Archive of Past Topics

In Winter 2018, we will offer two separate courses for high school students in grades 9-12.  The focus is Philosophy.  Both sessions will meet on Thursday evenings:  6:15 pm – 8:00 pm

Philosophy: The Big Questions

Philosophy is known for asking the biggest and most difficult questions about human existence. In this class you will be introduced to some of these questions and their prominent historical answers, as well as learn philosophical methods and techniques for addressing these questions more rigorously.

• Week One: Who are you?
• Week Two: What do you know?
• Week Three: What can you do?
• Week Four: Is morality objective?
• Week Five: What is authority?
• Week Six: What is equality?
• Week Seven: What is politics about?
• Week Eight: Formal Considerations
• Week Nine: The Big Questions – Your Turn

Instructors:
Willie Costello (PhD, University of Toronto, Philosophy) is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Stanford University. He specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, with particular interests in ancient Greek metaphysics and Plato. At Stanford and elsewhere, he has taught courses in ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of literature, and philosophy of technology. He is currently working on his first book, The causal origins of Plato's Forms.

Ian Zuckerman (PhD 2012, Columbia University) is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Thinking Matters program at Stanford University, where he helps teach courses such as Evil, Rules of War and Progress. A political theorist, Ian has published articles and book chapters on the history of modern political thought, on democratic theory and constitutional thought. He is currently at work on The Politics of Emergencies, examines the intersection of emergency powers and the idea of security in modern constitutional theory and practice in the United States. The second, a coauthored project, is a critical examination of “militant democracy,” a theory which justifies excluding groups from democratic participation.

In Winter 2018, we will offer two separate courses for high school students in grades 9-12.  The focus is Philosophy.  Both sessions will meet on Thursday evenings:  6:15 pm – 8:00 pm

Philosophy: Ethics, Social Responsibility, and Living Meaningfully

This nine-week course will introduce students to philosophy, concentrating mainly on issues related to morality and human well-being. We will explore questions about the foundation and nature of moral judgments, discuss what makes a life go well, and examine some concrete cases in which challenging moral choices have to be made. 

• Week 1: Introductions. What Do Philosophers Think and Write about? Moral Relativism
• Week 2: Morality and Self-interest
• Week 3: Life’s Goods and Meaning 
• Week 4: Moral Theory – Deontology
• Week 5: Moral Theory – Consequentialism 
• Week 6: Applied Topics in Ethics  
• Week 7: Moral Luck
• Week 8: Free Will
• Week 9: Philosophical Discussion Panel 

Instructors:

Greig Mulberry (PhD, University of Kentucky, Philosophy) is Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco where he teaches a range of undergraduate courses in philosophy. He has published articles on the philosophy of language and on philosophy and popular culture. His interests also include 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. 

Taylor Madigan (PhD student, Social Philosophy) at Stanford University is currently working in Social Philosophy. He previously taught the introductory philosophy course, “Philosophy in Calvin and Hobbes,” at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked with high school philosophy students through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It is his second year instructing students in the Stanford Humanities Circle.

Poems have the power to haunt us, guide us, and help us remember. In this course we will focus on both inspiration and technique. Each week we will read memorable poems by writers including Louise Glück, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens. We will examine how poets provoke emotion in their readers, as well as how they shape their poems through formal elements of craft. In addition to reading and discussing published writing, students will produce original work and experiment with revision strategies. A variety of writing prompts will engage students during class time, and we will take a walking tour of Stanford’s sculpture gardens to get inspired by art and nature. By the end of this course students will have written and revised several poems, and will be comfortable implementing literary techniques and visual considerations into their own writing practice.

• Week One: Introduction to Poetry and the Image
• Week Two: Ekphrasis/Erasure (Sculpture gardens walking tour)
• Week Three: Landscapes
• Week Four: Memory (workshop)
• Week Five: Narrative Strategies (workshop)
• Week Six: Dream Logic/Surrealism (workshop)
• Week Seven: Rhythm & Sound (workshop)
• Week Eight: Formal Considerations (workshop)
• Week Nine: Strategies for Revision/Style
• Week Ten: Class reading

Instructor: Laura Romeyn

Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford professor Adam Johnson once said that one of the things his father taught him was this: “there is the surface of the world that most people engage, and there’s always a realer, truer, purer world beneath that.” As artists, we cannot help but notice the rich world that lies underneath everything we see on a daily basis; we are aware of the possible stories behind anything and everything. During this course, you will learn how to construct short stories on your own by learning about different elements of fiction: character, POV, tone, dialogue, setting, and plot. Learning about these various “tools” shows us how to “build” our own narratives. By examining how these tools function in short stories, we will be able to analyze and evaluate the structure in all narratives, regardless of medium.

• Week One: What We Talk About When We Talk About Stories
• Week Two: Here’s the Story of a Man Named Brady: Point of View, Character, and Narrators
• Week Three: We’re Gonna Be Like Three Little Fonzies Here: Dialogue and Tone
• Week Four: To Scene or Not to Scene, That is The Question
• Week Five: Take Me To Another Place, Take Me to Another Land: Setting
• Week Six: The Brief Wondrous Summary of a 700-page Book About Plot
• Week Seven: A Good Plot is Hard to Find
• Week Eight: A Million Little Pieces of Plot
• Week Nine: Workshop
• Week Ten: Public Reading

Each class meeting of the High School Humanities Circle will be focused on one or more central questions. This quarter's program will be taught by a team of instructors, each of whom will teach from their area of expertise.

Instructor: All three instructors will team-teach this first session

Week 1: What is Ethics?

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Weeks 2 - 4: Issues in Bio-ethics

Instructor: Lindsey Chambers, PhD

Week 2: Introduction to Reproductive Ethics - The ethical and moral issues raised by reproductive technology, including sex-selection.

Week 3: Shaping One's Children - The use of reproductive selection in IVF to select genetic traits of one's offspring (from selecting against genetic disorders to selecting for desireable traits).

Week 4: The Metaphysics of Creation - Why creating a person is a metaphysically unique kind of activity, and arguments about whether it is ever possible to harm someone by creating him or her.

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Weeks 5 - 7: Ethics & Technology

Instructor: Willie Costello, PhD

Week 5: Genetic Engineering - In the near future, genetic engineering technologies will allow us to directly manipulate the genetic code of a future child. But when and why is it ethical for us to do so? Are the reasons for and against genetically engineering children the same as or different from the reasons for and against selecting children? And should such technology ever be used to enhance the human species?

Week 6: Self-Driving Cars - Accidents happen all the time on the road, and people often get hurt. In our current society, we have a complex system of laws and regulations which help us navigate such situations. But what happens when a self-driving car injures someone? Who is ultimately responsible for the injury – the person who owns the car, the company who made the car, or the car itself? Who should a self-driving car prioritize protecting – its passengers, other cars, innocent bystanders, or itself? And who should get to make such decisions – the company, the coders, or the public?

Week 7: Mars Colonization - Mars colonization is often presented as a solution to the looming crises of climate devastation and overpopulation of Earth. But do these problems actually justify such plans? Would we be doing a service to the Earth in leaving for another planet, or would we be neglecting duties that we have to the Earth and its environment? If there are such duties, where do they derive from? And how do those duties compare to the duties we have to the human species and its continued existence?

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Weeks 8 - 10: The Ethics of Environment 

Instructor: Blake Francis

Week 8: Moral responsibility for climate change - The scientific consensus is that climate change results from high concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Humans emit greenhouse gases while engaging in the activities of everyday life: heating the house, driving to work, putting food on the table, and keeping the lights on at school. Are these activities morally wrong because they contribute to climate change? Are you morally responsible for climate change? Is your family, school, city, state, country, or generation to blame? What about corporations, businesses and other institutions? In this class, we’ll consider arguments for and against holding individuals as well as groups morally responsible for climate change.

Week 9: Climate change justice - In this class, we will evaluate how the burdens of climate change should be distributed over time and across the world. How much should the current generation sacrifice to reduce threats from climate change? Which nations of the world should bear the greatest burdens of combatting climate change? The wealthiest nations? Corporations who pollute the most? Or should the nations most vulnerable to climate change damages pay the highest costs?

Week 10: Environmental ethics and climate change - A lot of ethical thinking about climate change focuses on harm done to human beings. But climate change also threatens the natural environment, including plants, animals, entire species, and ecosystems. How should we characterize our failure to combat climate change in light of these harms? What moral obligations do human beings have to plants and animals? Do we have a duty to protect nature for its own sake? Or does the moral importance of nature depend on its value to human beings?

About Our Instructors

Lindsey Chambers, PhD

Lindsey Chambers (Ph.D. University of California - Los Angeles) is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's McCoy Family Center for Ethics and the Center for Biomedical Ethics.  She has research interests in normative ethics, bioethics, and political philosophy.  Her work focuses on the ethics of shaping future persons through the use of reproductive selection.  She argues that procreators can wrong their progeny by failing to act well in the role of parent, even if their actions don’t harm the persons they create.  She is particularly interested in the intersection between parental use of reproductive technology and education to confer advantage on their children.

Willie Costello, PhD

Willie Costello (Ph.D., University of Toronto, Philosophy; B.A., summa cum laude, University of Pittsburgh, Philosophy, Linguistics) is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Stanford University. He specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, with particular interests in ancient Greek metaphysics and Plato. At Stanford and elsewhere, he has taught courses in ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature. He is currently working on his first book, The causal origins of Plato's Forms: The natural philosophy of the Phaedo and its context.

Blake Francis, MA

Blake Francis is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Stanford University. His research explores the intersection of political philosophy and environmental ethics. In his dissertation, “Climate Change and the Moral Significance of Harm,” Blake investigates the moral status of the activities that contribute to climate change, identifying and assessing when these activities are wrong versus when they are morally justified by the social benefits they provide. He received an MA in Philosophy from the University of Montana, where he also studied Forestry and Conservation. Before graduate school, Blake worked in wilderness management and trail construction with the US Forest Service in Arizona and Alaska. 

Foundations

Instructor: Greig Mulberry, PhD

Weeks 1 and 2: What is Philosophy?

How does philosophy differ from other disciplines and ways of thinking about the world and ourselves? How does it differ from science and religion? What sort of things do philosophers think about ask questions about? How does philosophy go about answering its questions? What are its methods? What are the main branches of philosophy?

Classical Philosophy

Instructor: Willie Costello, PhD

Week 3: Why be good?

In-class text: The “Myth of Gyges”, from Plato, Republic Book II

Week 4: What can we believe is true?

In-class text: The “Allegory of the Cave”, from Plato, Republic Book VII

Week 5: Should we fear death?

In-class text: Selections from Plato, Apology; Plato, Phaedo; and Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Week 6: How should we live together?

In-class text: Selections from Plato, Republic VIII (on democracy)

Political Philosophy

Instructor: Ian Zuckerman, PhD

Week 7: What is liberty? 

Is freedom something solitary, or can we only be free collectively? Does freedom primarily concern the state, or can social relations impinge upon freedom as well? What’s the relationship between freedom and economic life? Authors discussed may include John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hannah Arendt, Robert Nozick, Jerry Cohen.

Week 8: What is authority? 

How could we say when political authority is legitimate? When are we obligated to obey the law, and when is there a right to resist? Should authority be vested in an absolute sovereign, or a constitutional government? What’s the relationship between political authority and self-defense? Authors discussed may include Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X.  

Week 9: What is equality? 

Is equality a core political value and if so, why should we care about it? - or, do we care about it? When we talk about equality, are we talking about opportunity, condition, rights, capacity, or some other metric? What’s the relationship between equality and private property? Authors discussed may include John Locke, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, Milton Friedman, Alex Gourevitch.

Week 10: What is politics about? 

What do we mean when we call something political? Are things “political” because they have to do with the state, or because they have to do with the good life, or because they have to do with power, or because they have to do with human beings acting together in public, or because they have to do with violence and conflict? Authors discussed may include Aristotle, Machiavelli, Max Weber, Simone de Beauvoir, Franz Fanon

About Our Instructors

Greig Mulberry, PhD

Greig Mulberry (PhD, University of Kentucky, philosophy; MA, Virginia Tech, philosophy, BA, Miami University, psychology) is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco where he teaches a range of undergraduate courses in philosophy. He has published articles on the philosophy of language and on philosophy and popular culture. His interests also include 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. 

Willie Costello, PhD

Willie Costello (Ph.D., University of Toronto, Philosophy; B.A., summa cum laude, University of Pittsburgh, Philosophy, Linguistics) is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Stanford University. He specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, with particular interests in ancient Greek metaphysics and Plato. At Stanford and elsewhere, he has taught courses in ancient Greek philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature. He is currently working on his first book, The causal origins of Plato's Forms: The natural philosophy of the Phaedo and its context.

Ian Zuckerman, PhD

Ian Zuckerman (Ph.D., Columbia University) is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Thinking Matters program at Stanford, where he helps teach courses such as Evil, Rules of War, and Progress. Prior to Stanford he has taught at Columbia University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Minnesota Duluth. A political theorist, Ian has published articles and book chapters on the history of modern political thought, democratic theory, and constitutional thought. He is currently at work on two book-length projects. The first, entitled The Politics of Emergencies, examines the intersection of emergency powers and the idea of security in modern constitutional theory and practice in the United States. The second, coauthored, project is a critical examination of “militant democracy,” a theory which justifies excluding groups from democratic participation. In addition to these interests, Ian also researches “just war theory,” a body of moral philosophy and political theory that inquires into the ethics of when to go to war, and how war is thought. 2016-17 will be Ian’s third year at Stanford University.