philosophy student is
forced to adapt to new situations, try different approaches, and adopt a
variety of perspectives. Because philosophy questions all assumptions,
philosophy students learn to probe issues more deeply than students in many
other disciplines.
An added benefit of philosophy is an introduction to the intellectual
currents and trends that inform the society in which we live. Reading Plato,
Aristotle, Hobbes or contemporary feminists is not relevant only because
they have important ideas you need to think about. It is also important
because their ideas have had a profound impact on how we as a society think
of -- and raise questions about -- the good life, morality, politics,
science, truth and so on. If you are comfortable with philosophy, you will
be comfortable with the "big questions" that an informed understanding
ourselves and the way we live depends on.