In courses Vanessa Wills has designed such as “Philosophy of Fascism and Anti-Fascism,” “Black Woman Marxists on Race, Gender, and Class,” and “Marx and the Alienation Concept,” she helps students situate central philosophical questions within their relevant social and historical contexts. Dr. Wills introduces students to topics and voices that have long been considered canonical in our discipline, as well as perspectives that have historically been neglected. She shows students how philosophical methods are especially well-suited to making good sense of the world they are in and to developing unique approaches for leading and transforming communities. In this way, Dr. Wills executes a principal aim in her teaching: to help students build analytical and communicative competencies that serve them well in the philosophy classroom, in their academic and professional journeys more broadly, and in their lives, wherever they go.
Below are descriptions of some of the courses Dr. Wills has offered in past years:
Social and Political Philosophy
I ask my students to think about social contract theory as an attempt to answer a set of closely related questions. These include: “What makes governmental authority legitimate, if it is ever legitimate?” “What aspects of human behavior are natural and ‘necessary,’ and which ones are socially-produced and subject to change?” “What kinds of socially-produced inequality are permissible given the presumption of natural equality among all peoples?” and, “How can individuals gain the security offered by social connection while maintaining the freedom of total independence?” Further, we bring the classic social contractarian texts into conversation with voices that challenge that tradition’s frequent inattention to issues relating to race-, gender-, or class-based inequality. These are issues that can remain hidden when we focus our intuitions upon idealized social arrangements. In this way, we take social contract theory up on its own terms, subject it to critique regarding how well it achieves its own aims, and also query the aims themselves.
Students often find these questions intrinsically interesting and worth thinking about. My class is an offer to familiarize them with an ongoing conversation about issues they may already find compelling, though perplexing. In this way, I offer them a conceptual framework for understanding the authors’ views and I
pique their curiosity about what these scholars have to say. The promise is that by grappling with these
scholars’ writings, students will gain greater insight into things that matter and develop their own capacities to participate in scholarly conversations as well as in everyday discussions with their peers and in their communities.
Philosophy of Fascism and Anti-Fascism
Fascist and anti-fascist ideologies have acquired renewed relevance in the context of recent political shifts both in the United States and internationally. In this course, we will investigate the philosophical underpinnings of, and influences upon, the development of fascist and antifascist movements in the 20th Century, as well as those of their descendants in the present day. We will read the work of philosophers, historians, political theorists, political figures, and activists.
Economic Justice
The project of liberal democracy presupposes that some economic inequality is compatible with genuine political equality and, indeed, with democratic conceptions of justice. Yet, a 2014 study concluded that the United States fit the model of “Economic-Elite Domination” far more closely than that of “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy.” Globally, fully 85% of the world’s wealth is controlled by just 10% of the population. To what extent does profound, entrenched economic inequality undermine liberal ideals of autonomy, dignity and political equality? What does justice require of us in the face of such inequality?
We will approach this seminar thematically, addressing topics such as the minimum wage, reparations for the descendants of enslaved African people in the U.S., proposals for a universal basic income, and the “Wages for Housework” campaign led by socialist feminists, among others. We bring into conversation a diverse group of authors spanning from the economist Thomas Piketty to the contemporary memoirist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, from the socialist feminist activist Selma James to major figure of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, and philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Rawls, Peter Singer, and Adam Swift.
This seminar will include empirical and theoretical readings, and adopt an integrated approach to moral philosophical and practical-economic questions. Policy issues considered will include: the economics of gender oppression, economic reparations for historically oppressed populations, and arguments for and against a universal basic income, among others. “Economic Justice” is a key offering in GWU’s M.A. in Philosophy and Social Policy. In this seminar, students develop philosophical skills of analysis, conceptual clarity, and argumentative rigor. In concert with this, they learn to apply philosophical insights and methods to the kinds of policy questions they may encounter elsewhere in their careers. As such, it is recommended for any student interested in learning how to apply questions of value to matters of public policy.
Hegel and Post-Hegelian Philosophy
The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, best known for developing “dialectical idealism,” is simultaneously one of the most influential and one of the most controversial figures in the Western philosophical canon. Heralded by Karl Marx as “the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity,” but reviled by Karl Popper as “perhaps the greatest intellectual fraud in the history of our civilization,” there is at least consensus that Hegel’s impact upon the development of Western philosophy is profound.
Hegel’s dialectical idealism is one attempt to explain the dynamism and upheaval in natural and social existence, to theorize the relationship between practical action and theoretical knowledge, and to describe the role of human action and cognition in producing social and scientific progress. In Hegel’s own words, the purpose of dialectics “is to study things in their own being and movement,” understanding them as interrelated parts of a unified though differentiated totality. This totality has an internal development produced by the “sublation” of apparently distinct and contradictory concepts into more expansive ones, a process of conflict and resolution that propels history toward cognition of what Hegel called the “Absolute Idea.”
In this seminar, we will focus on four closely-related concerns of Hegel’s philosophical writings. These are: subjectivity, objectivity, and the possibility of scientific knowledge; the concept of “recognition” and its relevance to self-consciousness and to sociality; the relationships among
freedom, necessity, and historical development; and the relation of his views on race to the rest of his philosophical system.
In addition to Hegel, we will read works from Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, and W. E. B. Du Bois, authors who responded in varying, and sometimes radically opposing, ways to Hegel’s work. We will also read the work of scholarly interpreters of these figures’ engagements with Hegel.
Our aim in this seminar is to achieve an understanding of Hegel’s philosophical system, to trace the later use of his ideas in areas ranging from Marxism, to existentialism, to anti-colonial theory and beyond, and to engage critically with the legacy of Hegelian philosophy.
The Philosophy of Karl Marx
The 19th-Century German philosopher, economist, and political theorist, Karl Marx, is without doubt one of the most important thinkers in modernity and yet also one of the most poorly understood. In this course, we will examine philosophical themes that Marx developed in his work over the entire course of his career, including themes such as alienation and its abolition, dialectics, “species-being”, and historical materialism, as well as related political and economic themes such as exploitation and class struggle.
In this context we will also investigate the works of Marx’s close intellectual collaborator, Friedrich Engels. The aim of the course is for students to be enabled to understand and critically engage with Marx’s work, to gain practice participating in a deep analysis of a single philosophical author, and to acquire a historical and philosophical perspective that will provide greater context for evaluations of other past and contemporary positions in moral and political philosophy.
Philosophy of Race
Race plays a prominent role in our social existence, even in what some have called a “post-racial society,” and has for centuries. In this course, we will take a philosophical approach to understanding a set of related questions about race.
What is the origin and basis of the race concept? Is race socially constructed, or does it have a biological basis? Does racial discourse serve to further entrench racial divisions? How does racial oppression relate to other forms of oppression such as class- and gender-based oppression? What is racial “privilege”? As time permits, we will investigate issues such as affirmative action, racial solidarity, and the ways in which racial oppression differentially affects men and women.
Philosophy of Human Nature
For philosophers such as Aristotle, Hobbes, Marx, and many others, underlying any claims about morality, politics, and other normative matters in social life is a theory of human nature.
In order to know how human beings ought to live and what form of society is best suited to them, many philosophers have thought, one must understand what human beings are and how they have developed. The determination of a universal human nature is supposed to provide some grounding for universal claims about what is good for beings like ourselves, as well as shedding light on our similarities with and distinctness from non-human animals.
In this class, we will survey theories of human nature put forward by a range of thinkers, as well as encountering authors who argue that there can be no such thing as a universal human nature, at all.