PHI 3 consists of four Papers which are taught in small groups and focus on developing philosophical writing skills. Students will be asked to choose two courses per semester out of a selection of offerings. In general, the course covers an advanced examination of some particular historical and contemporary debates.

Entrance requirements: PHI 201 and PHI 202
DP requirements: At least 40% for coursework.
Assessment: Coursework 50%; Exam 50%

2024 COURSE OFFERINGS FOR SEMESTER 1

Philosophy 3 students will choose two of the following three courses:

Option I: David Hume on Justice and Injustice

Prof Ward E. Jones

While David Hume spent relatively little of his life writing philosophy, he is arguably the greatest philosopher to write in the English language. In his most substantial philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume defends original theories of (among others) meaning, mind, ontology, epistemology, action, moral psychology, society, and politics. In this class, we will undertake a close reading of Book 3 Part 2 of the Treatise, in which Hume defends his theory of justice. An early social theorist, Hume argues that the just society is made up of individuals who follow the right social practices – he calls them ‘conventions’ or ‘laws’. As receptive readers, our task will be to understand (i) why Hume thinks that we should understand justice in terms of social practices, as well as (ii) his extended argument for the three practices – private ownership, promise-keeping, and obedience to government officers – which he claims are necessary and sufficient for justice in a large society. As critical readers, we will be interrogating both Hume’s general approach to justice and the social practices which he argues (and those he neglects to argue) must be followed in a just society. 

Option II: Classical Chinese Philosophy

Prof Marius Vermaak

In this course we study key thinkers from the Classical period (500-200 BCE), from the two main traditions: Confucianism and Daoism. In a time of pervasive and constant social conflict they asked the following questions: “What is most important in life? What makes a human being? How should humans live in families and communities? What is the cause of social, political, and military strife and unrest? How should human society be organized? Who has political authority and why?” (Ropp, China in World History, 2006)

Option III: The Ethics of Pleasure

Dr Laurence Bloom

This course will examine pleasure by examining the role pleasure plays in morality. What should this role be? The question has met with a remarkably diverse array of answers over the past few millennia. Some have given pleasure a central role, claiming that ethics is entirely concerned with maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Others have excluded pleasure from consideration altogether, arguing that pleasure should play no role in moral decision making whatsoever. A variety of middle positions have been suggested as well. Perhaps not surprisingly, thinkers have also differed considerably in their respective understandings of what pleasure is. Some have held that pleasure is a fundamental and undeniable fact of existence; others that it is illusory and unreal. Again, a variety of positions about the reality of pleasure that fall between these extremes have been offered as well. In this course we will be examining a small, but influential and diverse selection of views about both the nature of pleasure and its proper place in moral decision making. In doing so, we will also be examining how views about reality and about what one takes to be real influence views about morality. Is this influence necessary or is it avoidable? Is it perhaps preferable?

2024 COURSE OFFERINGS FOR SEMESTER 2

Philosophy 3 students will choose two of the following three courses:

Option I: Perception and Illusion

Dr Tess Dewhurst

It is common-sense to presume that when we perceive something, the object of our perception (the thing we are perceiving) is the mind-independent object out in the world. However, as always in philosophy, common-sense is only the starting point. What, the thinking goes, is the object of ‘perception’ when we are confronted with an illusion? Or an hallucination? If things can appear to us in a certain way, and yet not be that way, then there is a gap between what we perceive, and how things actually are. The things we perceive, it is argued, are not the actual mind independent objects themselves. In this course we will be looking at how the problem of perception arises, and how we can overcome it, and what it means to hold on to the common-sense idea of perception. The problem is one that touches on epistemology, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The course will be structured around careful reading of, and critical engagement with, relevant literature, as well as developing your skills in defending your own ideas verbally and in writing.

Option II: The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy

Dr Lindokuhle Gama

Within the current landscape of African philosophical discourse, there is no consensus regarding the appropriate investigative methodology in the field. Reflections on the question of the best method have culminated in methodological alternatives, including but not limited to the “free stylist approach, ethno-philosophical approach, universalist approach, philosophical sagacity approach, conceptual-analytic approach, method of ordinary language, canons of discourse, method of relevance, method of cultural reconstructionism, conversational method, method of complementary reflection, and the method of hermeneutics” (Fayemi 2016: 2). In this course, our focal point will be the hermeneutic approach to African philosophy. Directed by Tsenay Serequeberan's seminal work, The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse (1994), the course aims to engage in a nuanced exploration. Our objective will be to subject the hermeneutic method to rigorous critical scrutiny, evaluating both its inherent strengths and weaknesses, with particular attention to its relevance within the context of the African liberation struggle. The course thus aims to cultivate a comprehensive understanding of the hermeneutic approach as an instrument of philosophical inquiry in the African philosophical tradition.

Option III: Philosophical Pessimism in 21st -Century Black Thought

Sabelo Ndwandwe

 Calvin Warren’s Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation is a significant recent formulation of Black pessimism about white society’s ability to overcome anti-Black hatred and its violent structural dynamics which crystallize around the Western metaphysical apprehension (or misapprehension) of nothing. Warren presents the Negro Question as a philosophical site of anxiety and terror – an incarnation of nothingness that Western metaphysics has always been fascinated with and terrified by it. In this course, we will study this text with careful attention to how his Black nihilistic thesis troubles the historiography of black emancipation by questioning its assumed ontological ground for political action and thereby forcing us to confront a deep abyss engendering the declaration “Black Lives Matter.” What ontological ground provides the occasion for the declaration? In this, Warren presses us to step back from the syllogistic reasoning that makes possible for such an affirmative declaration to be intelligible while concealing the terrifying question which propelled it in the first place. If human life is invaluable and Black life is human life, then indeed Black Lives Matter! But we know too well that such is not the case. Otherwise, why would the phrase need to be repeated and recited incessantly? Once we take the necessary pause from the assumptive logic of this syllogism, we soon realize that the statement declares too soon — a declaration that is really an unanswered (or unanswerable) question. Philosophical labour then lies in tracing this question and declaration back to its philosophical roots: the Negro Question.

Professor Jones is the course coordinator for Philosophy 3

Last Modified: Sat, 10 Feb 2024 13:08:06 SAST