Skip Navigation
Course Descriptions
Search
Course Descriptions
For a complete list of the courses offered by the department, visit the undergraduate
Course Catalogue.
Fall 2026 Courses
Robert P Crease
CER, HUM
Can AI make better people than humans are? Philosophers have been examining what it is to be human for millennia, each time capturing different aspects of what it is to be a person. Different ideas of human selfhood appear in Plato, the Bible, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and other thinkers. Different sides of selfhood show up when human beings become artists, scientists, friends, and more. Today it seems that AI does selfhood even better than we do. Does it? By the end of the semester, you’ll know.Timothy Jaeger
CER, HUM
An introduction to philosophy through readings and discussion on topics such as human identity, human understanding, and human values.
HUM
An introduction to pivotal theories of the Western philosophic tradition. Readings are drawn from ancient Greek, medieval, and modern classics of philosophy. Topics may include philosophic theories of politics, morality, logic, metaphysics, knowledge, anthropology, art, and religion.Psycho-Function
Maxaie Belmont
HUM, SBSAn Introduction to philosophy through readings and discussion on topics such as human cognition, memory, behavior, and identity. This course introduces key concepts about the nature of the human mind in Western Philosophy. The course will be conducted two-fold: a reading of dialogues from ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s Republic, Book 8 - 10, then select readings from the history of philosophy that coincide with the dialogues. The major topics to be covered will be beliefs, motivations, desires, and delusions, all united in one question: Why do any of those things matter to us, to you?
Dilara Sengul
HUM, SBS
An introduction to philosophy through the analysis of one or more aspects of contemporary life such as technology, war, international relations, families and friendships, or race, class and gender. A variety of texts are used.
CER, HUM
An introduction to philosophy through inquiry into the formation, justification, and evaluation of moral judgments. Students are introduced to the major theories and problems of ethics, such as utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative, ethical relativism, egoism, and classical conceptions of the good and virtue. Against this background students engage in discussions of contemporary moral issues.
CER, HUM
An introduction to philosophy through inquiry into the formation, justification, and evaluation of moral judgments. Students are introduced to the major theories and problems of ethics, such as utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative, ethical relativism, egoism, and classical conceptions of the good and virtue. Against this background students engage in discussions of contemporary moral issues.
Alexander R. Hufford
Our tumultuous world of today is a direct product of both ancient and modern political thought and action. In particular, revolutions of past centuries (like those in England, America, and France) were all inspired by a blend of ancient and modern political thought. For this reason, understanding aspects of contemporary political situations calls for a critical engagement with the foundational texts of Western political theory. In this course, we will read and analyze selections from Aristotle’s Politics, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract. Students will gain a solid foundation in ancient political theory and discuss relations between political theory and historical events, namely, Locke’s connection to the English Glorious Revolution of 1688 and Rousseau’s connection to the French Revolution of 1789. We will engage with these texts and ideas in the interest of gaining insight into the historical origins of contemporary political debates.
CER, DIV, HUMGary Mar
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
ESI, HUM
— ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY (1900 -1944)
Today influencers compete to monopolize, and monetize, our attention and time. One way to guard against undue influence is to equip our minds with an antidote, the skills of logical and critical reasoning. This course attempts to impart these skills, and to inculcate the habit, of critical thinking through a series of modules: creative problem solving, the art of deductive logic, the rhetorical and ethical principles of effective advocacy, the laws of probability for distinguishing pseudo-scientific fallacies from scientific theory testing.The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
This course will introduce students to the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, considered to be the three basic branches of knowledge acquisition and exercise since the Middle Ages. Learning how to read, comprehend, and communicate well is the threefold purpose of the course. (Students should be aware before registering that use of laptops, tablets, and cell phones in the classroom is strictly prohibited.)
Gregory Menillo
ESI, HUMInformal Approaches to Formal Logic
Michael Barr
ESI, HUMStudents can expect this course to focus around several topics in formal and informal logic, including but not limited to formal rules of inference, first order predicate logic, Russell's Paradox and Gödel's first and second Incompleteness Theorems.
Jennifer Carter
HUM, SBSThe principal aim of this course is to help a student acquire the skills of thinking, reading, and writing critically. The student develops a sensitivity to language and argumentation that is applicable to a wide range of situations and subject matters. Material is intended for freshmen and sophomores.
Jennifer Carter
HUM, SBSThe principal aim of this course is to help a student acquire the skills of thinking, reading, and writing critically. The student develops a sensitivity to language and argumentation that is applicable to a wide range of situations and subject matters. Material is intended for freshmen and sophomores.
HUM
An introduction to the historical and comparative study of the various arts in relation to the philosophical ideas that prevailed at the same time. At least four significantly different historical periods of intense creative activity - such as ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the 18th or 19th century in the West, ancient China, T’ang or Sung dynasty China, Heian or Muromachi period Japan, and the contemporary age - are studied in terms of the interconnections between philosophical theorizing and artistic practice.
Jennifer Carter
STASInvestigates the history as well as the present and potential future impact of technology and artifacts not only on material human life but also on the human experience of the world. It addresses ethical questions concerning the uses and abuses of technology as well as asking such questions as whether technology is neutral and merely instrumental or should be seen as having a more profound impact on human life.
Monsters and Machines
Computers, robots, AIs, and other forms of machinery challenge conventions about what is natural and artificial, conscious and non-conscious, good and evil. In this course we will address and question these conventions guided by three monsters: cyborgs, golems, and titans. Why monsters? They are both fascinating and frightening, they live between normal and paranormal worlds, and they are strange and somehow familiar. In short, monsters resist binary thinking; they are experts in occupying an intermediate position where conventional oppositions blur and destabilize. This is precisely the philosophical position that we must inhabit when thinking about modern technology. Through the cyborg, we will question the limits between the body and the machine, and the organic and the inorganic. The golem will help us to approach the gap between words and meaning, and intelligence and sentience. As for the titans, cyclopes will lead us to a discussion on how power employs technology, Prometheus will show us how technology is in itself power, and finally Cronus will open for us the question concerning the future of our world and experience.
William Perez-Porras
STASTara Mastrelli
The United States turns 250 this year. And honestly? It’s not looking great.
HUM and USA
The questions at the center of this course aren’t tucked safely in the past. They’re in the news, in the courts, in the arguments you may already be having. This course is about where those arguments came from, and what’s really at stake.
In this course we will critically engage with the philosophical ideas of the founding of the United States of America. We will study the political and moral ideas that shaped the founders’ understanding of human nature, justice, and rights, examining how these ideas influenced the founding of U.S. institutions. We will also analyze debates and critical perspectives that challenged the glaring contradictions between the purported ideals (i.e. equality, freedom, etc.) and the lived experience of those who were legally, practically, and violently excluded from said ideals (i.e. enslaved Black people, Indigenous peoples, and women).
Ultimately, we will ask together (and each student will answer for themselves) whether the promise of American life was ever meant to—or perhaps more importantly, can now—be realized by all.Viviane Magno Ribeiro
This course introduces modern philosophy by examining its main disagreements and clashes with ancient and medieval traditions, emphasizing the radical nature of its ideas. For this, the student will be introduced to the theoretical revolutions in metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, and political philosophy. Expect to read the major thinkers of the period, such as Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Locke, and Kant, as well as selected texts by women and Latin-American philosophers that reinforce the radicality of the universal and modern activity of thought.
GLO, HUMAlan Kim
CER, HUMReadings in existential philosophy and literature with special emphasis on such themes as alienation, anxiety, nihilism, absurdity, the self, value, death, and immediacy. Existentialist categories are used to interpret contemporary lifestyles and culture.
Foundations and Fractures: Law, Violence, and Political Community’
Valentina MoroCER, HUM
This course examines three foundational political paradigms – the polis, the social contract, and the modern state – by tracing the philosophical and political debates that shaped their emergence. Through this trajectory, particular attention is given to the way in which each framework defines political community and articulates the relationship between law, authority, and collective life.
A central focus of the course is the shifting interplay between power, law, and violence, especially in relation to the conditions under which obedience is demanded and disobedience becomes thinkable or necessary. In this sense, the course not only investigates the formation of political order but also the limits of legal and institutional authority, foregrounding practices of resistance and contestation within political communities.Rosabel Ansari
This course undertakes advanced studies in selected Greek thinkers from the pre-Socratics to the classical Athenian philosophers and the Hellenistic schools. Themes include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. We grapple with the continued relevance of Ancient philosophy for the contemporary world, our own lives, and how we make sense of things.
CER, HFA+MEDIEVAL MYSTICS ON GOD
Clyde Lee Miller
HFA+Everyone says that the medieval thinkers were focused on philosophy about God. Yet few courses about medieval thought go directly to the medieval mystical writings to understand both the attraction and the complexity of thinking and talking about God.
In this course we will sample five different texts whose authors consider seriously how to think about their relationship to God.Harvey Cormier
HFA+, USAA study of selected major figures in the history of American philosophy, e.g., Jefferson, Emerson, Edwards, James, Peirce, Dewey, Whitehead, and Santayana. American history is viewed through the lens of American philosophies such as pragmatism and transcendentalism.
Jennifer Carter
ESI, HFA+An exploration of the major assumptions, commitments, methods, and strategies of hermeneutics and deconstruction. The course examines how these two recent schools of thought have developed out of the contemporary philosophical scene and how they have had such a significant impact on literary theory, art criticism, text theory, social theory, and the history of philosophy. Readings include selections from the writing of Heidegger, Gadamer, Jauss, Ricoeur, Derrida, Kristeva, Lyotard, Kofman, Irigaray, and others.
CER,HFA+
Philosophical questions raised by human relations with the natural world, ranging from basic concepts such as nature, ecology, the earth, and wilderness, to the ethical, economic, political, and religious dimensions of current environmental problems, including the question of whether there are values inherent in nature itself beyond those determined by human interests alone.
Robert P Crease
STAS
This is an especially dangerous moment in human history. The Earth can no longer be treated as an inert background stage for our actions. Human and natural powers are now intertwined in an unprecedented way. Knowing those powers and how to manipulate them is critical to the existence and survival of our world. This course is about the systematic process behind that knowing. It analyzes the history of that process, its various features – experiment, theory, discovery, evidence, objectivity – and why that process is important for a democracy.‘Feminist Responses to Structural Violence’
Valentina MoroCER, HFA+
What does it mean to think about violence in structural terms? This question is closely tied to the role of institutions, as they reflect power relations while shaping identities.
The first part of this course will focus on key texts from continental philosophy that address the problem of violence in very different ways. Building on this conceptual vocabulary, we will then examine how feminist philosophies have addressed structural violence across three main areas: labor (both waged and domestic), coloniality, and state institutions – including the administration of justice. We will explore how these theoretical interventions have introduced a new vocabulary, with political and legal terms such as oppression, intersectionality, and femicide. Finally, we will consider how these responses are often connected to concrete community-based practices centered on refusal, institution-building, and abolition.Plato’s Theaetetus and The Sophist
Clyde Lee Miller
HFA+The Theaetetus is one of Plato’s longer dialogues in which he explores several different views of knowledge and knowing. The dialogue that follows is the Sophist which continues the conversation that seems unfinished in the Theaetetus. Here is an opportunity for seniors to reflect on the ways they see themselves as learners and knowers as they read and discuss these texts.
Sachiko Murata
ESI, HFA+Designed for upper-division students, this course presents in-depth study of a specific topic in an Asian philosophical tradition. Students are expected to demonstrate knowledge through mastery of native terms and concepts from that tradition.
William Chittick
ESI, HFA+
Designed for upper-division students, this course presents in-depth study of a specific topic in an Asian philosophical tradition. Students are expected to demonstrate knowledge through mastery of native terms and concepts from that tradition.
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
ESI, HFA+
Designed for upper-division students, this course presents in-depth study of a specific topic in an Asian philosophical tradition. Students are expected to demonstrate knowledge through mastery of native terms and concepts from that tradition.
Andrew Nicholoson
ESI, HFA+
Designed for upper-division students, this course presents in-depth study of a specific topic in an Asian philosophical tradition. Students are expected to demonstrate knowledge through mastery of native terms and concepts from that tradition.
Stony Brook UniversityHarriman Hall 213Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750
Phone: (631) 632-7570