Time and location: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00–2:15, Jerome Richfield 204
Instructor: E. R. Jiménez (email)
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:00–1:00, on Zoom, and by appointment
1 Description and objectives
1.1 Course description
This course is an introduction to modern philosophy through the lens of two related historical and conceptual issues: the rise of aesthetics and the colonial experience. From about the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, philosophers in and from Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia dealt, perhaps above all, with questions about the nature of experience—about, most pointedly, its evident contingency and particularity—against the backdrop of the encounter between radically different peoples and cultures. Our goal will be to track how questions and problems relating to this crux of issues get articulated, developed, and resolved, and in particular in the domain of aesthetics.
Topics to discuss include the nature of experience, the relationship between experience and knowledge, and the philosophy of art and aesthetics.
1.2 Course objectives
Our course has substantive and formal objectives.
- Substantively, our objective is to develop some idea about how philosophy took shape in the modern era, what its particular problems and questions were, and how these problems and questions achieved the particular salience they did in reference to questions about the nature of aesthetic experience
- Formally, our objective is to improve our capacities for reading comprehension, analysis of arguments, and written and oral communication, through the digestion and discussion of texts from the modern period, and through written and oral exercises in analysis of those texts.
1.3 Student learning outcomes
Students will:
- Explain and reflect critically on the human search for meaning and values within and across the human experience, as expressed in the art, literature, and philosophy in Europe and the Americas, roughly from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
- Analyze, interpret, and reflect critically on modern philosophy and diverse creative expressions, discourses, and thought traditions from the modern era.
- Demonstrate the ability to engage and reflect upon their own intellectual and creative development within the humanities.
- Describe and explain the historical and/or cultural context within which modern philosophy and culture emerged.
- Critically analyze how the study of modern philosophy is a reflection on the current conditions of the human experience and helps to envision progression as a society.
2 Policies
2.1 Attendance
Attendance doesn’t immediately impact your grade, but you should not expect to do well in this course if you aren’t here. I will monitor attendance loosely, however, for a reason I describe below. (See the section on attendance and participation below.)
If you miss class for any reason, you don’t need to tell me about it. Check the calendar to keep abreast of what’s going on. Generally, I’ll put anything of significance on the calendar, but I’d recommend you make a friend in class in case you want a more thorough rundown of what you missed.
2.2 Assignments
You’re going to write two essays and you’re going to take two oral exams. Each of your assignments will respond to a prompt from one of the four areas (in each case a different one) of the question bank (*tbd). You get to choose which area you cover in which way:
- You’ll write one essay at the midterm on a question in one area
- You’ll write a second essay at the end of the semester on a question in a second area
- You’ll complete one oral exam at the mid term in a third area
- You’ll complete another oral exam at the mid term in the fourth area
2.2.1 Essays
The two essays you write should have a few attributes.
- They should be clear.
- They should have a clear structure.
- They should be explanatory in nature, not only descriptive.
Thus, for example, I am less interested in whether you can regurgitate one or another thinker’s view and more interested in the sort of explanation you give for it. See a sample essay for material guidance.
Your first essay should be a minimum of 500 words. Your second essay should be a minimum of 1000 words. I have no attitude about matters of formatting. I encourage you to engage directly with texts; three quotes for the midterm essay and five for the final are probably good minimums.
I’ll score each essay out of ten points, and your essays together will be worth 50% of your grade. Here’s an approximate rubric:
| Points | Description |
|---|---|
| 5 | You did something |
| 6 | You did something and it was relevant to your prompt |
| 7 | You did something, it was relevant, and you wrote clearly |
| 8 | You did something, it was relevant, you wrote clearly, and you presented a more or less defensible view of the material |
| 9 | You did something, it was relevant, you wrote clearly, it was defensible, and it had a clear structure and/or you explained the views you described and/or you entertained and responded to objections |
| 10 | You did something, it was relevant, you wrote clearly, it was defensible, it had a clear structure, you explained the views you described, and you entertained and responded to objections |
If I suspect you haven’t written your work on your own, I will request a meeting with you to discuss it, and that discussion will figure into the grade you receive on it. I follow university policy on all matters of academic dishonesty.
2.2.2 Oral exams
Your oral exams will be slightly different from each other. For the oral exam at midterm, you’ll choose a prompt to respond to, and I’ll ask you questions about it. For the oral exam at the final, I will ask you at random one of the questions from the remaining question-bank area. The oral exam at midterm will be five minutes; the oral exam at the final will be ten minutes.
In each case, you should expect to give a 1–2-minute response at the beginning of the oral exam. Then I will ask you questions about it. You should also expect that questions during the oral exam may range over material not directly addressed by your question. I will keep my questions relevant to the question, but any material we’ve reviewed in class is fair game for an oral exam.
Throughout the semester we’ll be discussing questions thoroughly so you have some idea of what to expect. But you should also expect that oral exams are an occasion to assess your more general comprehension of the course material.
I’ll score each of your oral exams out of four points, and together they will be worth 50% of your grade. Here’s an approximate rubric:
| Points | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | You showed up and you said a few defensible things about the material |
| 2 | You showed up, you said a few defensible things, and you responded well to at least one direct question |
| 3 | You showed up, you said a few defensible things, you responded well to two or more direct questions, and you responded well to at least one indirect question |
| 4 | You showed up, you said a few defensible things, you responded well to two or more direct questions, and you responded well to two or more indirect questions |
2.2.3 Attendance and participation
The essays and oral exams are, in a way, a continuation and concentration of the work you should be doing in each class: reconstructing the material, posing questions about it, pursuing different answers to those questions, demonstrating the ability to explore a text on your feet.
Being here regularly and regularly contributing to class discussion may thus count positively toward your grade. In the week before final exams, you’ll receive an in-class score between 0 and 5. Although these count effectively as extra credit, you should think of them instead as credit toward your assignments earned through in-class participation.
Points earned in this way are determined by my asking how much you contributed to the class. A few guidelines as to how not to get points:
- If you miss a lot of (say, more than four or five) classes, you shouldn’t expect more than 2 points
- If you’re noticeably distracted during class time (e.g., on your phone, wearing headphones, walking in and out regularly), you can expect to receive 0 points
- Being in class doesn’t earn you points
- Talking in class doesn’t earn you points
What earns you points is:
- Being here regularly,
- Contributing regularly to class discussion, and
- Contributing in a way that demonstrates actual engagement with the material.
2.3 How I interpret policies
I interpret rules under a guiding thought about fairness: that policies should be applied in the same way for everyone; that everyone should have the same shot. I never think in terms of how the interpretation of a policy affects you or any other student individually; I always think in terms of how it affects the class as a whole.
When you ask for a rule to be relaxed, then, I’m not thinking about whether to relax the rule for you, but whether it would be fair to relax the rule for everyone (or everyone similarly situated). Most of the time this comes down to the simple question whether the policy should even exist, and if your classmates have already been acting in accordance with the policy, then to suspend it after the fact would be unfair to them for the diligence they’ve demonstrated.
2.4 Course grade
At the end of the semester, you will be assigned a letter grade based on the number of points you achieve. The maximum number of points possible is 28 (or 33 with the end-of-semester attendance-participation grade, but points over 28 will not count).
| Points | Letter grade |
|---|---|
| 28 | A |
| 27 | A- |
| 26 | B+ |
| 24 | B |
| 22 | B- |
| 20 | C+ |
| 18 | C |
| 17 | C- |
| 16 | D+ |
| 15 | D |
| 14 | D- |
| <14 | F |
2.5 University policies
This course follows all university policies regarding academic integrity, accessibility, and student conduct.
Students with approved accommodations should make their accommodations known to me early in the semester so that we can discuss appropriate arrangements.
Please note that I am a “mandatory reporter,” which means that I am required to report all instances of abuse of which I am made aware.
Information about academic integrity, disability services, Title IX, and other university resources and policies is available through the university’s policies and procedures page. All applicable policies and procedures apply to this course.
3 Contacting me
You have a variety of ways of reaching me and getting your questions or concerns resolved. These are also all ways of staying engaged in the course.
- Ask your question in class. Other students might have the same question; other students might have answers. In addition to improving class morale, you’re helping each other out when you get a question answered in class.
- Visit the course Discord.
- Find regular updates in
#announcements - Find discussion of the material and the course in
#general - Pose a question in
#questions - Discuss off-topic issues in
#chat - Send me a direct message. I’m going to try to be pretty attentive to DMs and activity on Discord throughout the work week, so should be fairly reachable:
- M/W/F 9–5, and especially 10–12 and 1–3
- T/Th 9–5 sporadically (I’m teaching)
- Find regular updates in
- Come to my office hours. I hold them virtually over Zoom on Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:00–1:00, and at other times by appointment. Join my Zoom meeting.
- If you have something sensitive you need to discuss with me personally, this is the way to do it.
- Write me an email me or send me a DM on Discord if you need to schedule a different time; I’ll see if it’s possible.
- Shoot me an email for any more official business. I’m at erick dot jimenez at csun dot edu.
- Visit a tutor. For more information, go to the tutoring web site.
- Poke around this course site.
- For questions about assignments, grading, and other policy matters, see the page on policies.
- For questions about readings, see the course outline.
- For questions about what’s going on, see the calendar.
4 Version
Version 0.9 · Pre-semester