Laura Kotevska

Emotions and Embodied Cognition

Students will apply advanced philosophical methods to the understanding of the passions. Students will analyse the most influential theories, historical and contemporary, about how passions function in society. They will evaluate how passions have reflected and interacted with the predominant culture since the early modern era. Students will learn how to apply their understanding of the passions to the social and political challenges of today.

I taught this course in semester 1, 2018

Philosophy and Literature

This unit addresses the 'ancient quarrel' between philosophy and literature. It asks us to examine the connections between literature and philosophy, and whether literature should matter us as philosophers. More than this, we ask whether there are some ideas that only be expressed through literature. In addition to moral and aesthetic questions, we focus on questions in the philosophy of language, epistemology and ontology. In this unit, we read literature and philosophy to answer these questions.

I taught this course in semester 2, 2018

Early Modern Science, Religion and Moral Philosophy

In this course, I take students through some of the most radical discoveries of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century by natural philosophers Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Margaret Cavendish, Isaac Newton, Emilie du Châtelet and Maria Gaetana Agnesi and show how their discoveries were commensurate with important contemporary moral and theological values of their time. To this end, students will be exposed to excerpts from primary texts and frontispieces to famous early modern works of natural philosophy. Rather than two warring paradigms for the explanation of nature, students will learn that science and religion formed an enchanted union in the early modern era. By recasting the connection between science and religion, students form a deeper understanding of moral philosophy in the early modern era.

I taught a version of this unit as "Early Modern Mythbusting" at the University of Notre Dame - Australia, in 2018.

Philosophy and the Good Life

According to a recent Swiss study, life satisfaction peaks at ages 16 and 17, and it is not until age 64 that individuals express comparable levels of life satisfaction. This is puzzling in an era of better health, longer life expectancy, more equitable access to education, and significant amounts of disposable income. But what does life satisfaction consist in? What does it mean to live a “good life”? In Philosophy and The Good Life, we will examine various approaches to living well that have been articulated throughout the history of philosophy. We will examine their prescriptions on the development of character, the value of fortitude, the role of pleasure in one’s life, the role of art in a meaningful life, the correct relationship between reason and emotion, and what caring for oneself consists in.

I taught an intensive version of this course for the University of Sydney in 2018.

Ethics: Theory and Practice

This course introduced students to central topics, concepts and methods of reasoning within contemporary moral philosophy, including the difference between consequentialist, deontological and virtue approaches to ethics. Students examined concepts such as the moral significance of human dignity, our obligations to avoid causing harms, moral responsibility, and the connection between actions and causes. Students explored these concepts in the context of climate change. For instance, one week of the course is titled ”what is the best action to take?” Since there are many things I could do to improve the world, but I can’t do all of them, I ask students to consider which action best I take and how stringent are my obligations? In the course of responding, students draw on the key ethical frameworks – consequential, deontological, virtue ethics — to examine the decisions individuals can make in the pursuit of avoiding harmful climate change. This course challenges the idea that climate change is an economic or scientific matter, and introduces students to the moral dimension of climate change.

I co-convened this course at the University of New South Wales in 2017.