Philosophical Traditions at Oregon
Our commitment to integrated pluralism involves engagement with each of the major traditions of contemporary Western philosophy: American, analytic, continental, and feminist.
American Philosophy
American Philosophy at the University of Oregon is a valuable way of doing philosophy as well as a historical tradition to be understood. As a method, American philosophy begins with an epistemological and ontological focus on human beings in interaction with each other and their environments. From the perspective of interaction, this approach also affirms a commitment to pluralism, the framing role of human communities, and the inseparability of knowledge and value. Our approach is explicitly grounded in the work of the classical pragmatists---Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey---and the work of their contemporaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Jane Addams. Our approach to the American tradition also embraces less recognized thinkers who contributed to the development of pragmatism and many others who share a general commitment to pluralism, the importance of community, and issues raised by life in the diverse societies of the Americas. As a result, American philosophy at Oregon is a living philosophy focused on present problems continuous with a long and rich tradition of philosophical inquiry grounded in American experience.
Coursework and research focuses on three connected areas. The first focuses on using the approach of American philosophy to address current philosophical concerns in theories of knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, race and gender theories, embodiment, and science studies. The second area expands the boundaries of American philosophy by exploring its relations with continental, analytic, and feminist philosophy historically and thematically. The third area expands the tradition itself by recovering the history of American philosophy, especially the role of African American, Latin American, Native American, and American feminist thought as part of the tradition.
Analytic Philosophy
Although analytic philosophy is not a major focus of our program, we appreciate the value of this tradition and foster dialogues between analytic texts and thinkers and alternative traditions, such as pragmatism, continental philosophy, feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis. Attention to possible intersections of these different traditions provides a much richer and deeper understanding of key issues than is available through analytic methods and modes of argument alone. Consequently, our courses that deal with themes and problems raised in analytic philosophy tend to engage this tradition by way of other points of view as well.
Current faculty interests in analytic philosophy are indicative of this cross-tradition orientation. One focus draws on empirical research on concepts, meaning, and language from the cognitive sciences to help clarify and resolve questions in the philosophy of mind and language. A second emphasizes how a naturalized approach to epistemology that unites empirical research on cognition with cultural studies of knowledge formation bears on central questions in epistemology and the philosophy of science. A third focus combines insights from phenomenology and developmental psychology to arrive at a conception of mind as both necessarily embodied and situated within the network of social relations. A fourth focus, in moral theory, includes cognitive research on moral reasoning and character development in addressing issues in virtue ethics, moral realism, and ethical naturalism. Our work in aesthetics and the philosophy of art includes key analytic texts and problems, along with work from hermeneutics and film and literary studies. In addition, historical courses and specific author's courses may have analytic approaches appropriate to their subject matter.
Continental Philosophy
"Continental Philosophy" concerns a cluster of questions and themes prevalent in 19th and 20th Century European thought, for example, the nature and possible end of metaphysics; critical social and political theory; ethics as first philosophy; the interplay of time, history, and narrative; the grounds of embodiment, gender, and the situated subject; and the entwinement of art, myth, and truth.
While certain patterns of inquiry orient our pursuit of these issues (e.g. critical theory, feminism, genealogy, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and post-structuralism), Continental philosophy at Oregon remains in conversation with other philosophical traditions. For example, present concerns include the relation of antiquity to thinkers such as Hegel, Schelling, and Heidegger; dialogue between Anglo-American and Continental feminist discourses; opportunities of mutual enlightenment and constraint between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences; conversations between Marxism and deconstruction on the one hand and pragmatism on the other; the relation of phenomenological descriptions of nature to contemporary evolutionary ecology; and Levinas's relation to earlier generations of Jewish thought.
Amidst such dialogues, which are the hallmark of our department, the close reading of texts and figures is also esteemed, particularly with regard to Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, and Schelling in the 19th Century, and Adorno, Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Husserl, Heidegger, Irigaray, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre in the 20th. One will thus find courses that work exclusively with one thinker or text as well as courses that move across texts and traditions.
Feminist Philosophy
Feminist Philosophy is best understood as a way of doing philosophy that arises out of and seeks to articulate the emancipatory aspirations of women. Feminist philosophers work within and across other philosophical traditions. To say that our work is "feminist" is to acknowledge that gender can be a central lens through which we conduct inquiry. Feminist philosophy considers what it means to enter the philosophical project as a sexed, raced, embodied, historically and culturally situated subject. The particular strengths of our department in feminism include phenomenology, embodiment, intersubjectivity, philosophy of science, pragmatism, poststructuralism, ethics, and politics, and we have particular interests in philosophies of sexuality and intimacy as well as the intersections between feminist theory, race theory, and other liberatory theories.
The department has hosted many feminist conferences, and faculty are or have been affiliated with the APA Committee on the Status of Women, the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, the Society for Women in Philosophy, and the International Association of Women Philosophers. The Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology was founded by Drs. Bonnie Mann and Beata Stawarska; this international organization meets regularly at SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) and holds intensive institutes in Oregon, with national and international participation, every 3 years.
The University of Oregon distinguishes itself at the graduate level by being the only institution in the nation to require that all graduate students take two courses in feminist philosophy, by the near equal numbers of female and male grad students (sometimes we have slightly more women), and by the flourishing publishing and professional activity of both faculty members and graduate students who work in feminism.
The University of Oregon has a very strong Women's and Gender Studies Program with more than 70 affiliated faculty. Graduate students may complete a certificate in Women's and Gender Studies in addition to master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy. Students will find additional research and scholarship activities at the Center for the Study of Women in Society, a well-endowed, multidisciplinary research center devoted to scholarship on women and gender.