Kant

A semester-long close reading of the *Critique of Pure Reason*, centered on Kant's response to Hume and his claim that the structure of experience is something the mind itself contributes rather than passively receives. You'll work through the text section by section — Aesthetic, Deduction, Analogies, Dialectic — giving an oral presentation on one passage, writing two term essays that defend a position against Kant or one of his critics, and doing weekly close readings rather than problem sets. It's the anchor course for anyone going deeper into modern philosophy, since almost every later debate in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science is either extending Kant or pushing back against him.