PHIL491/591 SP25

Special Topics in Modern Philosophy (PHIL491/591)
Leibniz
Dr. Marie Jayasekera
Mondays & Wednesdays  ·  2:00pm–3:15pm  ·  LA5–149

Called ‘polymath’ and ‘the last universal genius’, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is considered by many today to be one of the great thinkers of the early modern period. He made significant and influential contributions not only to philosophy but to disciplines as far-ranging as mathematics, physics, jurisprudence, and history.

This course will cover a subset of his countless writings and correspondence to get a sense of his mature philosophical thought on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and ethics. Time permitting, we may also read some of his writings on other philosophers in the period, such as Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley, both to see how he saw his contemporaries and for the light those works shed on his own philosophy.

Students taking this course will work on developing their ability to read historical texts; practice identifying, articulating, and analyzing arguments and positions from those texts; and practice constructing their own arguments about the texts and expressing those arguments in writing and orally during class meetings. Students should be prepared and willing to work through challenging primary texts and to engage actively in discussion with the material and the ideas of the other participants in the class.

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