Benson Center Courses
Spring 2026
Joseph Bottum, Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy
PHIL 4020-001: Philosophical Mysticism | T/TH 3:30 – 4:45 pm
This is a course about philosophy’s effort to understand extra-philosophical experience, the rational mind’s work to catalogue and explain super-rational revelation. Drawing mostly on the thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance — from the Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart — the course will delve into the experience of Being itself, often approached through the description of the Nothing that Being is not. A course in the experience of metaphysics, its aim is to do philosophy: taking what Plotinus called the flight of the alone to the Alone, and determining how rigorously we can describe it and incorporate it into a philosophical account of the world.
CWCV 4000-001: Rise and Fall of the Novel | T/TH 12:30 – 1:45 pm
Joseph Porter, Associate Teaching Professor
PHIL 1800-001: Modern Soc./Political Thought | MW 3:35 – 4:50 pm
Discusses foundational questions in modern Western social thought: Are all men—and women—created equal? Must government be founded on a social contract of some kind? Should we seize the means of production? We will explore these and other social, ethical, political, and philosophical questions through a survey of great thinkers from the Enlightenment to the present, focusing on excerpts from influential works such as Hobbes’ Leviathan, the Declaration of Independence, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality.
PHIL 1160-100: Introduction to Medical Ethics | MW 2:30 – 3:20 pm (Does not count towards the BUF program requirements)Ìý
Discusses foundational questions in modern Western social thought: Are all men—and women—created equal? Must government be founded on a social contract of some kind? Should we seize the means of production? We will explore these and other social, ethical, political, and philosophical questions through a survey of great thinkers from the Enlightenment to the present, focusing on excerpts from influential works such as Hobbes’ Leviathan, the Declaration of Independence, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, and Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality.
Fall 2025
Joseph Bottum, Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy
CWCV 4000: Rise and Fall of the Novel, MW 3:35 – 4:50 pm
Joseph Porter, Associate Teaching Professor
PHIL 1010: Intro to Western Philosophy: Ancient, TuTh 5:00 – 6:15 pm
PHIL 1160: Intro to Medical Ethics, TuTh 3:30 – 4:20 pm
Auditors welcome – emailÌýbensoncenter@colorado.eduÌýfor assistance