FILO - Philosophy
The course is an introduction of elemental symbolic logic study. It is targeted at students from all careers and does not require any prior particular knowledge. The starting point is the study of the logic structure of propositions and arguments in Spanish. Once appropriate understanding of basic concepts is achieved, formal elements are introduced. Propositional logic is presented in an accessible, but also strict manner. The most important notions are given a formal definition and an informal explanation, and are illustrated with multiple examples and various exercises. At the end of the course, predicate logic is introduced, which is the basis for the Logics 2 course.
Credits
3
Instructor
Paez Peñuela Andres
The course is aimed at students with no formal education in philosophy. The objective is to introduce them to the main philosophical problems by reading fundamental texts.
Credits
3
Instructor
Cepeña Diaz Granados Margarita
The course will be focused on one of the most important results or hypotheses of Plato´s philosophy: the theory of ideas. First, a dialog will be studied "temprano" Menón, where such theory is not yet exposed, but which offers a series of elements that allow justifying its formulation and a theoretical device (the doctrine of reminiscence) which will later be integrated therein. Then, it will continue with one of the most read and commented texts of the philosopher: the Fedon. In this dialog, the theory of the ideas is actually exposed, in its most general and problematic version. The course will be concluded with a dialog where these problematic aspects precisely constitute the driving thread: the Parmenides.
Credits
3
Instructor
Ariza Rodriguez Sergio
The course is a general introduction to some of the problems raised by Aristhoteles with regards to the relation between ethics and politics. To this end, students will analyze, discuss, and read, alternatively and selectively, two aristotelic readings: Nichomachean Politics and Ethics.
Credits
3
Instructor
Ariza Rodriguez Sergio
The course intends to introduce students to Descartes´ Doctrine, as it represents the philosophical birth certificate of Modernity. This Doctrine provides for almost all the greatest philosophical problems, in germinal stage, that were object of discussion ever since. Descartes´ Doctrine is one of the most remarkable efforts to protect the fundamental theses from the medieval outlook: God´s existence and immortality of the soul. Descartes thus became the last medieval thinker and the first modern philosopher.
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Gonzalez Quintero Catalina
Neoplatonic philosophy, as its name indicates, emerges as a synthesis of diverse traditions which can be traced back to the ancient reflections regarding Plato’s thought. But, being more than that, Neoplatonic philosophy exemplifies its own intellectual environment and constitutes itself not just by appealing to Platonic speculation, but also by discussing with several other philosophical traditions from late Antiquity (in particular with the Peripatetic School and Stoicism), with Gnosticism and with early Christian thought. In fact, its concern with the concept of the soul, with the problem of salvation, and its attempts to derive the sensible world from a higher, more perfect, reality cannot be fully comprehended without taking into account these spiritual traditions. Thus, the Neoplatonic movement inclines itself towards an interesting symbiosis between philosophy and Mysticism, between Pagan tradition and Christian revolution, and between Eastern and Western traditions. Synthetically put: it is, perhaps, the most complete intellectual expression of a decisive stage in the transition of humanity.
Credits
3
This course pretends to be an introduction to the first thinkers and poets of Greece, during the period known as the Archaic Age. Its departure point will be the intellectual transformation which took place during this period, and from which arise some of the fundamental pillars of Western thought. Although this change is normally associated with the group of thinkers known as the Presocratics, the revolution which took place in these centuries is also the work of the poets and minstrels of the Archaic Age. The reason for widening the list of names responsible for this transformation has its ground in the fact that such a change did not limit itself to widening human knowledge but also to transforming man itself. Or, in other words, the revolution did not only consist of widening the object of investigation, but also of transforming the investigating subject. It is, then, an innovation in a very broad ambit, and it is plausible to assume that it was carried out not just by philosophers, but also by all those who helped transform what it meant to be human and its environment, including, of course, poets.
Credits
3
Instructor
Ariza Rodriguez Sergio
The course is based on some sections of the third and fourth books of the Vasishta Yoga, one of the classic texts of the advait tradition, which is impossible to access through the text exegesis philosophical manner. The text itself suggests means of access that are not merely rational, but which are supported on intuition and on experience itself. Its peculiar style filled with metaphors, resemblances, narratives and the constant revisiting of the same issues from different perspectives will undoubtedly provide us with a new way of seeing and conceiving the world. Likewise, the course seeks to clarify notions such as Brahman, Maya, Ahamkara, Moksha, Atman, Jiva, karma, samsara, vasanas, atmavidya, prana, chakras.
Credits
3
Instructor
Cepeña Diaz Granados Margarita
Both secularization and pluralism in modern day society have led to death being an ever less discussed phenomenon. In past times, the discourse about death was an almost exclusive domain of religion, but with the loss of value in society of what was once traditionally religious, and the paramount status of other discourses (medical discourse, scientific approach, Esotericism, and the pseudo-scientific discourse of Self-improvement) death has come to be one of the great taboos of our time. This course pretends to retake the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective. Although the more prominent approaches will be those of philosophy and psychology (this course is offered by both departments), historical, anthropological and sociological approaches will also be discussed. Some of the general problems the course tries to address are: the historically recognized attitudes towards death in the West, the philosophical debate regarding the relationship between death, morality and happiness, actual individual attitudes, as well as beliefs and social prejudices towards death (subject of Social psychology), and the suffering which necessarily implies one’s own death or that of loved ones (Clinical psychology).
Credits
3
This course studies some of the most representative approaches in the history of Western thought to the question about Evil. It begins with the reading of Saint Augustine, who is one of the first thinkers to distance himself from the Greek explanation of Evil as ignorance about what is Good, and who, in turn, thinks of Evil as a constitutive phenomenon of the human subject with herself, characterized by the fragility of reason and will. Afterwards, Eighteenth Century David Hume’s and Immanuel Kant’s reflections about Evil will be considered, who think of this question no longer from the postulates of Christian faith, but from what they pretend to be a strictly rational analysis of the religious phenomenon. From there, they address the question about Evil in relationship with the structure and the limits of reason in its knowledge of the world (Hume), and the knowledge of the self (Kant). Finally, more contemporary reflections of thinkers like Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky and Badiou will be examined, who address the question about Evil as a constitutive phenomenon of the formation of the socio-political space, and the individual’s situation with respect to it.
Credits
3
Instructor
Manrique Ospina Carlos
Each ethical theory is based upon a particular conception of human nature, and every one of them is justified by using very different arguments and strategies. The main purpose of this course is to examine different approaches to morality, and to allow the student to use his analytical ability to understand the fundamental theses of each theory, in order to discover its practical implications. The course will be given by the Philosophy Department’s professors.
Credits
3
Instructor
Gonzalez Quintero Catalina
Credits
3
Credits
3
Totalitarianism is, according to Hannah Arendt, the central event of modern times. Her effort to comprehend this phenomenon, in its specific novelty, leads her to examine and question, to a great extent, some of the traditional political categories, and their assumptions, in order to propose a different way of understanding the sphere of politics. This effort has had its influence in some of the most suggestive and baffling figures of contemporary political thought who, following Arendt, also think that totalitarianism, as our age’s horizon, demands a renewed reflection regarding politics. Thus, the purpose of this course will be to examine the Arendtian notion of totalitarianism and its attempt to critically rethink certain assumptions and traditional conceptions of politics, while making these reflections dialogue with some coeval perspectives which have also drank from these fountains. With this objective in mind, some chapters of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition will be read, as well as some texts from Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Miguel Abensour and Roberto Esposito.
Credits
3
The course is intended to make a historic review the philosophical art proposals that have increasingly influenced the discussions about this topic. The course begins with the most classical ideas of Plato and Aristhoteles, who keep being a point of reference in modern thinking. The first objective is to address what it is known in philosophical history as "aesthetics". Then, the course approaches the central problem of aesthetics in the 18th century, and the problem of taste through authors as Winckelmann, Hume and Kant, and continues with proposals that open new relation possibilities between arts and philosophy: Schiller, Hegel and Nietzsche. The final section ends with some approaches to contemporary aesthetics, based on the challenges of non-figurative arts, among them, the theory of Worringer, the ideas of Kandinsky and Klee, and the proposals of Gadamer about the experience of arts.
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Acosta Lopez Maria
This course is a continuation of Logic I. The core subject matter refers to the logics of predicates, some semantic and syntactic testing methods, such as the Tree of Truth and natural deduction. Similarly, the course dwells on one of the most important extension of the classical logic: the modal logic, given its complexity only propositional modal logic will be studied.
Credits
3
Instructor
Barrero Guzman Tomas
The course intends to introduce students to Kant´s philosophy through the overview of its thoughts and a selective and careful reading of the Critique of Pure Reason. It is worth recalling that Kant´s philosophy not only constitutes the place where the main philosophical problems suggested by the modern periods merge, but it also sets most of the path that must be followed by philosophy up to these days.
Credits
3
Instructor
Manrique Ospina Carlos
Credits
3
According to Hegel, philosophy is about the absolute knowledge, which is not the starting but the final point of the human experience. The Phenomenology of the spirit is concerned with the different shapes consciousness adopts on that path. The course will be focused on the first two stages of the evolution of knowledge, and it will become the venue to discuss the questions brought forward in the first reading of the text.
Credits
3
Instructor
Acosta Lopez Maria
The course provides an approach to the philosophical and social dimension of Marx´s thought, based on some of his most relevant works, thus approaching to main notions, such as citizenship, emancipation, freedom, society criticism, alienation, nature, individual and society, ideology, history, materialism, idealism, work, value, goods, fetishism and its influence on contemporaneous reflection. Likewise, the course seeks to study contemporaneous readings of the Marxist economic, political, social and philosophical legacy, and how to establish relations and differences with other modern thought traditions, such as liberalism, communitarism, hermeneutics, Frankfurt School, neoliberalism, among others.
Credits
3
Instructor
De Zubiria Samper Sergio
By studying some of Nietzsche’s texts, the aim is to introduce the student into one of the most important thoughts of the coeval world, him being the philosopher who stands up to the Western philosophical tradition at the level of the development of its own knowledge. With Nietzsche, a doubt comes into play into the way the West has posed and built its knowledge, apparently free of all suspicion. The course will mainly deal with the text Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The book itself represents something completely new. The skillful classical text interpreter, who knows well how much sense can be made of every detail in them, attempts by himself to write a classic. And, from the beginning, he fills it with the equivocality with which classics come to be throughout the centuries.
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Mina Rodriguez Guillermo
Credits
3
Credits
3
The student -under the supervision of a professor- is supposed to apply the tools of thinking and exegesis of texts he/she has gained throughout his/her research project.
Credits
3
Instructor
Uribe Rincon Catalina
Credits
0
This course will focus on Heidegger´s Capital Work,Being and Time. A limit to heideggerian´s suggestion vis-á-vis the French existentialism, together with the classification of the 20s in the German academic philosophy (the influence of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Scheler, Weber and Jaspers) will serve as introduction to the new approach of human existence with respect to the restitution of the question of being.
Credits
6
Instructor
Uribe Rincon Catalina
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Ariza Rodriguez Sergio
By Special Metaphysics it is understood that part of Aristotle’s Metaphysics which doesn’t have as its subject the study of being qua being (General Metaphysics), but which focuses on a special kind of being: God. The Lambda book (XII) of Metaphysics is a treaty destined to elaborate a theory regarding this special being. It is, also, one of the books which have become more relevant to scholars during the last decade, to the point where it has come to be considered as the key to understanding the whole of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Central problems to this subject are the determination of an eternal substance, separate from the realm of the sensible, its relationship with the latter, the very possibility of an unmoved mover, and its abstract but, at the same time, particular character with causal force, its relationship with the intellect and the sublunary bodies. Aristotelian theses on this subject have profoundly influenced both Metaphysics and Theology to our day. The main sources for this seminar will be the eighth (VIII) book of the Physics and book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics.
Credits
3
Credits
3
The seminar seeks to use the knowledge gained in the courses Latin I,II,III and IV for the translation of different texts.
Credits
3
Instructor
Chinchilla Gutierrez Empeñatriz
The seminar seeks to use the knowledge gained in the courses Greek, I,II,III and IV for the translation of different texts.
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Casta?Eda Salamanca Felipe
Credits
3
Credits
3
In this course, some selected texts of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences’ so-called ‘Small Logic’ are examined, which will be sought to be clarified in the light of the ‘Big Logic’. If we consider the Hegelian Logic as a new ‘Transcendental Deduction of the Categories’, in Hegel’s way, the course will focus in trying to determine the main articulations of these categories, divided, as they are, into Being Categories, Essence Categories, and Concept Categories. This leads to distinguish between an Objective Logic, which spans the first two parts, and a Subjective Logic, which deals with the Logic of the Concept. It must not be forgotten that it was Logic, or what is logic, which Hegel developed with most care, and where we find a great part of the keys to understand his thought.
Credits
3
Instructor
Diaz Jorge
Credits
3
Instructor
Cepeña Diaz Granados Margarita
Credits
3
During the twentieth century there arises a great diversity of reflections and points of view about war. This is not surprising, given the number and seriousness of the types of armed conflicts which have their place during that period. Within this rainbow of posits, which goes from realist and decisionist postures, like those of C. Schmitt, to juridical pacifisms, like those of Kelsen, there stands out a novel reformulation of the ancient and traditional theory of the just war, in M. Walzer’s opus. Its contribution can be understood as a necessary referent to the philosophy of war of our time, not only because of its marked influence in liberal thinkers like Rawls, but also because of the different types of conflict it analyzes, and because it constitutes itself as a sort of midpoint between extreme pacifism and belicisms. This seminar has, as its general purpose, to be the departure point of a research on contemporary philosophy of war, through the reading of its main texts in a propaedeutic manner.
Credits
3
Instructor
Casta?Eda Salamanca Felipe
The course is about Carl Schmitt’s political theory. Work in the seminar will be advanced with the text Political Theology, a compilation of important works by the German philosopher, which include his concept of what is political (the friend/foe distinction), his vital space theory (Lebensraum), his critique of liberalism (close to that of Donoso Cortés, Bonald, etc.), the difference between normality and the state of exception, the relationship between legitimacy and legality, among others. The aim is to have a detailed discussion of this influential author’s theses, and to analyze their relevance regarding both national and international states of affairs in the present time.
Credits
3
Instructor
Arango Rivadeneira Rodolfo
Given the advance of global capitalism, the breaking of the State’s power, the growth of poverty and inequality, the expansion and generalization of unemployment which condemns millions and millions of people to desperation, among other things, the investigation about Western history’s background and cultural wealth becomes more important, in such a way that it may become possible to renew the collective imaginaries and to retake the tradition surrounding Solidarity, in the search for better worlds and more loveable societies where dignity and welfare for all become realized. The principle of Solidarity is central to the recovery project of Humanistic tradition. The vagueness of the concept and the multiple "layers of meaning" which have been associated to it justify a philosophical study about its origins, transformations in its meaning, and its relationships with political and social organization, even more when Solidarity is frequently invoked to justify actions and decisions in political, juridical and moral discourses.
Credits
3
Instructor
Arango Rivadeneira Rodolfo
The objective of the course is to make an approximation to some of Walter Benjamin’s politico-philosophical writings, studying the hints and proposals regarding the necessary transformation of contemporary philosophy. Likewise, the seminar seeks to carry out an exploration of Walter Benjamin’s intellectual biography, and the consolidation of his concerns regarding philosophy and politics. Lastly, the seminar aims to establish links with other contemporary philosophical traditions which nowadays dialogue with Benjamin’s opus.
Credits
3
Instructor
De Zubiria Samper Sergio
Credits
3
The purpose of this seminar is to examine the fundamental texts to phenomenology during its stages of formation and consolidation as a philosophical method. The seminar is organized around the phenomenological description of conscience made by the founder of this school: Edmund Husserl. To begin with, the first description of intentional conscience is presented and its basic elements analyzed: quality, matter, immanent content, etc. Afterwards, a posterior re-elaboration based on the method of phenomenological reduction is examined. Again, basic elements of intentional life experiences are analyzed: noesis, matter, noema, noematic sense, etc. Finally, in the third part, some concrete studies about the problem of constitution are addressed: solipsism, empathy, psychophysical relationships, etc. The seminar pretends to serve as an elementary introduction to the phenomenological method, and as a starting point for more advanced seminars regarding the internal conscience of time, the life’s world, solipsism, regional ontologies, etc.
Credits
3
Instructor
Rengifo Gradeazabal Mauricio
Credits
3
Credits
3
Credits
3
The purpose of this course is to study skeptic lines. Skepticism´s contribution to philosophy includes a reflection on the limits of knowledge as a series of more and less complex methods for the evaluation of beliefs. Among the former methods, the skeptical one was dialectic and included the review of each thesis with its anti-thesis. If the exam produced the same plausibility of each position as output, it was concluded that both beliefs had to be abandoned and the judgment suspended. In modernity, even though the dialectic facet of the sceptical methods is diluted, the power of doubt increases.
Credits
3
Instructor
Gonzalez Quintero Catalina
What is memory? What is the nature of memories? What is the object of our memories? Does what we remember consist of past events, or is it about past experiences? Do we remember through the representation of past perceptions, or do we rebuild our memories by means of actual perceptual representations? What is the nature of the memories which are not perceptual? What is the function of memory? How are memory and other cognitive capacities, such as perception and imagination, related? Can animals remember? Can babies? Why do we have so many false memories? Does the fallibility of our memory constitute an obstacle towards the acquisition of knowledge about our own past? These and other questions will be discussed during this seminar.
Credits
3
Instructor
De Brigard Felipe
This course will be enrolled by those who intend to graduate in the following semester.
Credits
3
Credits
6
Credits
3
Ethics is concerned with the issue of how to act in given circumstances and the judgments on such manner of acting. This seminar dwells on the justification of those acts and judgments. The likelihood of basing or not ethics is especially relevant for politics, culture and society. The relevance moral judgments have in practical, individual and collective life depends on ethics. Along this line of thinking, the course seeks to focus in the analysis of the problems posed by the philosophical groundings of moral and ethics. It takes on an aporetical approach, based on the theoretical and practical problems of the discipline. The text used to spark the discussion is Lessons of Ethics written by Ernst Tugendhat.
Credits
3
Credits
3
Instructor
Arango Rivadeneira Rodolfo
Although it isn’t strange to find the concept of "play" associated with diverse philosophical reflections about art and culture, this link appears to take a new turn in H.G. Gadamer’s thought. The play works here as the main train of thought which the German philosopher develops against what he terms to be the "subjectivization of the experience of art", one of whose effects is to reduce the work of art to a simple event for the aesthetic pleasure of the spectator. The efficacy of this critique –particularly targeted against Kant- demands a transformation of the traditional conception of play, which goes from being associated, as is usual, with the ontologically secondary realm of the illusory and superfluous, to taking on a preeminent status as an ontological model for art, model thanks to which the very possibility to legitimate art’s truth claims becomes real. With the purpose of comprehending how this radical displacement of the categories of play, art and truth takes place in Gadamer’s discourse, we will mainly focus on the first part of Truth and Method, his major opus, and its development in other of the author’s essays.
Credits
3
Instructor
Mu?Oz Gonzalez Diana
The purpose of this seminar is to serve as a space for studying and discussing some of the most influential perspectives in the actual debate regarding ‘Biopower’. As it is well known, it is Michel Foucault who introduces this term into the contemporary political discussions to describe that form of power, characteristic of modern societies (one which Foucault also calls "Governmentality"), which submits and normalizes the bodies, individuating them, tying them to a fixed identity, while at the same time regulating populations, ordering them towards their preservation and productivity, it is a power which, then, problematizes the possibility for subjects to take care of themselves, assuming themselves creatively in singular forms of life. Hannah Arendt had already moved in a similar direction, although from a different horizon, with her analyses regarding totalitarianism and her critical postulates about Modernity. For this author, then, when politics in Modernity assumes as its main goal the defense and promotion of life, human plurality is attempted to be reduced to predictable population, to mere biological existence which can be controlled and administered. Following these reflections, and in dialogue with the philosophical tradition, other coeval thinkers like Derrida, Agamben and Esposito have also thought about these complex relations between power, life and subjectivity, aiming to question, from their diverse interpretive paths, the opposition between what is "human" and what is "animal", prevalent in the Western conception of the political realm. The seminar proposes itself, then, to discuss some of the above mentioned reflections, as well as some of the main problems which in them could arise.
Credits
3
Instructor
Quintana Porras Laura
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
3
Credits
4
Hermeneutics of facticity starts from the interpretive status in which factical life is found. Greek conceptuality was coined in the midst of experiences which have no longer been available to us for quite some time. The philosophy which appropriates itself of the actual state of affairs through interpretation is forced to dismount the inherited interpretive state, because that of which we couldn’t originally interpret we don’t know how to safeguard in its originality. The dismounting and the return to the original sources can only be achieved if "there is a concrete interpretation of the Aristotelian philosophy available, oriented towards the facticity program, that is, towards a radical anthropological phenomenology". The horizon of Aristotelian ontology is the world which appears in the treatment of production and in the use of the produced objects, theoretical knowledge and praxis in which we must "have to do with beings which may be in a different manner".
Credits
3
Instructor
Gutierrez Aleman Carlos
Credits
3
Instructor
Paez Peñuela Andres
This seminar attempts to respond the following question: Truth with no method, or truth against the method? To do so, it covers the following topics: a) Method, the cornerstone of modernity [Bacon. Descartes. Ideological unification. b) Positivism of Comte. Droysen, Dilthey. c) Insecurity and schizophrenia of human sciences. d) Logic positivism. Carl Hempel and its coverage law. From Kuhn to Geertz. Airs of Freedom in human sciences]. e) Relativization of scientific experience in the vast environment of human experience. Temporality of human truth, fallibility and relativism.
Credits
3
There are diverse similarities between the subjects and the fundamental postulates of hermeneutic philosophy and those of rhetorical discipline. These similarities may be given because of either coincidences in perspective, or concrete influences during their historical development. In any case, studying the essential problems of hermeneutics in the light of the rhetorical discipline’s assumptions, and the other way around, proves to be not only useful for a better comprehension of both disciplines, but also an undertaking which contemporary philosophy has tried to take with, alas, few concrete results. The seminar’s method will consist of contrasting texts belonging to both traditions, in order to find their conceptual affinities and, if possible, a historical bond (influences of some authors on others, conceptual evolution, etc.).
Credits
3
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
3
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
4
Instructor
Paez Peñuela Andres
Credits
4
Credits
4
Credits
6
During this course the monograph director monitors the development of the research project until the defense of the thesis.
Credits
6
Instructor
Uribe Rincon Catalina
This subject will be enrolled by the students who intend to graduate in the following semester.
Credits
3
Instructor
Uribe Rincon Catalina
Credits
4
Credits
0
Credits
4