Professor Driver's teaching focuses on topics in Ethical Theory, Moral Responsibility, and the Philosophy of Film and Literature.
In Fall 2025 she will be teaching PHL 315K: Philosophy and Film and PHL 385: Moral Emotions. Tentative Course Descriptions are below.
Philosophy and Film: This course explores the aesthetics of film and the presentation of philosophical ideas through film. Topics to be explored include the issue of when, if ever, a bad film can be aesthetically valuable, whether moral concerns affect the aesthetic value of a film, the nature of film genres such as horror and science-fiction, the nature of the emotions that watching a performance of a fiction can elicit, as well as philosophical issues that are presented through film. The philosophical issues to be addressed include: the problem of skepticism, memory and personal identity, the nature of love and friendship, the meaning of life, absurdity and superstition, social inequality, and problems arising out of technology. Some of the films to be considered: The Seventh Seal, Jinpa, The Matrix, Snowpiercer, Ghost in the Shell, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Third Man, Nope, Arrival, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Nightingale, I am Not a Witch, and Hiroshima, Mon Amour.
Moral Emotions: This course explores the nature of moral emotions. Broadly speaking, there are two types that we will be considering: emotions that form a part of our moral responsibility practices, such as anger, resentment, and outrage, and then emotions that are other-directed, but not necessarily directed at the quality of will of another person, such as love and sympathy. In discussing the reactive attitudes, such as anger and resentment, we will also consider reactive emotions that have been been ignored or underexplored in the literature such as hurt feelings and condemnatory disappointment. This will help us understand the difference between a genuine reactive attitude and an attitude that is not directed towards the quality of a person’s will or the quality of a person’s will, but to some other aspect or feature of the person’s psychology. This, in turn, presents an opportunity to discuss responsibility for our emotions themselves. Readings include Pamela Heironymi's Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals, selections from Stephen Darwall's The Heart & Its Attitudes, as well as a number of articles on anger, resentment, disappointment, love, and sympathy.