Course Description
This course builds philosophical foundations for graduate students in the interdisciplinary study of theology, philosophy, and culture. The course attends to relationships between philosophy and theology by looking at philosophers who have dealt with the theological tradition of the West and whose influence has affected the subsequent development of theology and of philosophy. While attending to western cultural and historical influences on philosophy that have in turn structured dominant Christian thinking, the course strives to remember that philosophy is a cultural product. Accordingly, this course seeks to understand western philosophy’s influence, its sources, its strengths, and its limitations even as students begin to think globally about Christian thought.
The questions that guide this course include:
- What is truth, and who defines what is true?
- In what institutions or bodies do power and authority reside?
- In what ways are the thinkers we study conservers of their culture and in other ways revolutionaries?
- And finally, what do philosophy and theology have to do with our present-day social worlds and our communities of accountability?
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- articulate some of the major questions, themes, and figures in theological and philosophical history.
- describe how the history of philosophy impacts their particular vocation and the social issues that affect them and their communities.
- demonstrate the ability to critically explore the complexity of human culture in context, utilizing a Christian theological perspective.
- interrogate the structures of power that produce philosophical and theological knowledges.
Contract Grading
For more information on how you will be graded in this course, please refer to the Contract Grading page here.
Students must submit their contract by the second week of class, May 3.
Lectures
All lectures will be recorded as audio podcasts (A Curious Disputation, available here and on Spotify, Breaker, Google Podcasts, and others). Students are expected to listen to the podcast and read the show notes prior to class in order to prepare for large-group and small-group discussion.
Engagement
Student engagement is essential for this seminar course, though it may look different for each student. Students will be asked to turn in a self-evaluation at the end of the term with an articulation of how they engaged with the course content (e.g. in-class discussion, careful reading of the texts, engagement with the content outside of class, note-taking, etc.).
Students will complete a self-evaluation due on the last day of class (June 21).
Reading Responses
Each week (beginning May 3), students will submit a single-page reading response for that week’s readings. The responses should be limited to one page and can take any form most useful to the student: bulleted lists, mind-maps, illustrations, stream-of-conscious responses. There must be some words (though not all words), and the Responses must in some way address the guiding question for the week alongside any other pertinent notes useful for in-class discussion and the students’ own learning.
Note that part of their reading will include a small excerpt of a primary sources, known as a “toe dip” and marked with an asterisk on the course schedule. Students will be asked to just “dip their toes” into the water of the primary source on their own; these sources will be engaged more fully in class. Students are welcome to read the full primary source as they wish; these will be accessible on the course Perusall page.
Weekly Questions:
- May 3, Subjugated Knowledges: Describe “subjugated knowledge” as defined by Foucault and expanded on by other thinkers this week. How might attention to subjugated knowledge be significant to the work of this course?
- May 10, Neoplatonic Thought: What about Augustine’s location in North Africa in the 4th century helps make sense of his philosophical and theological convictions?
- May 17, Aristotelian Thought: How might we understand the particularity of Hildegard’s and Thomas Aquinas’s authority in the Church and broader Medieval culture?
- May 24, Modern Philosophy: What are some of the major shifts in thought that occurred in and around Descartes’ lifetime?
- May 31, The Enlightenment: How do you understand our world (students, in Seattle, in the U.S., in the 21st century) as a continuation of Enlightenment-era thinking?
- June 7, Existentialism: How would you describe an existentialist epistemology (i.e. theory of knowledge)? What is truth for a Christian existentialist like Kierkegaard?
- June 14, Social Gospel: What are some of the ways Du Bois had to establish his authority as a Black thinker, especially vis-a-vis thinkers like Hildegard, Wollstonecraft, Kant, and others from generations before?
- June 21, Post-Structuralism: How do you see this theme of “against essentialism” show up in Halberstam’s work, as well as other texts you’ve read in this course and others this year?
Deep Dive
After spending a few weeks “dipping your toe” into the waters of philosophical primary sources, you will be asked to do a “deep dive” into a philosophical thinker and their primary source writing, as illuminated through secondary source material.
For this assignment, you will be asked to:
- Choose a philosophical thinker from the course.
- Pick a social issue that that thinker addresses in his/her context (e.g. sexuality, war, political engagement, economics).
- Find and read 3 primary source readings by this thinker on this topic and 3-5 secondary source readings that will help you make sense of the primary source readings.
- Turn in a Deep Dive Reading Guide which is designed to help you articulate, apply, analyze, evaluate, and reflect-upon your reading.
Please reach out to Lauren for help determining a social issue and locating primary sources.
Suggested due date: May 24 on Populi. All assignments due by end of the term.
Subjugated Knowledges Project
In the second century CE, the writer Tertullian famously posed the question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” His question wasn’t a curiosity; he was notoriously suspicious of the role of reason and philosophy (“Athens”) in theological thought (“Jerusalem”). Throughout this term we have attended to the ways the philosophical tradition provides the grounding for theological thinking. We have also pushed this question forward to ask, what do Athens and Jerusalem have to do with our current social context(s)?
For your final project, I’d like you to craft your own answer to the questions, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and “What has Athens and Jerusalem to do with [social context]?” What are some of the ways you think the theological tradition has leaned on the work of philosophy? In what ways does your study of philosophy help you read theological thought or tradition differently? How do the questions of the philosophers we’ve studied help you ask new questions of your vocation and the communities you are invested in?
How you attend to these questions is up to you. However, you are encouraged to explore a subjugated mode of knowledge, like the ones we have explored in the course, such as: short stories, podcasts, videos, informative websites, children’s books, and visual art.
The goal of this assignment is for you to (1) deepen your understanding of the course’s readings and concepts, to (2) synthesize new ideas by bringing together insights from various readings and your own research or reflection, and to (3) share those new ideas with a (potentially) non-academic audience. Although aesthetics is culturally and historically bound–like everything else in this course!–this assignment asks you exhibit a level of excellence in your creative work. See previous students’ projects (for inspo), here.
Note: All assignments must include a bibliography in Chicago Style. Works of art will need to be submitted with an Artist’s Statement that reflects on how the questions from the course inform your artistic expression. Students should submit a brief, informal proposals by June 7: https://forms.gle/m3Cbcbuv2QfXHPaG7.
Due June 21 for graduating students, June 24 for non-graduating students, on Populi.
Weekly Schedule
| Class Date | Topics | Readings/Assignment |
|---|---|---|
| April 25 | Introductions & Orientations | Read through syllabus and class website. |
| May 3 | Subjugated Knowledges | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 1 Read Hartman, “In Search of Subjugated Knowledge” Read Mingolo, “Decolonizing Western Epistemology” Read Frykenberg, “A Short Lesson in Subjugated Knowledges” Read Foucault, “Two Lectures”* Turn in Subjugated Knowledge Reading Response Turn in Grading Contract |
| May 10 | Neoplatonic Thought | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 2 Floyd-Thomas, “Plato on Reason” (Beyond the Pale) Read Miles, “Patriarchy as Political Theology” Read Updike, “Augustine’s Concubine” Read Augustine, Confessions, Books I & III* Turn in Neoplatonic Thought Reading Response |
| May 17 | Aristotelian Thought | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 3 Read Antonio, “Aristotle on Politics” (Beyond the Pale) Read Crosthwaite, “Thomas Aquinas on Servitude” (Beyond the Pale) Read Allen, “Two Medieval Views on Women’s Identity” Watch “Introduction to Hildegard von Bingen” on TikTok Read Aquinas, Compendium to Theology* Read Hildegard, Scivias* Turn in Aristotelian Thought Reading Response |
| May 24 | Foundations of Modern Philosophy | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 4 Read Livingston & Schüssler Fiorenza, Modern Christian Thought Read Barstow, Witchcraze Read Todd, “Thomas Hobbes on Human Nature” (Beyond the Pale) Read Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy* Turn in Modern Philosophy Reading Response Turn in Deep Dive |
| May 31 | The Enlightenment | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 5 Read Logan, “Immanuel Kant on Categorical Imperative” (Beyond the Pale) Read Brekus, “Sarah Osborn’s Enlightenment” Watch “Mary Wollstonecraft and A Vindication of the Rights of Women“ Read Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women* Read Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals* Turn in Enlightenment Reading Response |
| June 7 | Existentialism | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 6 Read Antonio, “Friedrich Nietzsche on Will to Power” (Beyond the Pale) Read Livingston, “Christian Existentialism” Watch “Existentialism: Crash Course Philosophy“ Read Nietzsche, The Will to Power* Read Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling* Watch a LIVE reading of Kierkegaard and the Mermaid at 7 p.m. PDT Turn in Existentialism Reading Response Turn in Project Proposal |
| June 14 | Social Gospel | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 7 Sanders, “Walter Rauschenbusch on Society” (Beyond the Pale) West, “Reinhold Niebuhr on Realism” (Beyond the Pale) Dorrien, “Recovering the Black Social Gospel” Read Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk* Read Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis* Turn in Social Gospel Reading Response |
| June 21 | Post-Structuralism | Listen to A Curious Disputation, Season 2 Ep 8 Pollis, “The Apparatus of Sexuality” Smith, “Michel Foucault on Power” (Beyond the Pale) Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure” Ott and Sawyer, “Sexual Practices and Relationships among Young People” Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. 1* Turn in Post-Structuralism Reading Response |