Philosophy Courses

PHIL 1F90
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophical Classics and Contemporary Life
Contemporary problems viewed through a variety of philosophical writings. Students are encouraged to formulate and examine their own beliefs about freedom, knowledge, religion, love and questions of right and wrong.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 1F91, 1F93 and 1F94 except with permission of the department.

PHIL 1F91
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophies of Human Nature
How do we see ourselves? Who are we? What are we? A critical analysis and evaluation of classical and contemporary views of human nature from a variety of philosophical and religious traditions.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 1F90, 1F93 and 1F94 except with permission of the department.

PHIL 1F93
Introduction to Philosophy: The Foundations of the Present
An attempt to place the philosophical issues which confront the reflective individual today in their historical context by examining the teachings and arguments which shape our views of such matters as body and soul, life after death, truth and knowledge, faith and moral responsibility.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 1F90, 1F91 and 1F94 except with permission of the department.

PHIL 1F94
Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophical Problems
Central problems of philosophy as living questions for reflection, dialogue and debate, including: Is the external world really there? Does God exist? Can I really know anything? What is a person? Is everything permissible? Can my life have meaning?
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 1F90, 1F91 and 1F93 except with permission of the department.

PHIL 2F01
Ancient Greek Philosophy
Beginnings of Western civilization in the thought of the great sages of ancient Greece. These early philosophers set Western civilization on a new and distinctive course, which has resulted in our contemporary scientific- technological way of life.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2F09
Ethics: Foundations and Cases
An investigation into the ultimate basis of our beliefs about what is right or wrong, good or bad. Begins with case studies about particular moral issues, such as abortion, euthanasia and animal rights, issues that provoke profound moral disagreement. Continues into explaining the ultimate basis of such disagreements and concludes with an attempt to explain why consensus has not so far been reached and how consensus might be reached on such issues. Considers both traditional and contemporary approaches to explaining and resolving moral disputes.
Lectures, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2F93
Philosophical Psychology
Philosophical and historical foundations of Freudian and post-Freudian theories concerning the nature of the human psyche. Theories and theorists include exorcism (Gassner), animal magnetism (Mesmer), the school of Nancy (Bernheim), Charcot, Freud, Jung and Adler.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one PHIL or PSYC credit or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2F95
Bioethics
(also offered as BIOL 2F95)
Value conflicts and moral dilemmas in biology and medicine. Emphasis on specific case studies in reproductive interventions, medical experimentation, concepts of "health" and "disease", modification of behaviour, lifestyle choices, allocation of scarce or expensive medical resources and death and dying.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one BIOL or PHIL credit or permission of the instructor.
Note: may count as an elective, but not as a major credit in honours BIOL (single or combined) major.

PHIL 2M90-2M92
Selected Topics in Philosophy
Topics chosen to reflect areas of occasional interest which are not represented in the regular program of studies. Proposals from students are welcome.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one PHIL credit or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2P02
Early Modern Philosophy: The Rationalists
Classical philosophies of Europe in the 17th- and 18th- centuries as found in the writings of the Continental Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz).
Lectures, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P03
Early Modern Philosophy: The Empiricists
Classical philosophies of England, Ireland and Scotland in the 17th- and 18th- centuries as found in the writings of the British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume).
Lectures, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P12
Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu Thought
Hindu thought beginning with the Vedic myths, through the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita to the systems of the Vedanta. Topics include Karma, reincarnation, altered states of consciousness, Maya, the problem of knowledge, the role and nature of God, the theory and practice of yoga.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P13
Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Buddhist Thought
Buddhist thought from Prince Siddhartha's enlightenment and subsequent Deer Park Sermon (the basis of Hinayana) through the Perfection of Wisdom to Madhyamika Buddhism (the Mahayana representative) to Zen (the silence of the Buddha). Topics include Nirvana, non-self, one-hand clapping.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P14
The Beginnings of Existential Thinking
The sources of both theistic and atheistic lived philosophy in such figures as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoyevski.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P15
The Growth of Existential Thinking
The work of such philosophers as Scheler, Heidegger, Marcel and Sartre.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2P14 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2P17
Introduction to Chinese Philosophy
Confucian, Taoist and Chinese Buddhist philosophical traditions examined in conjunction with appropriate texts.
Lectures, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P18
Introduction to Postmodernism
Origin and development of postmodern thinking with particular reference to the issues of ethics and the role of women. Selected writers may include Nietzsche, Derrida, Levinas, Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous and Wyschogrod.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P25
Introduction to Logic
Modern deductive logic; the objective is to develop the ability to analyze arguments in order to determine their worth. Arguments will be symbolized in order to clarify their form and to determine their validity or invalidity.
Lectures, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P81
Ethics in Film
(also offered as FILM 2P81)
Critical examination of the development and resolution of moral problems and ethical dilemmas arising in selected (mostly recent) films.
Lectures, seminar, lab, 4 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one PHIL credit or FILM 1F94 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2P82
Business Ethics
(also offered as MGMT 2P82)
Evaluation of the contribution of business practices, institutions and actions to the general human good. Topics may include false or misleading advertising, product safety, monopolistic price schemes, effects of pollution, discriminatory hiring policies, the role of shareholders, management, government and the public in determining corporate policy and economic justice.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: not open to BAcc and BBA majors.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in MGMT 3P82.

PHIL 2P91
Philosophy of Art
Historical and systematic approach to the theory of art, analysing the current proliferation of theories as variations on a few basic concepts such as work-analysis vs. content-analysis; constitutive vs. genetic or affective definition; intrinsic vs. extrinsic meaning.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P92
Philosophy of Love
Consideration of the question "What is love?" in such philosophical texts as those of Plato, Aquinas, Kierkegaard and Scheler and in literary figures of the student's choice, e.g., Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Byron.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.

PHIL 2P96
Philosophy of Human Nature
Major philosophical orientations regarding the concept of humanity across the Western and some Eastern traditions. Examination of basic issues involved in reaching a philosophical understanding of human nature and its place in the scheme of things.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one PHIL credit or permission of the instructor.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 2F96.

PHIL 2P97
Philosophy of Religion
Traditional issues such as the proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil, the relationship of faith to reason and the nature of religious knowledge.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one credit in PHIL or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2P98
Philosophy in Literature
Philosophical issues in literature, such as creation stories in ancient and contemporary mythology, the nature of human freedom versus externally determining forces, conflicts of values, the encounter of opposing world views.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one credit in PHIL or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2P99
Philosophy of Sex
Application of ethics to questions of human sexuality. Topics may include sexual values, the semantics of sex, the concepts of the romantic and eternal-feminine, respect for the personhood of women, censorship, pornography, legal enforcement of morality, sex in advertising, prostitution and AIDS.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one PHIL credit or permission of the instructor.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in WISE 2P99.

PHIL 2V85-2V89
Contemporary Social Issues
Problems arising in the areas of social ethics and public policy. Topics include the morality of deceit, overpopulation, obligations to future generations and the environment, nuclear deterrence, animal liberation, moral enforcement and world hunger. Whenever possible, topics are selected in accordance with student interests.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one credit in PHIL or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 2V96-2V99
Philosophy of Science
Historical introduction to the metaphysical foundations of modern physical science. Concepts of space, time and matter as they evolved from the theories of the pre-Socratics to those of Bohr, Heisenberg and contemporary exponents of quantum mechanics.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one credit in PHIL or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3M50-3M59
Selected Topics in Philosophy
Selected issues on the basis of faculty expertise.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: one credit in PHIL or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3M95-3M99
Comparative Studies in Ancient and Modern Philosophy
Historical and systematic study of one or more important themes as developed in the transition from ancient Greek to modern and contemporary philosophy.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2F01, 2P02 and 2P03.

PHIL 3M96
2001-2002: Parmenides/Descartes: Philosophical Beginnings

PHIL 3P01
Theory of Knowledge
Fundamental distinctions in the theory of knowledge, such as knowledge and belief, the empirical and the a priori, analytic/synthetic, scientific versus metaphysical knowledge.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2P02 or 2P03.

PHIL 3P02
Metaphysics
Major problems of metaphysics, considering the question of what there is. Topics may include the nature of space and time, the mind-body relation, substance and property, universals and particulars, causation, identity and personal identity.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2P02 and 2P03.

PHIL 3P19
The Rise of Christian Philosophy
Philosophy from the patristic period through Erigena and Anselm up to and including the 12th-century Renaissance. Lectures, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2F01 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P20
Scholastic Philosophy
Great Islamic, Jewish and Christian philosophers of the 13th-century.
Lectures, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2F01 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P60
Phenomenology
The work of philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Scheler and others.
Lectures, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2P14 or 2P15 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P90
Critical Study of a Classical Philosophy: Plato I
Plato's middle period ontology, centering on The Republic.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2F01 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P91
Critical Study of a Classical Philosophy: Aristotle I
Aristotle's Metaphysics.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2F01 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P92
Hermeneutics
Philosophical theory of interpretation and understanding, with special reference to the methods employed in the humanities (history, literary criticism etc.); the problems of hermeneutics in the works of such thinkers as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Heidegger and Habermas.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisite: PHIL 2P14 or 2P15 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P93
Critical Study of a Classical Philosophy: Plato II
Plato's late dialectic, centering on the Sophist.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2F01 and 3P90 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P94
Critical Study of a Classical Philosophy: Aristotle II
Application of Aristotelian metaphysics.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2F01 and 3P91 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 3P98
Hegel and the 19th-Century
Great comprehensive metaphysical systems of the 19th-century and reactions to them. In addition to Hegel, philosophers include Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte, Mill, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2P02 and 2P03 or permission of the instructor.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 3P58.

PHIL 3Q90
Consciousness and Society
(also offered as PSYC 3Q90)
Psychoanalytic approaches to modern clinical pathologies of narcissism, transpersonal psychologies of meditation and consciousness, and socio-cultural approaches to radical salvation movements are combined to examine both the nature and history of religious-mystical experience and the repeated appearance of mystical movements and gnostic cults throughout the 20th- century. Emphasis on the personal, social, and political conflicts associated with these phenomena.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: open to PHIL (single or combined) and PSYC (single or combined) majors until date specified in BIRT guide. Students must have a minimum of 8.0 overall credits or 3.0 PSYC credits above PSYC 1F90.
Prerequisite: PSYC 1F90.

PHIL 3Q95
Theories of Personality: Freud and Jung
(also offered as PSYC 3Q95)
Major clinically derived theories of personality with special attention to their bases in case study/life history methodology; focus on Freud and Jung and their continuing relevance for current personality, developmental and transpersonal psychology. The possibly unique relation of "depth psychology" to numinous experience (mysticism, creativity, psychosis).
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: open to PHIL (single or combined) and PSYC (single or combined) majors until date specified in BIRT guide. Students must have a minimum of 8.0 overall credits or 3.0 PSYC credits above PSYC 1F90.
Prerequisite: PSYC 1F90.

PHIL 3Q96
Theories of Personality: Developments in Psycholodynamic and Transpersonal Psychology
(also offered as PSYC 3Q96)
Major developments in the psychoanalytic tradition (Kohut, Winnicott, Klein) as they relate to analogous developments within transpersonal and Jungian approaches to "higher" states of consciousness. Conflicts and congruences between these perspectives illustrated by selected life histories (Melanie Klein, Wilhelm Reich, G. Gurdjieff).
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: open to PHIL (single or combined) and PSYC (single or combined) majors until date specified in BIRT guide. Students must have a minimum of 8.0 overall credits or 3.0 PSYC credits above PSYC 1F90.
Prerequisite: PSYC 1F90.

PHIL 3V95-3V99
Issues in 17th- and 18th-Century Philosophy
Special issue or a particular thinker of central importance in the classical period of modern philosophy. Where it does not focus upon one individual (e.g., Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant), the course will trace the development of an issue (e.g., causality, mind-body union, the doctrine of substance, personal identity etc.) through its classical origins.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2P02 and 2P03 or permission of the instructor.

PHIL 4P07
Husserl and Transcendental Phenomenology
Basic issues and the characteristic method of phenomenology using some of the major works of Husserl.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4P20
Kant and the 18th-Century
Historical study of the thought of Immanuel Kant in the context of the 18th-century enlightenment, focussing primarily on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Prerequisites: PHIL 2P02 and 2P03 or permission of the instructor.
Completion of this course will replace previous assigned grade in PHIL 3P56 and PHIL 3P96.

PHIL 4P47
Contemporary Approaches to Consciousness
(also offered as PSYC 4P47)
Cognitive, philosophical, neuropsychological, physical and phenomenological perspectives on consciousness will be explored, including the work of James, Sperry, Gibson, Penrose, Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger and research on metaphor and self-organizing natural systems.
Lectures, seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: open to PSYC (single or combined) and PHIL (single or combined) majors with approval to year 4 (honours).

PHIL 4P97
Honours Tutorial I
Directed intensive and individual study in an area in which a student has developed and displayed a particular interest.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.
Note: to be chosen in consultation with a faculty member able to supervise the study. Proposals for a tutorial course must be approved by the Chair of the department by the last day for late registration.

PHIL 4P98
Honours Tutorial II
Directed intensive and individual study in an area in which a student has developed and displayed a particular interest.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.
Note: to be chosen in consultation with a faculty member able to supervise that study. Proposals for a tutorial course must be approved by the Chair of the department by the last day for late registration.

PHIL 4V00-4V04
Advanced Studies in Political Philosophy
Examination of either a particular thinker or a problem in political philosophy. Political philosophers may include Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, J. S. Mill, Rawls and Nozick. Problems may include liberty and political obligation, justice and equality, human nature and the political order, civil disobedience, participation and consent, liberalism, anarchism, socialism and conservatism.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4V06-4V14
Studies in Contemporary European Philosophy
The work of one or more thinkers prominent in recent Continental thought.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4V15
2001-2002: Heidegger

PHIL 4V15-4V29
Modern Philosophical Studies
Advanced course devoted to one or more of the major thinkers of the tradition from Descartes to the present day.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4V20
2001-2002: Kant

PHIL 4V26
2001-2002: Rationalists

PHIL 4V30-4V45
Advanced Studies in Eastern Philosophy
Concentrated critical and interpretative study of selected texts in the areas of Advaita, Vedanta, Yoga etc. or Madhyamika and Yogacara schools of Buddhism.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4V34
2001-2002: Yogachara Buddhism

PHIL 4V46
2001-2002: Habermas and Post Modernity

PHIL 4V46-4V60
Advanced Studies in Comparative Philosophy
Selected issues on the basis of faculty expertise.
Seminar, 3 hours per week.
Restriction: students must have a minimum 70 percent major average and a minimum of 10.0 overall credits.

PHIL 4V47
2001-2002: Bataille and Lingis

PHIL 4V48
2001-2002: Nietzsche and Buddhism