Spring Quarter

In this seminar we will read a substantial portion of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. We will examine Aristotle's account of happiness or the good and its relation to other goods, his conception of virtue or excellence of character and how it is acquired, his conception of decision and deliberation, his account of practical wisdom, the kinds of friendship, and the two forms of happiness.

An examination of the relationship between language and action from the classical pragmatists to Oxford philosophy of ordinary language. Thinkers include, among others, Victoria Welby, C.I. Lewis, Margaret Macdonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, and J.L. Austin.

In this seminar we will look at various attempts, both historical and contemporary, to understand the essential character of human action, that have either deliberately abstracted from its ethical dimensions or, conversely, attempted to place it at the core of their accounts. Topics will include the nature of intention, ethical 'constitutivism', the so-called 'guise of the good', and the character of practical rationality more generally.