1. Introducing Philosophy with Crime and Punishment
Teaching Dostoevsky Outside Slavic Studies

2. Background World Humanities II:
Notes from Underground with Baudelaire, Manet, and Debussy
ENGL 4950: Special Topics Moral Perfectionism:
The Eternal Husband alongside A Winter’s Tale, A Doll’s House, and The Good Soldier as samples of imperfectionism
Challenge:
Finding ways to fit Dostoevsky into classes

3. Background Independent Studies for Philosophy students:
Wittgenstein and philosophical therapy; Kant and moral objectivity and moral reasoning
ENGL 4950: Special Topics: Dostoevsky
A traditional literature course for English majors
Challenge:
Finding a clear way to approach the texts; distinguishing literary versus philosophical approaches to the text

4. In the Philosophy Curriculum
PHIL 2010: Introduction to Philosophy
A historical approach
Now online only every summer
A contemporary approach
Now my standard every-term course
PHIL 3095: Major Thinkers: Dostoevsky
Offered every third Spring

5. The Basic Purpose The Mission of the Dostoevsky Society:
To support and expand the encounter with Dostoevsky.
The Philosophy Curricular Mission:
“This course introduces students to the methods by which philosophers raise questions and problems, provide answers and solutions, and thereby generate knowledge. It also introduces students to some of the key content areas of philosophy, which include the nature of reality, knowledge, consciousness, and the good.”

6. The Basic Purpose Put otherwise: The Synergy:
“This description gives you the three basic aims of the course: it will introduce you to how philosophers work and what they work on, and it will introduce how they work by describing what they do in terms of what we’ll call ‘academic moves’ or ‘critical moves’ or even ‘critical academic moves’ that are applicable in any discipline.”
The Synergy:
Applying the philosophical questions, concepts, and methods to the C&P excerpts increases understanding of both while showing the power of method

7. The SLOs
The student is able to define and utilize basic critical moves and disciplinary terms when writing about philosophy.
The student is able to articulate a philosophical question at issue.
The student is able to articulate a philosophical answer to the question.
The student is able to apply those philosophical answers to another text.
The student is able to properly format and submit written work.

8. Pedagogical Principles
Four Kinds of Knowledge
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Scaffolding
Stages of Mastery
Making it Stick
Autonomy

9. Definitions of Philosophy
Investigating the Conceptual
Articulating Inferences
Making Distinctions
Key Methods: thought experiments; conversion into propositions; generation of questions
Key Results: conceptions of concepts; better questions

10. PHIL 2010: The Basic Approach
We open with two excerpts from C&P: the discussion of the article “On Crime” and the confession to Sonya
We philosophy and stop to apply it to the excerpts.
We end with three more excerpts from C&P: the conversation in the tavern; the walk to and commission of the crime, and Part II of the Epilogue

11. PHIL 2010: The Historical Approach
Justice: excerpts from Books I and II of Plato’s Republic
The Good: Boethius’s On the Supreme Good and excerpts from On the Eternity of the World
Doubt: the first two meditations of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy
Personal Identity: Chapters 27 of Book II of Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding
The Sublime: excerpts from Kant’s Critique of Pure Judgment
Conscience: the opening dozen sections of the second essay of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality

12. PHIL 2010: The Contemporary Approach
Epistemology:
Practical reasoning and basic beliefs
Theoretical reasoning and justification
Kinds of inference: deduction, induction, and abduction
Skepticism: knowing the external world and minds (others and my own)
Metaphysics:
Consciousness, personal identity, and free will
Ethics:
Moral objectivity and moral reasoning
Political Philosophy:
Liberty

13. Results for Philosophy
Much better writing
Much better development
Much better grasp of the philosophy material and methods

14. Results for Dostoevsky
What evidence supports his beliefs? What kind of inference it at work where he does offer justification, and does it work?
Does he have any basic beliefs, and if so, are they ‘proper’?
How does the problem of skepticism help us to understand his approach the external world, the minds of others, and his own mind more fully? In particular, are ordinary people philosophical zombies?
What model of consciousness is assumed by Raskolnikov?