Leonidas Bouritsas - Affiliate Assistant Professor
	Affiliate Assistant Professor Email: lbourits@stevens.edu Phone:  (201) 216-5552 Fax: (201) 216-8245 Office: Morton 206
Research Interests Political philosophy; the relation between intellectual and political freedom.

Raised in cosmopolitan Athens of the 1960s, Leonidas Bouritsas received a classical education via an immersion in ancient texts and the study of history. His mixed ancestry, from the Peloponnese and the Aegean isles, reflects diverse domains of undertaking, such as politics, the military, seafaring, finance, and education. (He represents the third generation of teachers, and counts a former prime minister, a speaker of the House, and the founder of one of the fist commercial banks in the region among his family tree.) He majored in American literature (B.A., Aristotelian University), did post-graduate work in theoretical linguistics (M.A., University of London) and philosophy (M.A., Michigan State University, and Ph.D., Graduate Center, the City University of New York). He has taught philosophy in colleges in the U.S. and in Greece, while publishing in English as well as in Greek. He has competence in several languages. His non-academic occupations so far include politics, business administration, investment banking, journalism but also environmental activism, open-sea sailing and mountaineering. Recently taught courses include International Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Critical Thinking. His current interests pertain to the issue of the relation between intellectual and political freedom. He is finishing a book titled "Paradox of Freedom: On the Old Rivalry between Philosophy and Politics." He became an American citizen in 1990.

Education

B.A., Literature, Aristotelian University
M.A., Theoretical Linguistics, University of London
M.A., Philosophy, Michigan State University
Ph.D., Philosophy, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Teaching

HPL 111   Theory of Human Nature

Philosophy, at the risk of duplicating important work done in other fields, seeks to attain a seemingly elusive if immensely rewarding "bird's eye-view" over things human as well as non-human. If this gives one a sense of its unusually broad subject, its method appears to be drastically different from all other fields too insofar as the philosophic inquiry is based more on asking questions than on answering them. This introduction to philosophy emphasizes exclusively questions about human nature, or human affairs, over time and space, in the broadest possible sense. With the help of classic texts, we will introduce this vast topic by considering both descriptive and normative attempts at tackling the question of human nature, concentrating at times on views people have traditionally held about what constitutes the proper domain of that debate and about the type of justification involved therein.

Required texts:

1. "Sophocles, Antigone; Oedipus the King; Electra" (Oxford World's Classics)
2. "Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War" (Penguin Classics)
3. "The Freud Reader" (W. W. Norton)

HPL 350   Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

In this course we will read in depth if selectively from a number of influential texts and sources of ancient and medieval philosophy. By virtue of the time span covered, from the early fifth century BC to the late Middle Ages, the course is a typical western history of ideas/philosophy course; but it should also serve as an elaboration on various permanent themes and questions of philosophy in our time. As such, every attempt will be made throughout to establish the lasting relevance of ideas born and debated many centuries ago. In the process we will seek to examine critically the reasons for the undeniable preponderance of the ideas of Plato (and by extension of Aristotle), both during the above time span as well as currently, and do so primarily by reconstructing and reassessing the pivotal debate between Socrates and the sophists.

Required texts:

1. "The Dialogues of Plato," (Bantam Classics, 2006)
2. "The Sophists," by W.K. C. Guthrie (Cambridge, 2003)
3. "Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages," by Richard E. Rubenstein (Harcourt, 2003)

HPL 368   Philosophy of Science

Any course in philosophy is an invitation to a gentle if relentless breaking down of disciplinary boundaries. If this statement reflects at least partly the nature of the intellectual domain called ‘philosophy,’ then a course in the philosophy of science should be no exception, and the present course will attempt to make the most out of this happiest of coincidences, namely the opportunity to understand philosophy in the context of discussing the nature and evolution of science, and vice versa. There is a price to be paid, however, for this commitment to an unusually broad set of questions (for example, ‘What are the terms under which intellectual freedom, and thus both philosophical and scientific inquiry, flourishes, for individual people or entire collectives?’ or, ‘How is one to deal with the paradox emerging from the fact that although the social and political conditions on the ground give rise to scientific and other ideas unthinkable outside a certain context, science at its best, and, by extension, or in a parallel form, philosophy, almost routinely turn against society’s most cherished assumptions?’ or, for that matter, ‘How is one to explain the undeniable degree of responsibility if not direct complicity of science in the committing of grand scale crimes especially in the 20th century?’). The price has to do mostly with a feeling of dizziness at the rate of succession of different ideas, their intrinsic instability, and their characteristically tentative status. To address this problem the course is roughly divided into two different parts, one specialized and one more general, and also reflecting the differences between the two texts which will be used. Part I follows in detail, both scientifically and historically, the argument behind and the ultimate fate of the debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr on the implications of the revolution in quantum mechanics; by pitting genius against genius, and by focusing on the environment which surrounded them and which they influenced in turn, we should expect to raise interesting questions about the most intriguing problem of all, namely the problem of intellectual freedom. Part II will be an attempt to build on some of our observations and achieve some greater perspective with the help of our author at the time, Howard Margolis, who pertinently proposes and defends the “limited relevance of relativism.” We will follow his efforts to interpret Thomas Kuhn’s landmark idea of “paradigm shifts” by connecting history and philosophy of science with cognitive psychology, and thus delivering on the promise of an interdisciplinary approach; we will also follow his seeking to understand and explain scientific change, and in the process distinguish it perhaps from progress; and finally pay special attention to his thesis that despite any original incomprehension of and indifference towards a new paradigm, “a critical problem for a revolutionary shift in thinking lies in the robustness of the tacit habits of mind that conflict with the new ideas, relative to the habits of mind that accept the new ideas.”

Required texts:

1. "Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution," by Edmund Blair Bolles
2. "Paradigms and Barriers: How Habits of the Mind Govern Scientific Beliefs," by Howard Margolis

HPL 340   Social and Political Philosophy

Aristotle created a tradition many centuries ago when he gave the name Politics to one of his books. Therein, he defined man (human being) as the political animal, and proceeded to study the conditions and requirements for successful participation in public life, or what he openly acknowledged to be the essential human endeavor. Ever since, the term politics has come to refer both to the activity itself, i.e. participation and deliberation on public matters, as well as to the study thereof. This ambivalence should not discourage us from our first approach to this discipline; indeed, unlike many of its 'cousins' in the area of the social sciences, and definitely unlike its distant relatives in the natural sciences, in politics it becomes especially difficult to ultimately distinguish between event and observation, data and theory, fact and value. We will see to what extent this is a problem or a blessing. For similar reasons, the very notion of a political animal is pregnant with as many different interpretations and attitudes as are the issues it helps settle. We will patiently attempt to recognize and assess both sides here, too. We will begin, however, by raising some of the pivotal questions that Politics, Political Science, Political Theory, Political Philosophy are about. For example: What is the proper relation between politics and philosophy? Is a political dimension common to all--a political consciousness really universal? How encompassing can politics be? Is its starting point or fundamental priority the issue of government, of equality, of freedom, of justice, or of happiness? Finally, given the choice of authors—from classical thinkers of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. to the eighteenth century, we will have the opportunity to question their relevance, and by extension the relevance and lasting significance of ideas born some time ago and under seemingly different circumstances: nowhere does the challenge made by the ancient world to the modern one appear more forceful than in the domain of politics. A. Classical to Enlightenment: Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant. B. Post-Enlightenment: Smith, the Federalist, Paine, Burke, Hegel, De Tocqueville, J.S. Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, Strauss.

Required texts:

1. "History of Political Philosophy," edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, third edition, Chicago, 1987.
2. "Leonardo, Machiavelli, and the Science of Power," by Roger Masters (Notre Dame, 1998)
3. "A Paradox of Freedom and the Old Rivalry between Philosophy and Politics," by Leonidas Bouritsas (ProQuest/UMI, 2006)

Recent Contributions--Abstracts

1. To the editor, The New York Times
   Re: The Shame of the Prisons (editorial, February 18, 2006).
   
   Arguing as you do in terms of “basic human rights” may allow you to occupy the higher moral ground in the important debate about the situation at Guantanamo, but when you conflate such rights with “democratic principles,” then both accuracy and debate suffer. Democratic principles, even when shared among certain peoples internationally, and absent, for starters, a credible world government, a global immigration treaty, or a revised Geneva Convention, presuppose and rely on the existence of a functioning constitutional republic; six billion people, on the other hand, are not a citizenry yet for any such principles to apply either consistently or efficiently. (Interestingly, the president’s own recent concern about the grand scale disaster still unfolding in Darfur, invoking as he did the concept of citizenship to express his dismay, casually blends a moral, humanitarian stance with the exclusive idiom of a constitutional republic thereby trivializing both.) Additionally, to invoke basic human rights as the definitive answer to the problem at hand stifles the very debate you attempt to initiate insofar as you will not allow in your columns the expression of any view that challenges your mantra. And that is the view that misplaced humanitarian values may have been historically a part of the problem not its solution. A recent case in point was your article “Looking Back With Despair at a Life of Fighting Genocide” (Critics, Feb. 13). The article perpetuates the misconception that Raphael Lemkin “coined in the 1940’s” the word genocide—an error repeated in Samantha Power’s Pulitzer prize winning “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide--going out of its way to praise the unique if doomed role of humanitarians like Lemkin to handle genocidal violence. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche spoke of "a gruesome ethic of genocide (Volkermord) motivated by pity.” Nietzsche’s prescient use of this word was as important as his emphasis on the relevant motivation behind human actions. His contrarian skepticism about humanitarian values permitted him to foresee the coming of an age of systematic mass murder without being overwhelmed by the sheer scale and intensity of violence. Lemkin, on the other hand, despite his insistence to have intent included in the definition of genocide, remained captive by the idiom of anti-violence, thinking it sufficient to argue that genocide is “worse than war.” He never quite grasped the uniqueness of the Holocaust consisting in the intent to eliminate what the Nazis perceived to be a superior adversary. The 1930’s and 1940’s do not represent a humanitarian failure—but a failure of humanitarian values to help predict, let alone prevent, grand scale violence, a lesson that the 21st century cannot afford to ignore.
   
   
2. On the creative link between the humanities and technology
   
   This paper is motivated mainly by two questions. On the one hand, one is constantly intrigued by the elusive character of genuine creativity and innovation; on the other hand, one is perplexed by the not uncommon tension arising from the interaction between the humanities and technology.
   
   I argue that the better our understanding and appreciation of creativity and innovation becomes, the more able we will be to recognize what brings together the study of the humanities and technology, all in the interest of promoting freedom of expression in a genuinely open social space. To that effect I examine the parallel cases of two uniquely creative and innovative minds, Leonardo da Vinci and Alan Turing, in order to bring out those elements in their prolific working lives which explain at the same time their ingenious creativity and the astounding diversity of their respective undertakings. In the process I attempt to dispel the common belief that in the case of such human beings—undoubtedly Leonardo being the quintessential Renaissance man, and Turing one great polymath of the previous century—sheer defiance of disciplinary boundaries substantively speaking explains their greatness. Instead I argue that it was their ability to recognize and indeed to rejoice at the mind’s non-substantive innovative moment or dimension, exemplified equally well in, and regardless of, the domain at hand, that explains their distinct place in history.*  Thus, when ingenious innovation is given a high premium, a discovery in math or hydraulics or physics, for example, is at the end of the day a discovery to be cherished equally--first and foremost by the innovator herself.
   
   At the same time—and in order to better accentuate the relevance of the political space to the question of creativity within the tension between the humanities and technology—some historical background may be of help. One is reminded that from Plato onwards the notion of a division of labor between an over-seeing ruling elite and an increasingly specializing political body has been translated readily into a division of labor between the pursuit of ideas, on the one hand, and the search for technological application and utility, on the other. Indeed, Plato’s idea was driven by the assumption that democracy’s loose openness fails precisely because it breaches this division. Now, as it turns out, personalities like Leonardo and Turing, understood correctly, might suggest that it is mistaken to respond to this Platonist division of labor by eliminating division altogether. A closer study of examples like Leonardo and Alan Turing lead to a more realist position in the sense of one’s being mindful now of the plurality of purposes and identities that the urban environment generates--a position, in other words, that accepts the inevitability of some division of labor but draws the line between the moments of creation shared by both humanities and the crafts, on the one hand, and the less innovative aspects of any relevant mental process, on the other, and not between types or classes of individuals. This I argue is a type of division of labor that deserves to be promoted; indeed, the less successful our best educational efforts prove in producing the likes of Leonardo and Turing, the more important the point of teaching by example becomes; and the more education and enlightenment depends on the free interaction of both ideas and people, the more the urban environment that is ideally conducive to such an interaction, serves best the purpose of promoting creativity.**
   
   *  The assumption here is that even the use of the phrase ‘logic of discovery’ encourages a misnomer. Furthermore, and as a result, such facile dichotomies between, say, the fine arts and crafts are convenient discipline boundaries at best, not substantive fault lines reflecting disparate intellectual domains.
   
   **  A certain paradox in human intellectual history—and thus in the history of higher/highest education—is that the very quality that sustains the life of the mind in the long run cannot be reproduced at will by any organized effort or system--political, cultural, or educational.

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