Advanced Topics in Philosophy I

Topic for Fall 2026: Sculpting the Self – Truth-Speaking, Intellectual Virtue, and Philosophy as Transformative Experience from Plato to Foucault. Italian humanist Francesco Petrarca refused to apply the term “philosophers” to “professors sitting in a chair” (or tucked behind an AC template). Instead, he reserved the name for those (Greek and Roman) philosophers, who practiced what they preached. If ancient philosophy established such an intimate link between philosophical discourse and the form of life, why is it that today, given how philosophy is usually taught, it is presented primarily as a theoretical and highly specialized discourse? Does the practice of philosophy lack a direct relationship to the philosopher’s way of life? If instead, it requires a mode of existing in the world that transforms the whole of one’s intellectual and social life: how should we understand the long duration development of philosophy as inherently practical in parallel and in relation to contemporary philosophy as an academic discipline and discourse? What does philosophy have to say about how we ought to give a self-aware account of ourselves within the world (and against it)? Can it still help us learn how to openly listen and carefully dialogue with oneself and others? Might philosophy aid in our own self-analysis and projection through testing situations so that we are better equipped to make informed, ethical decisions? In this atypical survey of Western philosophical thought, we will examine philosophy as something more than an object of theoretical study or set of abstract interpretations. Throughout the course, we will analyze the notion of philosophy as a way of life and set of “spiritual exercises” aimed at self-transformation (happiness, virtue, inner tranquility, self-control, veridiction): from its ancient sources (Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus/Seneca, Cicero/Marcus Aurelius) to its exceptional later resurgences (Montaigne, Descartes, Shaftesbury, Kant, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Foucault). You will walk away from the course familiar with a multiplicity of ways in which it is possible to practice and experience philosophy as personally relevant to one’s life that go beyond its common (mis)conceptions or traditional definitions. This course is also offered as a full-credit writing option.