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Spring 2025 Graduate Course Descriptions

Listed below are the Philosophy courses being offered at Purdue University in Spring 2025. The courses are listed by their five-digit course number and course title, followed by a brief description. The tables below each description also include information on the course type (e.g., lectures = ‘LEC’), the enrolment limit of the course, the day(s)/time of the course or each section of it, the classroom in which the course will be taught, and the instructor(s) for the course. Courses that include a recitation section are marked in the tables below as type ‘LEC/REC.’ Details of the recitation sections are not listed. The type ‘DIST’ indicates a fully asynchronous, online course. ‘Grad’ indicates that a graduate student will be the instructor of record. PHIL courses that are cross-listed with other courses are marked as such (e.g., ‘c/l DEPT 10000’).

Have questions about philosophy graduate courses? You can contact our Grad Coordinator, Vickie Sanders, via email at sanders@purdue.edu, or by phone at 765-494-4275.

500 LEVEL COURSES

53200 Studies in Theory of Knowledge

The focus of the course will be contemporary analytic epistemology.  The four main topics we will look at are: 

1. the foundationalism-coherentism debate;
2. the internalism-externalism debate;
3. skepticism and responses to it;
4. epistemic probability.

 Course requirements: keeping up with the reading, a short paper, a long paper, a class presentation, and several shorter written assignments (no exam). 

54000 Studies in Social and Political Philosophy

This seminar will look at recent work in democratic theory on political parties, partisanship, political epistemology, and militant democracy. 

55300 Mathematical Logic

An introduction to metatheoretic studies of formal axiomatic systems. Basic set theory is developed for use as a tool in studying propositional calculus. Further topics may include many-valued logics and basic (metatheory for) modal or predicate logic. 

600 LEVEL COURSES

60100 Plato’s and Aristotle’s Ontology and Metaphysics OR Aristotle’s and Stoic Ethics  

(choose one)

I am prepared to offer a seminar on one of two topics:  Either Plato’s and Aristotle’s Ontology and Metaphysics OR Aristotle’s and Stoic Ethics.  If the former, we will start with Parmenides’ poem arguing to the unreality of the spatio-temporal world, turn next to Plato’s Parmenides and Sophist, which ends with a renunciation of “father” Parmenides, and conclude with many weeks devoted to Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics ZH, a critique of Plato’s metaphysics. If the latter is preferred, we will read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, then turn to the major topics in Stoic ethics, and conclude with a selection of recent articles on Aristotle, Kant(!), and the Stoics, devoted to a “rethinking of happiness and duty.”   

**Interested participants are invited to cast a vote (to dfrank@purdue.edu) with their preference. I promise to be bound by the will of the majority.**

68000 Pedagogy Seminar

This graduate seminar provides graduate students with a forum to discuss and enact teaching strategies. Over the course of the term, weekly meetings will be devoted to a discussion and implementation of issues in teaching, learning, and assessment. The goal of this course is to prepare and enhance the teaching portfolio of our students and to make them more effective teachers in the classroom. 

 
68500 The Philosophy of Kant

This seminar will be an in-depth exploration of Kant’s ethics, focusing on Groundwork, the second Critique, and Kant’s Religion. We will be discussing issues treated in my book, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, Kant’s Metaphysics of the Will. Topics treated will be a) Kant’s account of the will, b) the nature of Morality and Kant’s Categorical Imperative, c) With what  right (quid juris) is the categorical imperative binding? d) the relation between Groundwork and the Second Critique,  e) the highest good, and d) the nature of radical evil. Students will be responsible for several in-class presentations (three or four) and either two short papers or a longer seminar paper at the end. Students will be encouraged to submit their papers for presentation at a conference, or to produce a draft of a paper suitable for publication.  

Want to know what else we offer? Check out the Master Course List