Introductory courses can have a variety of legitimate goals, depending on the type of institution at which one teaches and the students one has, one’s own conception of the discipline and of the practice of philosophy, one’s areas of specialization, and a host of other factors. I am lucky enough to teach at Bard College, an institution with (more or less) absolute teaching autonomy. This Introduction to Global Philosophy course was the first that I taught at this institution, so I wanted to make use of that autonomy. The first motivating thought for the design of the course was from a conversation with Francey Russell (Barnard College and Columbia University). We had talked about designing an intro course based on Kant’s four questions of anthropology:
- What can I know?
- What ought I to do?
- For what may I hope?
- What is the human being?
I adopted these four questions as a means of introducing students to epistemology, ethics, and moral psychology, swapping out the last for “Who am I?” in order to introduce them to questions about the nature of the self. (I felt justified in doing so since Kant says that the first three questions are aspects of the fourth.) I also added a fifth question—“What ought we to do?”—to include a section on political philosophy.
With that structure in hand, I thought about learning objectives. I had both explicit learning objectives and, I suppose, hidden objectives. The explicit objectives were for students to develop skills in community building and joint inquiry, to develop skills in reading and writing philosophy, and to use those skills to engage in a practice of gaining self-knowledge or self-understanding and intellectual autonomy.
Another way to think about these explicit objectives is that I wanted students both to work with philosophical texts and with themselves, to think about the (possible) role of philosophical texts and philosophical thinking and practice in their own lives.
These explicit objectives were served by several parts of the assessment structure. The first assessment for the course was a low-stakes group assignment with individual reflection. The assignment was to research the life of a person who had studied philosophy (I gave them a couple of lists) and to present to the class. It was low stakes because the point of the assignment was to get them to work together to get to know each other and to think about the role that philosophy played in someone else’s life (not necessarily academic philosophy). This assignment was scaffolded by earlier group activities in class. Each student was also assigned an “essay buddy” to work through their essays with – and collaboration (though not full co-authoring) was very much encouraged.
In terms of intellectual autonomy, a fairly large part of the grade for the course (30%) was self-graded, comprising a “participation” grade and a reflection diary. I met with each student to discuss their own personal “participation” goals for the class, which could include all sorts of engagement with the material and each other, not just talking in class. For those with worries about self-grading, the usual occurred. Only one student gave themselves 10/10 for this grade and most underrated the extent and quality of their own engagement.
Another large part of the assessment (20%) comprised low-stakes “easy” marks: weekly discussion questions (which I drew on in every class), and a P/F essay rewrite where a P required simply handing anything in. The point of this assessment structure was to build trust and community in the class since their low-stakes written work was the basis for their work in class. While I taught this class before the introduction of ChatGPT, I have no intention of changing this assessment structure. Though, I may add the possibility that students may use ChatGPT as a research tool for the group research assignment.
My hidden objective was to decolonize the curriculum. I didn’t tell the students that the course was based on Kant’s four questions, for instance. And I jammed together texts from philosophical traditions from different geographies and historical eras: Bell Hooks with Aristotle; Susan Brison with Desmond Tutu; Laozi with Maria Lugones. If we don’t tell new students that philosophy is white, male, etc., even if we do so in order to undermine those narratives, then (new) students won’t think that philosophy is white, male, etc.
One comment that I did get from one or two students at the end of the class was that I didn’t give enough historical context for the texts we read. This was intentional on my part—I wanted them to come to the texts cold and without a sense of a “canon” (and for some texts, I did provide context in class where it would help). I think that the next time I teach it I will circulate some contextual information in advance. You’ll note that the learning objectives say nothing about developing any historical sense or historicizing skills. This is not because I think those unimportant—if anything, the exact opposite, especially for those who want to pursue further philosophy. It is just that there are choices to be made regarding what an intro course does. A historically inclined intro course would be a very different beast. It’s also worth noting that Bard philosophy majors are required to take at least two courses that meet implicit histories of philosophy requirements.
I ended up making some changes to the syllabus as the semester progressed. Bard has long (15-week) semesters with no week-long midsemester break (don’t ask. . .), so I ended up cutting some material from the end of the course (on hope) and replacing it with some in-class exercises. And some of the texts are difficult: I think that next time I will (unfortunately) cut Catherine Elgin’s “True Enough,” and maybe Hayek on density grounds.
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Yarran Hominh
Yarran Hominh is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. His research sits at the intersection of social and political philosophy with moral psychology. He draws liberally from a variety of traditions of thought and practice, including the pragmatist tradition, the Black radical tradition, Buddhist modernism, and anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis from around the globe. He is working on a book entitled The Problem of Unfreedom.
