Spring 2026 Course Offerings
For a complete list of courses and course descriptions, please see the University Catalog. If you have further questions, please contact the department at 207.581.3866.
Course Offerings
PHI 100 0002-LEC 45110 Contemporary Moral Problems, MWF 1:00-1:50pm, Stevens Hall 375, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Derek Michaud
Course Description: Examines a variety of moral problems causing controversy in contemporary society. Focuses on evaluating arguments for and against competing solutions to these problems. Also discusses different philosophical strategies for thinking about moral obligations and relationships. Topics surveyed may include abortion, affirmative action, euthanasia, feminism, the environment, capital punishment, welfare, and aid to the needy, technology, war and racism, among others. Gen Ed: Ethics, West Cult Trad, and Social Context & Inst.
PHI 100 0991-LEC 45111 Contemporary Moral Problems, Web Online Only, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 39, Instructor: Joe Arel
Course Description: Examines a variety of moral problems causing controversy in contemporary society. Focuses on evaluating arguments for and against competing solutions to these problems. Also discusses different philosophical strategies for thinking about moral obligations and relationships. Topics surveyed may include abortion, affirmative action, euthanasia, feminism, the environment, capital punishment, welfare, and aid to the needy, technology, war and racism, among others. Gen Ed: Ethics, West Cult Trad, and Social Context & Inst.
PHI 100 WINT-LEC 45112, Contemporary Moral Problems, WINTER (12/29/25-1/16/26) -Web-Online, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 39, Instructor: Joe Arel
Course Description: Examines a variety of moral problems causing controversy in contemporary society. Focuses on evaluating arguments for and against competing solutions to these problems. Also discusses different philosophical strategies for thinking about moral obligations and relationships. Topics surveyed may include abortion, affirmative action, euthanasia, feminism, the environment, capital punishment, welfare, and aid to the needy, technology, war and racism, among others. Gen Ed: Ethics, West Cult Trad, and Social Context & Inst.
PHI 102 0001-LEC 45113, Introduction to Philosophy, TuTh 12:30-1:45pm, Merrill Hall 330, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Sam Underwood
Course Description: An introduction to philosophy approached through a selection of central questions: What should count as philosophy and what is it for? What is knowledge and can I ever know anything? What counts as “real” and why? What can I say about my experience of the world and are other things conscious in the same way? When, if ever, am I free to choose to act or believe? What makes something good and what does that mean for my choices and my life? Through discussion of these problems we come to learn methods that philosophers employ, practice skills in philosophical inquiry, gain tools in precise and careful analysis, and think about the relationship between philosophy and other fields. Gen Ed: Ethics and West Cult Trad.
PHI 102 0004-LEC 45114, Introduction to Philosophy, MWF, 4:00-4:50pm, Nevill Hall 208, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Mike Devito
Course Description: An introduction to philosophical thought and critical thinking through an engagement of ideas from the world’s philosophical traditions. Questions will be asked about the nature of wisdom and knowledge, the essence of reality and of ideas, human nature, virtue and community, justice, and political life. Assignments will include reflection papers and exams. Gen Ed: Ethics and West Cult Trad.
PHI 102 0005-LEC 45115, Introduction to Philosophy, MWF, 3:00-3:50pm, Neville Hall 208, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Mike Devito
Course Description: An introduction to philosophical thought and critical thinking through an engagement of ideas from the world’s philosophical traditions. Questions will be asked about the nature of wisdom and knowledge, the essence of reality and of ideas, human nature, virtue and community, justice, and political life. Assignments will include reflection papers and exams. Gen Ed: Ethics and West Cult Trad.
PHI 102 PHI 100 0990-LEC 45116, Introduction to Philosophy, Web Online Only (03/06/26-05/01/26), 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 39, Instructor: Joe Arel
Course Description: Introduction to Philosophy is an introduction to the academic discipline of Philosophy. This course introduces students to major questions and methods of inquiry in Philosophy. Methods of inquiry include clear and concise articulation, logical argument, critical analysis, and synthesis. In addition to basic logic, topics include epistemology (what is knowledge), metaphysics (what is reality), and practical philosophy (how should we live our lives?). Gen Ed: Ethics, West Cult Trad.
PHI 104 0001-LEC 44623, Existentialism and Literature, TuTh 9:30-10:45am, Stevens Hall 365, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Sam Underwood
Course Description: Existentialism is a revolutionary movement in 20th century philosophy that studies the ways in which it is up to us to make our lives and our world meaningful. The texts we will read in this course will offer insightful and perspective-shifting studies of human nature in addition to challenging us to reflect personally on the values by which we live and, indeed, to ask ourselves whether we are honest with respect to how we live our lives. We will also consider works of contemporary literature that help to bring out these existentialist themes in particularly vivid and intimate ways through their content as well as their form of expression. Gen Ed: Ethics, West Cult Trad, Artistic and Creative Expression.
PHI 222 0001-LEC 46302, Philosophy of Games, TuTh 2:00-3:15pm, Deering Hall 101C, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 30, Instructor: Robby Finley
Course Description: An introduction to the ways that philosophy can inform our understanding of games and the way games can provide new means for approaching philosophical problems. Topics include philosophical accounts of games, the aesthetic value and ethics of games, how formal theories of decision and games can be applied to philosophical problems, and how games can serve as a medium for addressing philosophical questions, with a focus on agency, personal identity, and meaning. Class preparation will require both reading philosophical texts and playing or watching play of assigned games. Gen Ed: Artistic and Creative Expression and Western Cultural Tradition
PHI 232 0001-LEC 44296, Environmental Ethics, TuTh 12:30-1:45pm, Boardman Hall 210, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Don Beith
Course Description: A study of environmental ethical principles ranging from the history of Maine ecology to contemporary issues in environmental justice. We will study Thoreau’s The Maine Woods alongside traditional ecological knowledges and Wabanaki thinking, then read the ethics of the built environment through Alexander Wilson’s The Culture of Nature and other social constructivist thinkers, concluding our investigations with Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. We will also examine indigenous, ecofeminist and contemporary climate change thinkers. Gen Ed: Ethics, Population & the Environment, and Social Context & Inst.
PHI 235 0001-LEC 43967, Biomedical Ethics, TuTh 9:30-10:45am, Jenness Hall 108, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Susan Bredlau
Course Description: Investigates the ways in which we are always engaged in ethical decision making and how it is often those practices that we assume are helpful or good that most require ethical consideration. Focuses on experiences of illness, disability, and aging to consider how these experiences challenge common understandings of our bodies, health, and caring for others. Examines how interactions between individuals are always situated within broader social and political contexts and reflect on how our understanding of disease, mental illness, and scientific research impedes or supports communal, as well as individual, well-being. Gen Ed: Ethics, Western Cultural Tradition, and Social Contexts & Institutions.
PHI 262 0001-LEC 44297, Philosophy of Art, TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm, The Maples 217, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 25, Instructor: Susan Bredlau
Course Description: In this course, we will study works of philosophy that help us to think carefully and broadly about what art is and isn’t. In tandem with these texts, we will explore a rich variety of works of art and writings by artists to consider how art is deeply significant for human life–both at personal and social and political levels. No prior training in or significant exposure to art is expected! Gen Ed: Western Cultural Tradition and Artistic and Creative Expression.
PHI 332 0001-SEM 46132, Environmental Philosophy, TuTh 9:30-10:45am, The Maples 217, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 25, Instructor: Don Beith
Course Description: In this course we will study radical approaches to learning to rethink philosophy itself in the face of the climate crisis, focusing on attempts to bring philosophizing back down to earth or its elemental origins. To this end, we will read Marcia Bjornerud’s Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human alongside some essays from The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking Through Arboreality edited by David MacAuley and Laura Pustarfi, and Bruno Latour’s Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Gen Ed: Population & The Environment.
PHI 336 0001-LEC 44974, Feminist Philosophy/WGS 410 0001-LEC 43811/SOC 340 0001-LEC 44595/CMJ 493 0001-LEC 45250, TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm, Williams Hall 220, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 22 combined, Instructor: Elizabeth Neiman
Course Description: feminist, gender and queer theorists explore epistemological questions, or questions about how knowledge is formed and by whom and with what implications. We explore continuities and points of distinction amongst these theoretical perspectives, and with particular attention to Indigenous and Black feminist contributions. Theory can make for a challenging read — but we make sense of the materials together through seminar-style discussions and also informal writing responses. With cross-listings in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Anthropology, CMJ, Sociology, and Philosophy, this course draws students from multiple disciplines. This is fitting as feminist and gender theory informs work by researchers and teachers across the university, and in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. Over the course of the semester, you will be asked to weigh how the materials we encounter may usefully inform your work in another major or minor. Gen Ed: Writing Intensive.
PHI 420 0001-SEM 44624, Topics in Continental Philosophy: Title, W 4:00-6:50pm, The Maples 217, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 20, Instructor: Don Beith
Course Description: This seminar will focus on critical understandings of time. We commence our study with Henri Bergson’s pioneering treatise Time and Free Will that challenges our everyday chronological understanding of clocktime. Then, we will take up the existential phenomenology of time consciousness in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, where we will critically read Heidegger’s claims about what it means to live out of an authentic temporality. In conclusion we will consider postmodern receptions of these thinkers, especially Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonism and Elizabeth Grosz’ Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power.
PHI 475 0001-SEM 44022, Philosophy Capstone: Title: Monism, MWF 10:00-10:50am, The Maples 217, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 20, Hao Hong
Course Description: Monism in metaphysics is the thesis that reality is fundamentally one. Despite its apparent counterintuitiveness—our world seems to contain many distinct things, such as trees, rocks, planets, electrons, animals, and people—versions of Monism have been defended in different philosophical traditions, including but not limited to Ancient Greek philosophy (Parmenides), Modern European philosophy (Spinoza, Anne Conway), German Idealism (Hegel), British Idealism (F. H. Bradley), contemporary analytic philosophy (Jonathan Schaffer), Daoism (Laozi and Zhuangzi), Neo-Confucianism (Zhang Zai), Huayan Buddhism (Fazang), and Hinduism (the Upanishads).
We will examine some versions of Monism and explore the different senses in which “reality is fundamentally one”. We will practice our skills of interpreting texts, identifying and analyzing arguments, developing cross-cultural insights, and defending our own philosophical positions. Each student is expected to develop a research project that results in a scholarly paper.
JST 383 0001-LEC 46054, T History of the Holy Lands/HTY 199 0001-LEC 43430, MWF 3:00-3:50pm, Stevens Hall 370, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 35 combined, Joshua Walton
Course Description: This course will challenge students to evaluate the cultural phenomena that are the Hebrew Bible and Qur’an in their historical and cultural context by studying a broad range of historical documents and archaeological cultures in the periods during which the Bible and Qur’an came to be written texts. The course provides an introduction to the history of Middle Eastern cultures 3500 BCE-700 CE in the Holy Land and its neighbors. Along the way, students will analyze and interpret the Biblical accounts of ancient cultures in the Holy land in light of contemporary historical and archaeological data. They will evaluate how the Bible, and in its wake, Jewish and Christian identities, have influenced the perception of the past. The archaeological record of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society throughout the history of the Holy Land provides an important framework to interpret the creation of these canonical texts.
For questions or permission, please contact: Philosophy at 207.581.3866 or email Jen Bowen at jennifer.bowen@maine.edu