Index for PHIL-4800
Fate, Freewill, and Time
Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies
Course Syllabus and Schedule
Syllabus: 4800 S12
Schedule: 4800
Master Schedule (for Readings and Presentations)
Final Project Requirements
Final
Project Options
I. Final
Project Assignment--paper
II. Final
Short Project Assignment--short film
Assignments
Presentations:
Each presentation should offer:
(1) Analysis: a thorough
exposition of the section assigned. There is no need to cover everything, but
your audience will need to know about all of the components essential to
understanding the material.
(2) Discussion: a set of
discussion questions to submit to your classmates as a vehicle to discussion of
what you take to be the key issues or questions raised by the assigned
reading. You will required to use these
questions to provoke and guide a quality class discussion
Short Papers
(assignments coming soon)
Text
Summaries
Film
Response Papers
Supplemental Online Materials and Texts
Santas Reading
and Writing Guidelines
Study
Questions for Relevant Films (for discussion and paper writing)
|
Waking
Life |
||
|
Mindwalk |
Online Reading
and Video Materials (for substantive help on your papers and general edificationJ)
General Resources and Readings
Waking Life clip on Free
Will and Determinism
Ron
Barnette's Fate and
Freedom (former VSU Philosophy Department Head has the free will Dr. Santas
in an epic struggle with God's Omniscience)
For Ancients and Medievals
Homer
Sophocles
(497/6-406/5 BCE)
Oedipus Rex (a translation and adaptation by Dr.
Constantine Santas)
Plato
Gorgias (Project Gutenberg, Jowett translation)
Aristotle
(384-322 BCE) Nicomachean Ethics
(see notes on Aristotle
and the Good Life)
|
Reading |
Notes |
|
Text of Book III (On
Choice) |
Santas
Notes Nic.
Ethics, Book III |
|
Text of Book VII (On
Akrasia) |
Santas
Notes Nic.
Ethics, Book VII |
Epicurus
(341-270 BCE) and Lucretius (ca. 99 BC- ca. 55 BC)
Reading
Stanford
Article on Epicurus
Epicurus
Text of Letter to Menoeceus
(a life of freedom in an atomic universe)
Lucretius
Text of On
the Nature of Things, Bk II
(atoms swerving gives us free will)
Video
BBC Video on
Epicurus on Happiness: Part I;
Part
II; Part
III
Stoicism
Reading
Stanford
Article on Stoicism
Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) entry on Stoicism
Stanford
Article on Seneca (4
BC- AD 65)
Video
BBC Video on
Seneca on Anger Part
I; Part
II; Part
III
St.
Augustine (354-430)
Stanford
Article on Augustine and Will
Confessions
Bk 11 (on Time)
St.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)
For Moderns
Rene
Descartes (1596-1650)
Works
by Descartes at Project Gutenberg
Stanford
Article on Descartes
Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) entry on Descartes
YouTube Video
on Philosophy and the Matrix--Descartes
Meditations on
First Philosophy (complete
text from Early Modern Texts)
See esp. Meditation
IV (on how to remove error and find truth through free will)
See Santas Notes on Meditations, IV
John Locke
(1632-1704)
Works by
John Locke at Project Gutenberg
Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry on Locke
Macmillan
Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Locke
Text of Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
See
"Liberty of the Will" Book II, Chapter xxi
(Power), sections 5-27
Baruch
Spinoza (1632-77)
Works by Spinoza
at Project Gutenberg
Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry on Spinoza
Internet
Encyclopedia entry on Spinoza
Text of Ethics (see Parts IV & V)
Gottfried
Leibniz (1646-1716)
Works
by Leibniz at Project Gutenberg
Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy entry on Leibniz
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Leibniz
Leibniz on
Causation (see esp. section on Divine Causation)
Text of Monadology
(full text from Oregon State site)
Theodicy
(Leibniz' abridged
version of text from University of Idaho)
David Hume (1711-76)
Text of Enquiry,
See esp. Section VIII (a
discussion of Liberty and Necessity as compatible)
See Santas Notes Enquiry,
VIII
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Selection
from Critique of Pure
Reason: Antinomies (see esp. Third Antinomy, pp. 219-22)
Text of Groundwork for the Metaphysics
of Morals
See Santas
Notes on Kant's
Noumenal Self
Arthur
Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
J. S. Mill
(1806-1873)
Text of On
the Freedom of the Will (from The Online Library of Liberty)
William James
(1842-1910)
Text of Dilemma
of Determinism
G.E. Moore (1873-1958)
Free Will
J.L Austin
(1911-1960)
Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1189-1951)
Freedom of
the Will
G.H. Mead
(1863-1931)
Mind,
Self, and Society (full text
online)
The Present as the
Locus of Reality (Mead’s essay is a philosophy of time)
Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article on Mead
and Temporality
Stanford
Article on Mead, Section
5. Sociality, Emergence, and The Philosophy of the
Present
Jean Paul
Sartre (1905-80)
Text of Being and Doing Freedom
Text of Existentialism
and Humanism (a philosophy of radical freedom and choice)
Philip K. Dick (1928-82)
Works by Philip K. Dick at
Project Gutenberg
Michael Gazzaniga, Who’s in
Charge?
Ari Santas
Essay Willpower
(on freedom as a practice)
Student Evaluations Online
Instructions
for Online Student Evaluations