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Undergraduate spring application deadline is December 1 for spring term.

PHIL 302 Philosophy Now:

The specific topic of this course changes from semester to semester. Each time the course is offered, it considers a topic of current social importance and employs important work in social and moral philosophy to understand them. Topics have included reparations and responses to historical injustices; toleration of religious and other differences; immigration and the question of who should get in and why. Future topics may involve the legitimacy of torture; justice in the distribution of health care; markets and morals; same-sex marriage; the role, nature, and justifiability of patriotism; etc.
4 Undergraduate credits

Effective August 16, 2017 to present

Meets graduation requirements for

Learning outcomes

General

  • Compare and contrast major moral theories, theories of justice, and philosophical theories in social and political philosophy.
  • Focus most acutely on the centrality of justification for claims made in these accounts.
  • Apply, at an advanced collegiate level, the resulting understandings to an analysis of the moral dilemmas in a topic of current social importance such as reparations and responses to historical injustice; patriotism; warfare; toleration of religious and other differences; and other challenging issues currently central in civic debate.
  • Use the work of the course to reflect on personal beliefs and attitudes about these central issues, and to construct ways, as a citizen, to act morally on those beliefs.

Minnesota Transfer Curriculum

Goal 6: The Humanities and Fine Arts

  • Demonstrate awareness of the scope and variety of works in the arts and humanities.
  • Understand those works as expressions of individual and human values within a historical and social context.
  • Respond critically to works in the arts and humanities.
  • Engage in the creative process or interpretive performance.
  • Articulate an informed personal reaction to works in the arts and humanities.

Goal 9: Ethical and Civic Responsibility

  • Examine, articulate, and apply their own ethical views.
  • Understand and apply core concepts (e.g. politics, rights and obligations, justice, liberty) to specific issues.
  • Analyze and reflect on the ethical dimensions of legal, social, and scientific issues.
  • Recognize the diversity of political motivations and interests of others.
  • Identify ways to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.