PHIL2400: Ethics and the Passions Course Outline

The following is the course outline for PHIL2400: Ethics and the Passions broken down week by week.  I'm really looking forward to this course

Lecturer: Dr. Marguerite La Caze

Lecture: Michie (Bldg 9) 540 Wednesday 10am-11.50am

Tutorial 1: Forgan Smith E348 Wednesday 12pm-12.50pm

Tutorial 2: Forgan Smith E348 Wednesday 2pm-2.50pm

This course examines the work of both modern and contemporary European philosophers on the nature of ethics and the passions. We will discuss theories of the passions and their importance for ethics in the work of, for example, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Robert Solomon and Iris Marion Young. Issues explored may include: the nature of forgiveness, the relationship between love and respect, the importance of wonder and generosity, political interpretations of the passions, and the nature of resentment.

Week One: 27^th February. Introduction to Ethics and the Passions. 

Week Two: 5^th March. Aristotle and the virtues.

Reading: Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Bollingen. Nicomachean Ethics. Books II-IV 

Week Three: 12^th March. The Stoics and controlling our emotions. Seneca.

Reading: Seneca, ‘On Tranquility of Mind.’ Dialogues and Letters Trans. C.D. N. Costa, London: Penguin, 1997. 29-58. 

Week Four: 19^th March. Heloise and Abelard – love and the ethics of intention.

Reading: Abelard and Heloise, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, Trans., Betty Radice, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. 109-156.

Week Five: 2^nd April. Descartes. Generosity and wonder.

Reading: René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol.1. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 349-89..

Week Six: 9^th April. Kant. Love and respect in Kant’s ethics.

Reading: Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy. Trans. and Ed. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 543-588.

First Essay Due: 11^th April.

Week Seven: 16^th April. Irigaray: wonder and love.

Reading: Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993, 59-71; 97-115. 

Week Eight: 23^rd April.Nietzsche: The noble virtues.

Reading: Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London: Penguin, 2003, 31-54; 192-221. 

Week Nine: 30^th April. Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers. Shame, guilt, and remorse

Reading: Karl Jaspers. The Question of German Guilt. Trans. E.B. Ashton.New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, 25-75.

Hannah Arendt, ‘Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship.’ Responsibility and Judgment. Ed. Jerome Kohn, New York: Schocken, 2003, 17-48 

Week Ten: 7^th May.Political reassessments of anger and bitterness. Negative emotions as a response to injustice.

Reading: Lisa Tessman, Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, Chapter 5.

Lynne McFall, ‘What is wrong with bitterness?’ Feminist Ethics. Ed. Claudia card. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991, 146-160. 

Week Eleven: 14^th May.Political reassessments of positive emotions. Compassion and sympathy.

Reading: Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, Chapter 7.

Elizabeth Spelman, ‘The Heady Political Life of Compassion’, Fruits of Sorrow, Boston: Beacon Press, 1998, 59-89. 

Week Twelve: 21^st May.Jankélévitch, Arendt, Derrida and forgiveness.

Reading: Jacques Derrida, ‘On Forgiveness’, On Cosmopolitanism and fo

rgiveness.

Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney, eds. London: Routledge, 2001, 27-60.

Vladimir Jankélévitch, ‘Should we Pardon them?’ Critical Inquiry22, 1996, 552-572. 

Week Thirteen: 28^th May. Review.

Second Essay due: 9^th June.