Philosophy: a roundup of current studies and upcoming endeavors

My current classes:

Sartre – PHIL 467

Ethics & Evolution – PHIL 480
Philosophy & Cosmology – PHIL 501
Phil Forum Colloquium – PHIL 510
(sitting in on) Comparative Religious Ethics – RELG 380

For Sartre I hope to work with his “ontology of freedom” – his own argument that no matter what our physical make-up and environment, we are always “condemned to freedom”. There is always some wiggle-room for our consciousness to choose, this way or that. I have (and have mentioned) a book comparing Sartre and Buddhism (primarily Japanese Zen I think).

The central question raised by Dr. Borgmann in Philosophy & Cosmology is whether philosophy can reconstruct a ‘moral cosmology’ today, or if such a project is doomed by the overwhelming power of materialism. I take his view to be that a ‘moral cosmology’ would accept and yet go beyond contemporary science-driven materialism (which is an amoral worldview within which we currently try to construct morality). In past times the universe was intrinsically moral, right through to three hundred years ago in the West. But now that is no longer taken as a given; today’s universe is (if you accept modern science) cold and indifferent. Are we forced to accept and meek out our existence in such a universe, or can we accept and compellingly go beyond such an understanding?

For Ethics and Evolution I’m not sure where I’ll focus just yet. Any suggestions? I guess the central question will be how we can understand ethics in light of Darwinianism (a la Dennett’s book, “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life“) . I’m thinking I may want to explore Kantian rejoinders – noting that physical structures go so far to explaining the world, but such things as consciousness and morality cannot properly (completely) be brought under the wing of evolution…

The central question raised by Dr. Borgmann in Philosophy & Cosmology is whether philosophy can reconstruct a ‘moral cosmology’ today, or if such a project is doomed by the overwhelming power of materialism. I take his view to be that a ‘moral cosmology’ would accept and yet go beyond contemporary science-driven materialism (which is an amoral worldview within which we currently try to construct morality). In past times the universe was intrinsically moral, right through to three hundred years ago in the West. But now that is no longer taken as a given; today’s universe is (if you accept modern science) cold and indifferent. Are we forced to accept and meek out our existence in such a universe, or can we accept and compellingly go beyond such an understanding?

The Colloquium just provides discussion on current issues in the professional field of philosophy – sometimes this is stimulating, sometimes not. The Comparative Religious Ethics course is perhaps the most interesting on a personal level because it challenges the way I have in the past viewed religion and ethics (i.e. rationally, as bodies of arguments connected with experience) with a view of story or narrative as at least the most powerful element of religion and ethics, if not the true heart of each.