Cohen's List

Via Cliopatria, I came across this post by Dan Cohen on the top ten philosophy syllabi at Syllabus Finder. It's quite interesting. Cohen is struck by how diverse the topics are in comparison with history, but I suspect that this is simply a matter of the size of philosophy as a discipline. Philosophy covers everything from here to the edge of the universe and back again, ten different ways simultaneously. What strikes me is all that is lacking. There are a number of ways in which philosophy as a matter of practice tends to be divided: problematic (philosophy of religion, of science, of art, etc.), historical (ancient, medieval, early modern, etc.), regional (Chinese, Russian, Anglo-American, etc.), cultural (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Marxist, etc.), scholastic (Aristotelian, Platonist, Kantian, etc.) and so forth. Regional, scholastic, and cultural divisions play very little role in the organization of curricula in general; they occasionally peek their heads through, but tend not to be fundamental. This leads to obvious deficiencies -- lack of serious exposure to Chinese philosophy, Sikh philosophy, the complex courses of various philosophical schools, etc. But it does have the advantage of making it easier to organize a department and a set of stable course requirements. The lines of organization tend to be problematic and historical; this gives you a way to cover everything (in a very, very general way) two different ways, and when done properly this works very well. What I notice about the list is that there are no purely historical syllabi (no ancient, medieval, or modern courses), although several blend the historical and problematic, as one might expect. The breakdown is roughly into two intros (which are mixed, as most introductory courses are, but tend problematic, as most introductory courses that are not explicitly designated historical do); two aesthetics courses; and six social/political courses. This is rather unbalanced, perhaps almost as unbalanced as the history list's domination by American history. Of course, it isn't possible to say what any of it means without knowing something of the psychologies of typical Syllabus Finder users -- what percent are students and what are instructors, what they tend to use Syllabus Finder before, etc.