Philosophy & Religion

This course examines the philosophical writings of the ancient worlds Greece, Rome, India, and China. What is the true nature of reality? What can we know about it? How should we live our lives? We will explore the answers given to these questions by such philosophical schools as the Platonists, Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, Buddhists, and Daoists. Students will develop skills in logical argumentation and self-reflection.

This course provides an overview of Stoicism from its origins with Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BCE to the major Roman Stoics Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics divided Philosophy into three parts, which students will examine in turn. In Physics, they'll discuss whether the universe is purely material, whether it is ordered providentially, and whether fate is compatible with free will. In Logic, they'll learn about the Stoics as pioneers in formal argumentation while honing their own skills in logic. In ethics, they'll learn about Stoic notions of virtue as well as Stoic approaches to emotion to see if they find insights to apply to their own lives. Students will also be presented with ideas from the primary ancient rivals of the Stoics, the Epicureans and Skeptics.

This course introduces the nature of ethics, how to acquire ethical knowledge, the relationship between ethics and the major world religions, as well as moral philosophy and the development of responsibility. The four major ethical traditions are studied: consequentialism (the moral assessment of actions based upon consequences); deontology (some actions are deemed right or wrong regardless of consequences); contractarianism (moral rules are based upon our hypothetical verbal or written agreements); and virtue ethics (the character of the individual is how we understand ethics). We will also consider important moral issues of the day, including animal rights, euthanasia, famine relief, sexuality, and “Just War Theory” in relation to both war and terrorist threats.

This course introduces the history of philosophy and the process of philosophical inquiry. Reading key philosophical texts from different eras and cultures, students engage with essential questions related to ethics, knowledge, and the nature of reality. Using logic and conceptual analysis, the tools peculiar to philosophy, students examine not only our touchstone texts but their own assumptions and beliefs about the fundamental questions that philosophers have grappled with at all times and places.

We’ve all heard the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but what exactly does happiness mean? Is happiness a state of mind, or rather synonymous with a life well lived? What connection exists between happiness and ethics? What are the politics of happiness? How exactly should we pursue happiness, or is happiness ultimately overrated? Using touchstones such as Buddhism, Aristotle, and Epicurus in the ancient world, as well as Emelie du Châtelet, Hannah Arendt, and Søren Kierkegaard in the modern western world, this course will investigate various philosophies of happiness. Synthesizing these thinkers with their own lived experience through reading, discussion, and written reflection, students will articulate their own philosophies of happiness.

The course will explore the relationships between mind, brain, soul, and self. "How can conscious subjectivity arise out of matter?"; "Is the mind the same as the brain?"; and "Is my self located in my body, my mind, or my brain?" are examples of the questions students will explore. Texts will include perspectives in both prose and poetry from the ancient Greek world and from Existentialist thinkers, as well as from works in the Buddhist, Daoist, and Islamic philosophical traditions.

The philosopher Augustine famously wondered, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.” Time and space are both basic ingredients of human experience, and yet it is incredibly difficult to say what exactly they are. This class will consider diverse perspectives on the natures of time and space from philosophers, scientists, and poets. Attention will be given not only to objective accounts of what time and space might be in reality, but also to experiential accounts of these phenomena from various cultural standpoints. Students will read and discuss the views of thinkers from Ancient Greece, Rome, India, and the Islamic world alongside the perspectives of contemporary science.

This course will consider questions of faith through the lens of poetry. If the nature of God resists description (as many religious traditions affirm), then we shouldn’t be surprised that poets have often seemed best equipped for communicating experiences of faith in compelling ways. Poets have also been among the most persuasive voices arguing against organized religions and challenging the validity of their central tenets. In this course, we’ll read work by poets from a variety of religious traditions and those from none (including many who despise religion), and we’ll explore how their poems can give insight into some of the essential questions that religions pose (e.g., What is prayer? Can any vision of heaven be credible? Given the horrors of life, is it possible to believe in—let alone praise—God?). With a few key exceptions (e.g., Rumi, Herbert, Hopkins, Dickinson), we will be reading and writing about modern poets, including: Osip Mandelstam, Paul Celan, Philip Larkin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Seamus Heaney, Yehuda Amichai, Joy Harjo, Anne Carson, Denise Levertov, R.S. Thomas, and Ross Gay.

Have you ever had an experience that lifted you out of yourself, rendering you incapable of self-conscious thought? A Greek treatise from the 1st century CE described this phenomenon with a word that we translate as “Sublime,” which in turn derives from the Latin meaning “at the limit.” The Sublime, then, refers to the limits of our human experience, whether the natural world sets, an artist creates, or society mandates those limits. We will begin this course with Sophocles, Aristotle, and Longinus, establishing the original Greek definition of the Sublime as it applied to tragedy and epic. The 18th century philosopher and politician Edmund Burke, the early 20th century novelist Edith Wharton, and the 21st century philosopher Barbara Freeman will then challenge us to apply the concept of the Sublime to our personal experience.  

This course examines the Hebrew and Christian biblical texts with an aim to understanding the significance of these works in both the ancient and modern worlds. Close reading of books from both the Old and New Testament will provide students with an in-depth view of the Bible’s stories and themes. Special attention will be paid to the cultural context from which these texts emerge, in order to better understand their meaning. Bible stories will be read with an eye for the ethical and spiritual inspiration and lessons they contain. The relevance of the Bible to students’ personal lives and to modern society will also be discussed.

In this course, students will explore contemporary topics in educational theory and philosophy related to K-12 schooling practices in the United States. We will consider how beliefs about society and nation cohere into varied theories and philosophies which in turn inform contemporary debates. We'll explore learning theories (including zones of proximal development, cognition, multiple intelligences and transaction); educational pedagogies (including critical, cultural, progressivist, and fugitive); and how established thinkers (and we) might weigh the merits of education from a variety of philosophical vantages. Students conclude our course with a individually-designed capstone research project that seeks to answer, via theory, philosophy, and directed research on practice, what education means and why it matters. Readings include excerpts from: John Dewey, Carter G. Woodson, Lev Vygotsky, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene, Arthur Applebee, James Gee, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Sonia Nieto, Jerome Bruner, Maria Montessori, Rudolph Steiner, and more.

This course focuses on the comparative study of the five major world religions, as well as for religion and spirituality in general. It will do so through examining the beliefs and lived practices of different religious communities throughout the world, and by discussing the various considerations that these raise in the modern world and in our lives. In addition to learning the essential tenets of each religion, students unpack and discuss seminal texts and stories from each, learn about the experiences of and visit houses of worship for each tradition.