Faculty
Alexander Montag
BA, University of Pennsylvania. MAPSS, University of Chicago. PhD, Tulane University. Interests in ancient philosophy, especially Plato, and its late-modern reception, especially Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as critiques of rationalism throughout the history of philosophy, including Maimonides and Rousseau. Recent dissertation, Philosophy and Logos, examines the foundations of Socratic dialogue as a philosophical method distinct from scientific or technological modes of reasoning. SLC, 2026–
Previous Courses
Philosophy
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Open, Seminar—Spring
PHIL 3350
What is the relationship between the words we use and the things we encounter in the world? Do words belong to things by nature, or only by agreement? Does language correspond to a world already laid out before us, or does it shape what we are able to think, perceive, and encounter? Where does meaning come from—a speaker who intends something by their words, or the rules governing how they are used? To broach these questions, this seminar will trace the history of philosophy of language from its origins in ancient Greek thought through its radical transformation in modern times. Texts will be drawn from seminal moments in that history, from Plato's Cratylus on the correctness of names, through Rousseau on the passionate origin of language and Nietzsche on language as metaphor, through Heidegger's treatment of language as the medium through which the world can be encountered at all, to the analytic tradition on naming, reference, and meaning. The seminar will close with the urgent question of how the history of philosophy can help us understand large language models (LLMs), which produce fluent speech with no speaker behind it. Do such systems really use language, or only simulate it? Does meaning require an understanding mind, or only the right patterns of use?
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Fall
PHIL 3215
What does Silicon Valley take for granted that the great philosophers long ago called into question? What is technology—is it a form of knowledge, a relationship to nature, or something more fundamental to what it means to be human? How did the ancient Greek understanding of techne become the modern drive to master and remake the world? To approach these questions, this seminar will trace the philosophy of technology from its origins in ancient Greek thought through its radical transformations in modern times. We will ask, in the end, what the history of philosophy can tell us about where Silicon Valley's unexamined opinions lead. Texts will be drawn from major moments in the philosophy of technology, from Plato and Aristotle on the nature of craft and human artifice, through Bacon, Descartes, and Rousseau on the Enlightenment transformation of nature into a resource to be mastered, through Marx, Heidegger, and Arendt on the social and existential stakes of modern technology, to the manifestos of contemporary tech thinkers who, knowingly or not, are replaying arguments as old as philosophy itself.
Faculty