2007 Readings

Belief and the Existence of God

7^th March

• St Thomas Aquinas, Whether God Exists
• William Paley, The Teleological Argument
• David Hume, ‘Why Does God Let People Suffer?’ in Bowie, GL, Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy

14^th March

• William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief
• Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, Chap. 7

21^st March

• Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations
• Plato, Theaetetus

Abortion and Euthanasia

28^th March

• Robert E. Joyce, Personhood and the Conception Event
• Alasdair Macintyre, ‘The Storytelling Animal’ in Bowie, GL, Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy

4^th April

• Ian Weeks, A Letter on Euthanasia
• Ian Weeks, July 16th 2007, Remembering Dion

18^th April

• Judith J. Thomson, A Defence of Abortion

The Good Life

2^nd May

• Aristotle, book 8, Nicomachean Ethics
• Plato, Phaedrus

9^th May

• Mahdi, Muhsin, ‘Alfarabi’, in Leo Strauss & Joseph Cropsey (eds.), History of Political Philosophy

16^th May

• The myth of the ‘ring of Gyges’ — Plato’s Republic, Book II excerpt
• Epicurus on the pursuit of pleasure — Letter to Monocceus
• Thomas Hobbes: all people are selfish — excerpt from Leviathan

23^rd May

• FL van Baumer, Main Currents of Western Thought, Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes

Science and Truth

30^th May

• BF Skinner, ‘Is a Science of Human Behavior Possible?’
• J Peter Euben, ‘Political Science and Political Silence’

25^th July

• Karl Popper, ‘Science: Conjectures and Refutuations’, Ch 1

1^st August

• Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, Ch 11

Woman

8^th August

• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, ‘Introduction: Woman as Other’ (1949)

Justice and the State

15^th August

• Excerpts from JS Mill’s Utilitarianism, Chapter 5 (1863)

22^nd August

• Chapter 3 of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology, ‘Political Theology’

29^th August

• Osama bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa

The Philosophy of Technology

5^th September

• Nick Bostrom (2007) Letter from Utopia, www.nickbostrom.com
• George Grant (1969) ‘A Platitude’, in Technology & Empire, Anansi, Ontario

12^th September

• George Grant (1969) ‘The University Curriculum’, in Technology and Empire, Anansi, Ontario

19^th September

• Slavoj Žižek, ‘The Matrix, or The Two Sides of Perversion’, in Enjoy Your Symptom!

The Virtue of Selfishness

17^th October

• Ayn Rand (1961) ‘Introduction’, in The Virtue of Selfishness