Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Intensive study of major works that have had a formative influence on the structure and development of western thought. Reading and discussion of primary texts and their central ideas introduce students to essential philosophical, literary, social and religious themes of western civilizations. May be repeated once for credit when a different topic is taught. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

In this course we will examine texts that had a formative influence in the history of Western thought, and will explore the reasons for their enduring importance. Plato’s dialogue Symposium and a short selection from Apology will provide the framework for the broader theme of the course: the centrality of love and the intellect to the human experience. What is the nature of love and the intellect? Are they interwoven or separate forces? Do they strive for the same aim in human life? How do they affect human choices and the social organization of the human world?

We will explore how the conceptualization of love and the intellect goes well beyond the facile reduction of these concepts to body and mind (a reductionist approach projected by the modern mind onto the Western tradition) and rather involves all aspects of the human experience: questions of justice, the law, knowledge, the divine, selfhood and the social bond, language, human dignity, friendship, motherhood, the relation with the natural world, the senses and desire. Our readings span a range of different thinkers throughout time in the Western world—from Ancient Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the age of the Enlightenment and modernity—in works that still exercise their fascination in the present. We will also include a few contemporary writers (Indigenous writers Linda Hogan and Armand Ruffo, and Canadian writer Alice Munro) to ponder the ways in which such reflections are approached in the modern age.

This course appeals to students who are interested in the history of ideas and in the exploration of different genres of writing and what they say about the self and the world.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1. Read and analyze Humanities texts creatively and to academic standards.
2. Situate texts in their historical and socio-cultural context.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of shifting discourses on love and the intellect throughout the time period studied and in relation to the contemporary age.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the way in which the texts studied contributed to the development of Western thought.
5. Write about Humanities texts analytically by becoming proficient in modeling interpretation, linking claims to evidence, developing a thesis, structuring a paper, and using sources effectively.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: