Philosophy 6

In this course, we will read major works of literature with a philosophical eye. In particular, we will examine how works drawn from the Ancient, Medieval, and Modern periods offer different viewpoints on issues including (but not limited to!) the following: humankind’s place in the world, the form of ‘the good life’, freedom and responsibility, the status and content of morality, the value of different social relationships…and the nature of the divine and how it relates to all of the foregoing.

The texts for the course are Homer’s The Odyssey, Dante’s The Inferno, and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It should be noted that there will be quite a lot of reading for this course – usually 50-70 pages a night, with no real breaks. There will be several in-class writing assignments designed, in part, to reward those who keep up with the reading schedule.