Joshua Trubowitz

Course description and syllabus coming soon!

Description: This is the first course in a year-long sequence about the nature and purpose of political life. Among other things, we will consider why human beings live in political communities; whether there is a distinctively human form of social life; the grounds on which a political community is entitled to use force on its own citizens; and whether it should allow its citizens to pursue their own conception of happiness. In the attempt to answer these questions, we will meditate on the relationship between virtue and happiness, the difference between education and indoctrination, the tension between personal happiness and the common good, and more. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Machiavelli will be our guides.

Syllabus

Description: We will confront foundational questions about the nature of truth and reality through an intensive study of Plato’s Sophist. Questions about what is real are familiar to us. We wonder whether people are being fake with us, or whether God exists, or whether there is really such a ‘thing’ as justice. But there is also a prior and more fundamental question: What does it mean for something to be real? This is known in philosophy as ‘The Problem of Being.’ Plato’s Sophist is one of the Western philosophical tradition’s most searching attempts to answer it. We will try to follow in Plato’s footsteps. Major themes of the course will include: reality vs. mere appearance; authenticity vs. pretending; truth and falsehood; and the difference between beings (entities, things) and their being.

Syllabus