Convenor: Ruben Noorloos (ruben.noorloos@icub.unibuc.ro)
Description:
This reading group will study a number of canonical and less-canonical authors for their views on prejudice, and especially ‘social’ prejudices based on, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Besides a text that exemplifies the critical social turn in contemporary epistemology, we will look at a mixture of early modern texts that articulate a theory of prejudice, apply such a theory to some social cause, and/or fail to apply it in this way. Throughout we will be especially interested in how these authors think social factors influence prejudice and in what they do, and don’t, identify as prejudices (and why).
Place and time: weekly meetings on Wednesday, 15:00-17:00 at ICUB (Str. D. Brandza 1), starting January 17
Texts as well as the most up-to-date schedules will be made available through Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JF6daSvD0g5wNhXpnKq-i6Cr–KQp5-M?usp=sharing
Venue
Readings:
- Descartes (17-1-2024)
Reading: Discourse on Method II-III; Principles of Philosophy I, 71-76
Optional reading:
- Amy M. Schmitter, “Cartesian Social Epistemology? Contemporary Social Epistemology and Early Modern Philosophy,” Roczniki Filozoficzne 68, no. 2 (2020): 155–78, https://doi.org/10.18290/rf20682-8.
- Poulain de la Barre (24-1)
Reading: Discourse on the Equality of the Sexes, Part I (pp. 122-46 in Desmond Clarke, The Equality of the Sexes: Three Feminist Texts of the Seventeenth Century, OUP 2013)
Optional reading:
- Amy M. Schmitter, “Cartesian Prejudice: Gender, Education and Authority in Poulain de La Barre,” Philosophy Compass 13, no. 12 (2018): e12553.
- Siep Stuurman, “Social Cartesianism: François Poulain de La Barre and the Origins of the Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 4 (1997): 617–40, https://doi.org/10.2307/3653963.
- Malebranche (POSTPONED TO 7-2)
Reading: Search After Truth 2.2 (pp. 131-60 in Lennon-Olscamp ed.)
Optional readings:
- Search After Truth1.7-8; 2.3.1-2; preface to Elucidations to ST (pp. 539-542 in Lennon-Olscamp)
- Jacqueline Broad, “Impressions in the Brain: Malebranche on Women, and Women on Malebranche,” Intellectual History Review 22, no. 3 (2012): 373–89.
- Spinoza (14-2)
Readings: Theological-Political Treatise, preface; Ethics I, appendix
Optional reading:
- Theological-Political Treatise, chs. 1-3 (on prophecy); Ethics IV, appendix (summary of Spinoza’s ethics); Letters 51-56 (correspondence with Boxel, on the existence of ghosts)
- Mogens Lærke, Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021): ch. 6.
- Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “Descartes and Spinoza on Epistemological Egalitarianism,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 13, no. 1 (1996): 35–53.
- Astell (POSTPONED TO 28-2)
Reading: A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II, chs. 1-2 (pp. 127-44 in Springborg ed.) and ch. 3, sect. 4 (pp. 166-79)
Optional reading:
- Karen Detlefsen, “Custom, Freedom and Equality: Mary Astell on Marriage and Women’s Education,” in Feminist Interpretations of Mary Astell, ed. Penny Weiss and Alice Sowaal (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), 74–92.
- Allauren Samantha Forbes, “Mary Astell on Bad Custom and Epistemic Injustice,” Hypatia 34, no. 4 (April 2019): 777–801, https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12495.
- Berkeley against the freethinkers (6-3)
Reading: Alciphron, first dialogue
Optional reading:
- Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking, sect. 1
- Toland, Letters to Serena, first letter
- Clare Marie Moriarty, “The Ad Hominem Argument of Berkeley’s Analyst,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26, no. 3 (May 4, 2018): 429–51, https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2018.1450216.
- Hume (13-3)
Readings: Treatise of Human Nature 1.3.13.7-20; ‘Of National Characters’
Optional reading:
- ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (esp. paragraphs 21-31; Miller 239-245)
- Silvia Sebastiani, “Nations, Nationalism and National Characters,” in The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century Philosophy, ed. Aaron Garrett (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 593–617.
- (Hume addresses topics connected to prejudice in a great many of his writings. Some other relevant texts are ‘Of the rise and progress of the arts and sciences’, ‘Of commerce’, the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (esp. the conclusion), and ‘A dialogue’)