Philosophy of Death and Dying

What are our moral obligations to other animals? Should non-human animals have legal rights and moral standing? If so, on what basis? How does the moral treatment of animals change across the contexts of food, research, captivity, and the home? Historically, western philosophers construct the animal in opposition to the human. Why? What is an “animal” and why is the “human” contrasted with it? How does language shape and produce our relationships with animals? How is the animal represented and characterized, and how does this representation impact our thinking about animal ethics?

This discussion-based course explores the relationships between humans and non-human animals. Drawing on fiction, philosophy, and ethology, we will examine our beliefs and assumptions regarding animals, human-animal relations, and the ethical implications of the human-animal binary. This course will focus on a wide range of theoretical approaches, including the traditions of animal liberation and animal rights as articulated by thinkers such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer, the growing field of animal studies as represented by thinkers like Jacques Derrida, and current debates in practical ethics, such as animal experimentation, hunting, and invasive species.

Upon completion of the course, students will have refined their understanding of the concept of the animal and they will be familiar with the key legal and ethical debates regarding human-animal relationships. Course requirements include class discussions, weekly writing exercises, a midterm exam, and a final paper or project. Students should come to this class prepared to read challenging philosophical essays and to share their ideas with others.

This course draws on multiple disciplines and interdisciplinary fields (anthropology, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, postcolonial and feminist studies) to explore questions about authoritarian and anti-authoritarian contexts and practices. Authoritarianism, broadly defined, is characterized by centralized power, repression of dissent, and pressure to obey authority. Dictatorship, totalitarianism, and fascism all name forms of authoritarian regimes. It can be easy to recognize authoritarianism when it has become established in such forms. But what does it look, feel and sound like in terms of how it can infiltrate our daily systems? In this class, we will consider how authoritarianism can take hold through looking at dynamics of power in the relations, discourses and structures that make up everyday sites such as the home, family, the school, places of worship, and the workplace. On the flip side, we will also consider examples of collaboration in contexts of conflict and disagreement. What does working (and learning, teaching, and living) together in contexts of conflict, and with multiple forms of difference and disagreement, involve? The course will include attention to the significance of the nation-state as a form of political organization that dominates the globe today. We will also consider examples of social and political movements that have emerged in response to state repression in the 20th and 21st centuries in different parts of the world, as well as contemporary discourses about racism and anti-racism, sexual violence, war, capitalism and economic power, and disagreement and conflict.

Some of the questions we will examine over the term include: How do we understand relations between truth and power (and how are these terms defined)? How do we know what we think we know (epistemology)? What is structural power? What is the significance of relations between individual and group for how we respond to tensions between “individual freedom” and “collective or community wellbeing”? What is the significance of private/public distinctions for politics? Course materials will likely include work by Louis Althusser, Nur Amali Ibrahim, Benedict Anderson, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Verónica Gago, Adolf Hitler, William Mazzarella, George Orwell, Edward Said, Carl Schmitt, Timothy Snyder, Gayatri Spivak and Luisa Valenzuela, among others. We will also draw on contemporary news, social media and film. Students will be evaluated based on small group projects, weekly reading responses, and a mid-term paper.

What is the nature of self? What is the nature of mind? Why do we suffer? What is enlightenment? This course introduces students to the foundations of Buddhist philosophy and practice. Buddhism encompasses a variety of different traditions, teachings, practices, and goals. In this class, we will adopt a philosophical perspective to explore a range of Buddhist thinking on topics such as reality, consciousness, nothingness, and ethical conduct.

We will begin by reading Asvagho?a's Buddhacarita, which tells the story of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha. Next, we will study the Theravada, Buddhism's foundational structure, and then proceed to explore the later Mahayana teachings. This course will study primary literature, including excerpts from the Pali Canon and several Mahayana sutras, alongside selections from contemporary thinkers such as Thích Nhat Hanh, angel Kyodo williams, and Pema Chödrön. Along the way, we will discuss suffering (dukkha), emptiness (suññata), impermanence (anicca), non-self (anatta), interdependence or dependent uprising (pa?iccasamuppada), desire (tanha), the four noble truths, the eightfold path, liberation and enlightenment (nibbana), action and causation (kamma), wisdom (pañña), compassion (karuna and bodhicitta), and our responsibilities to other beings.

Although this course primarily focuses on Buddhist theory and Buddhist texts, students will be briefly introduced to different meditation and mindfulness practices through a series of guest speakers and a weekend visit to the Morgan Bay Zendo in Surry, Maine. This course will be conducted in seminar style with an emphasis on class participation. No prior background in Buddhism or philosophy is required. Course requirements include class participation, weekly writing assignments, a midterm essay, and a final project.

The practice of social dreaming has a long history in philosophical thinking, stretching back to Hesiod and Plato. What constitutes a perfect or ideal society? Or, if no such place is possible, what makes for a well-functioning society? Likewise, what constitutes a terrible society? What kind of places and spaces do we want to avoid? These are important questions for human ecologists to ask as we seek to improve our relationships with our natural, social, and technological environments. To explore questions of ideal and flawed places, this course studies the concepts of utopia and dystopia across a range of philosophical, political, and literary writings. Although we will focus our attention on theoretical literature, we will read several novels and short stories, and students will present research on a work of utopian or dystopian fiction.

Additional course questions include: What motivates us to envision utopias and dystopias? Does political philosophy require a utopian vision? What do utopias and dystopias tell us about social fears, anxieties, and hopes? Course readings will focus on classical Greek thought, Enlightenment thought, political theory, and critical theory. Texts may include Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Octavia Butler’s Blood Child, Ursula K. LaGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and selections form The Utopian Reader by Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent. Since this course is being offered as a college seminar and will meet the first-year writing requirement, we will focus on writing as process—prewriting, writing, and rewriting. As students draft bi-weekly writing assignments, they will meet with the professor or TA either individually or as part of a weekly writing lab. Papers will be peer reviewed and each student will be expected to revise each paper. In addition to bi-weekly papers, there will be an in-class presentation, a midterm exam, and a final paper.

This course is an introduction to concepts and practices of nationalism, the modern nation-state, and questions about postcolonial contexts and concepts. Over the term we will draw on the disciplines of anthropology, literature, history, philosophy, and on the interdisciplinary fields of psychoanalysis, postcolonial and feminist studies to think critically about the relations between group and individual, between governments and corporations, as well as about citizenship, sovereignty, border control, migration, repression, genocidal violence, patriotism, belonging and exclusion. The course will begin with key points of historical reference such as the Peace of Westphalia and the French, US, and Haitian Revolutions. We will then proceed to focus on examples of nationalist projects in 19th, 20th, and 21st century Europe, as well as on nationalist and postcolonial movements in the Americas, Africa, and Western Asia. Students will be asked to consider course materials in relation to contemporary discussions about asylum, racism, sexism, capitalism and poverty, political economy, freedom of speech, academic and artistic freedom, genocide, human rights, and political violence. Course materials will likely include work by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Benedict Anderson, Hannah Arendt, Aime Césaire, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Eric Hobsbawm, Ranjana Khanna, Deborah Thomas, Carol Pateman, Jacques Rousseau, Edward Said, Carl Schmitt, Gayatri Spivak, and Françoise Vergès.

Students will be evaluated on class participation, weekly reading responses, and two short essays.

Algerian Jewish philosopher, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), one of the most widely translated French philosophers of the 20th century, developed a body of work often referred to as "deconstruction." Derrida’s oeuvre has influenced multiple fields and disciplines, including Literature, Anthropology, Philosophy, Postcolonial Studies, Psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory. This course will track some of the ways in which Derrida engaged with ideas of difference, through a focus on questions his work poses for understandings of the human. The class will engage with Derrida’s archive through reading some of his early work, including essays and interviews about the status of writing and speech, language, and philosophy, and then move through his later work, including his increasing focus on explicitly political topics such as the death Peñalty, the animal, sovereignty, and war. Although the texts we read will be primarily Derrida’s own writing, we will also read authors who respond to and build on Derrida’s thought. These may include Gayatri Spivak, Ranjana Khanna, Samir Haddad, Peggy Kamuf, and Michael Naas, as well as texts by those with whom Derrida was in dialogue, such as Sigmund Freud, Hélène Cixous, Michel Foucault, Sarah Kofman, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. As we move through Derrida’s texts and those informed by them, we will pay particular attention to questions about sexual difference, colonialism, the human, death in relation to life, and representation. Students will be evaluated on participation in seminar discussions, weekly reading responses, a mid-term paper and final paper. There are no prerequisites for this course, but students will be expected to conduct close readings of challenging texts. Students are encouraged to contact the professor with any questions about the course and whether it is a good fit for them.