Welcome to Humanities Literature seminar! I am excited to spend the year with you discussing the literature I love.
This semester, we will read works of Western literature that span some four thousand years (about 2000 BCE to 1700 CE). It is our challenge to read, analyze, discuss and share observations and ideas about these works to better understand the people who produced them and consequently to better understand ourselves and our own culture.
Most of these works grapple with what I like to call The Big Questions – those ontological questions that all human beings face, both at an individual and a cultural level. All human beings and all cultures grapple with these questions and the answers to them:
1. How should I ideally live?
2. How should I treat other people?
3. Why do evil and suffering exist?
4. What is truth and how can I (or can I) access it?
5. What is the meaning of life? Does my existence matter?
6. What is an ideal community? What is the best way to order our society?
7. What is justice? What is the best way to achieve justice?
8. What is my relationship to the physical and natural world around me?
9. What is the nature of the divine, and what is the relationship between the divine and humankind?
This semester, we will read works of Western literature that span some four thousand years (about 2000 BCE to 1700 CE). It is our challenge to read, analyze, discuss and share observations and ideas about these works to better understand the people who produced them and consequently to better understand ourselves and our own culture.
Most of these works grapple with what I like to call The Big Questions – those ontological questions that all human beings face, both at an individual and a cultural level. All human beings and all cultures grapple with these questions and the answers to them:
1. How should I ideally live?
2. How should I treat other people?
3. Why do evil and suffering exist?
4. What is truth and how can I (or can I) access it?
5. What is the meaning of life? Does my existence matter?
6. What is an ideal community? What is the best way to order our society?
7. What is justice? What is the best way to achieve justice?
8. What is my relationship to the physical and natural world around me?
9. What is the nature of the divine, and what is the relationship between the divine and humankind?