Welcome

Office: 3311 Boylan
Virtual Office Hours: W 1:00 – 2:00 PM or by appointment
Email: dcampos@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Course times: W 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM, only on scheduled days
Virtual classroom: Zoom (link will be provided; attendance is optional)
Course site: Blackboard through CUNY

Course Description: Philosophy means the “love of wisdom.” In its ancient Greek conception, it is a form of love. But what is love?

In this course, we will read classical and contemporary philosophical works on the nature of love and its relevance for ethics, especially in interpersonal relations.

Our main text will be Plato’s Symposium, a classical Greek account of Eros. We will also read texts such as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book VIII on friendship), Ralph Emerson’s essays “Love,” Charles Peirce’s essay “Evolutionary Love,” and Martha Nussbaum’s chapter on contemplative creativity in Plato from her book Upheavals of Thought. Thus, we will have classical Greek and American discussions of love at the core of our inquiry.

Methodologically, we will place special emphasis on reading, comprehending, analyzing, and criticizing philosophical texts. We will also learn how to work in stages to write a high-quality philosophical paper that engages classical texts and scholarly commentaries and criticisms.

This course website contains copyrighted materials available only for your personal, noncommercial educational and scholarly use. This site is used in accordance with the fair use provision, Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act where allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Every effort has been made to provide attribution of copyrighted content. If you wish to use any copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain expressed permission from the copyright owner. If you are the owner of any copyrighted material that appears on this site and believe the use of any such material does not constitute “fair use”, please contact Professor Daniel Campos to have the content removed, if proven necessary.

This open educational resource / zero-cost textbook (OER/ZTC) course site was created as part of the CUNY and SUNY 2017-21 Open Educational Resources Initiatives. Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Legislature awarded CUNY and SUNY funds to implement open educational resources to develop, enhance and institutionalize new and ongoing open educational resources across both universities.

Special thanks to the CUNY Office of Academic Affairs, the CUNY Office of Library Services, Brooklyn College Administration and Professor Miriam Deutch, Coordinator, Brooklyn College Open Educational Resources Initiative. Site design and formatting by Colin McDonald, OER Developer.