Available Courses

This course is an introduction to Analytic Philosophy and its history. This tradition or “style of thinking” is strongly associated with Anglo-American Philosophy, although it is widely practiced all through the world, as in Germany, Canada, Québec, Spain, South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle-East, India, Pakistan and China, Oceania and Africa.

We will focus on some of the main figures of the history of this movement, such as Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine and Davidson. We will also encounter other figures in philosophy of science and political philosophy.

Kant’s intention was to limit the claims of metaphysics in order to make room for faith. He saw his philosophical efforts as a revolution akin to that of Copernicus. The course will consider Kant’s claim that his critique was a “call to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge.” A close reading of parts of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and of other major texts will be used as a basis for this consideration.

Through a critical assessment of philosophical discourses on religion in modernity, this course will attempt to map out the current definitions of religions, their anthropological, ethical and metaphysical conditions and claims. This course will be attentive to their limits and relations to definitions produced by sociological and psychoanalytical discourses. The lectures will focus on religious behaviours and acts, and their effects on individuals and groups. This course is not about “God”. It will define the place and function of the images and ideas about the divine in religion.

This seminar is a close examination of the multiple interactions of dialectical philosophy, the divine method, cosmology, knowledge, pleasure and the good in Plato’s Philebus. This late period dialogue focuses on the one/many problematic in its initial sections. It then examines the method of dialectic. The inquiry in Philebus into the four kinds of the unlimited, the limited, mixture and cause had a profound effect on late Neo-Platonism and early Christianity. The Philebusconcludes with a hierarchy of the five possessions in relation to the good life. The seminar is open to M.A. and Ph.D. students. A knowledge of ancient Greek would be helpful but is not required.

The objective of this course is to encourage students to learn to read Modern philosophical texts in a systematic way. Such a process is painstaking at first, but it has many advantages. A student who learns to follow closely the thoughts of a great thinker will be less dependent on secondary sources of opinion.

The objective of this course is to encourage students to learn to read Modern philosophical texts in a systematic way. Such a process is painstaking at first, but it has many advantages. A student who learns to follow closely the thoughts of a great thinker will be less dependent on secondary sources of opinion.

Through a critical assessment of philosophical discourses on religion in modernity, this course will attempt to map out the current definitions of religions, their anthropological, ethical and metaphysical conditions and claims. This course will be attentive to their limits and relations to definitions produced by sociological and psychoanalytical discourses. The lectures will focus on religious behaviours and acts, and their effects on individuals and groups. This course is not about “God”. It will define the place and function of the images and ideas about the divine in religion.

Western philosophy has had and, sometimes, continues to have a difficult and complex relationship with affectivity, passions and feelings. However, in various ways, the emotional life will have been thought of from Aristotle to the Stoics, from Thomas Aquinas to Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, etc.

The 20th century oscillated, in philosophy and other disciplines, between the primacy of suffering, pain and pain and the liberation of desire and the promotion of enjoyment. He will have been attentive to the “complaint” as much as to the cries of joy, to the temporality of these experiences as much as to the speeches which express them.

This course intends to propose two interpretative threads of what happened there, two threads which will be crossed. The first thread, heterochronic (Foucault), comes from a careful reading of questions and treatments of “passions” by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, before the invention of the idea of the responsible and rational individual subject. The second thread will come from the contemporary reflections of George Didi-Huberman on the “facts of affects” which attempt to go beyond the psychologizing aporias of discourse on affects, passions, feelings, emotions.

Western philosophy has had and, sometimes, continues to have a difficult and complex relationship with affectivity, passions and feelings. However, in various ways, the emotional life will have been thought of from Aristotle to the Stoics, from Thomas Aquinas to Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, etc.

The 20th century oscillated, in philosophy and other disciplines, between the primacy of suffering, pain and pain and the liberation of desire and the promotion of enjoyment. He will have been attentive to the “complaint” as much as to the cries of joy, to the temporality of these experiences as much as to the speeches which express them.

This course intends to propose two interpretative threads of what happened there, two threads which will be crossed. The first thread, heterochronic (Foucault), comes from a careful reading of questions and treatments of “passions” by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, before the invention of the idea of the responsible and rational individual subject. The second thread will come from the contemporary.