Humanities 30(4)-6-7-8-9
Course Description: This course examines selected landmarks in Western culture, combining politics, ethics, literature, philosophy, history, science, psychology, art and religion from antiquity to the present.
OVERVIEW
The purpose of this class is to help fish realize that they are wet.
Like it or not, we are Westerners. This is not an option. It is a fact. We are, in fact, speaking English at an American university in the early 21st century. The questions we ask, the objections we raise, the assumptions we make, the categories we use (and our misgivings about them), are all the products of centuries of historical development. We are not free to choose whether we will be influenced by the Western intellectual legacy, our only choice is whether or not to be conscious of it the pervasive influence still exerted by earlier thinkers. Understanding the genesis of the categories that structure the world around us offers the only genuine possibility of freedom from the tyranny of unexamined ideas and the futility of unexamined lives.
This course is an overview of the Western high cultural tradition. It explores the development of Western literature, philosophy and history. We begin with the ancient River Valley Civilizations then we turn our attention Athens and Jerusalem moving from Hellenistic Greece and Rome to the Christian Middle Ages, continuing through modernity to the contemporary impasse of globalized Western culture. We will examine landmark works that have made the West, and the world, what it was and is. At the end of the two year course, you will be more sophisticated in asking and answering two related questions, “What do you mean?” and “How do you know?”
This course will introduce students to what the Germans call “Kultur”, high culture as a coherent historical tradition. Contending conceptions of the human condition will be examined within the traditions that combined to form the West. This class is also about various ways of thinking about the organization of society, political order and change, and economic relations that have been influential at various points in Western history and the influence these ideas continue to exert upon us. Along the way, we consider the Western tradition in, among other things, philosophy, science, literature, politics, history, ethics, art, religion and psychology. We will aim both to understand these authors on their own terms and to assess their relevance to our contemporary intellectual concerns. This course is selective, not comprehensive. It is merely a portion of a vast network of ideas and achievements and events that would take more than a lifetime to fully absorb.
You will be busy. Take the Bible course as a sophomore in the Fall term. The Western Tradition course is designed for upperclassmen (it is best started by juniors) who are willing to grapple with a collection of ideas which, taken together, are some of the “best that has been said and thought”. It will cover four terms, (for two years) and it will be strenuous. Permission of the instructor is required. It will demand active class time and at least eight hours per week of reading, often more. Either make the commitment or don’t bother asking for permission to enroll. There is no other way.
There is no elevator to the upper floors of cultural competence, you have to climb the stairs. Class preparation will consume much of your time and energy if you are doing it right. This class is old school. Learning is work, not entertainment. Have fun on your own time. On my time do your reading. This class is far too small to hide in during a three hour discussion. This class is only suitable for serious students who are willing to make a commitment to intensive study of the landmark works of the western intellectual tradition. We will read at least one text per class, sometimes more, for fifteen weeks per term. Those that are capable of rising to this challenge may find this a profoundly rewarding experience. These books will speak to you if you will listen. You will feel new grooves being cut into your brain. If you apply yourself diligently, these books can change your life. This class is a small step toward becoming “well read”. There are parts of the university library where the students in this class often gather the night before our weekly class to commiserate about the intellectual tasks required. I would encourage you to do so, because you’ll get no sympathy from me.
Students are responsible for the content of the readings and for the content of lectures and discussions. Every student is responsible for getting the reading done beforeevery class. I can explain these books for you but I cannot understand them for you. Only you can do that. It is expected that the students will read some selected texts of the assigned works before each term begins. You will thus have assigned reading during the summer and Christmas vacations. You must get control of your time, because once enrolled in this course you are on my schedule, not yours. I encourage you to begin reading as soon as you get over the initial shock of this list. First a cover to cover of the Bible, to encounter the mythos of Jerusalem, then the Western Tradition.
Humanities 304: The Bible and Western Culture
\1. Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus
\2. Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
\3. History: Joshua, Judges, Ruth
\4. Samuel, Kings, Chronicles
\5. Ezra, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Maccabees
\6. Wisdom: Psalms, Proverbs, Sirach
\7. Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom of Solomon
\8. Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch Ezekiel
\9. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
\10. Synoptic Gospels: Mark, Matthew
\11. Luke, Acts of the Apostles
\12. Epistles: Paul to Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon
\14. Epistles: James, Peter, John, Jude, Timothy, Titus, Colossians, Ephesians, 2nd Thessalonians
15 Gospel of John and Revelation
HUMANITIES 306 GREECE
Summer Reading = Iliad and Odyssey, Republic, Nicomachean Ethics
\1. Gilgamesh
\2. Homer, Iliad
\3. Odyssey
\4. Waterfield, The Presocratics,
\5. Herodotus, History of the Persian Wars, (I, 1-8; II, 35-98; III, 1-87; IV, 1-144;
V, 1-16; VI, 102-117; VII, 1-56, 198-235; VIII, 40-112; IX, 58-79)
\6. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, (I 1-23; II 35-54; III 70-85; V 84-116; VI 27-28)
\7. Aeschylus, The Orestia,
\8. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
\9. Euripides, Bacchae, Medea, Trojan Women
\10. Aristophanes, Clouds, Frogs, Lysistrata,
\11. Plato, Symposium (Bernadete translation, Chicago)
\12. Republic, (Bloom translation, Vintage)
\13. Apology, Crito, Phaedo (Cooper, Plato Five Dialogues, Hackett)
\14. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
\15. Politics
HUMANITIES 307 ROME and CHRISTIANITY
Christmas Reading = Lucretius, Dante, Koran
\1. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe,
\2. Virgil, The Aeneid
\3. Gnostic Gospel of Thomas;
Tertullian, On The Flesh of Christ, (Chapter 5; 4)
On the Prescription of Heretics, (Chapter 7)
Origen, First Principles, (Chapter 1)
Justin Martyr, Apology
Wilkin, The Christians As The Romans Saw Them, Chapter 1, Pliny and Trajan
\4. Horace, Satires;
Juvenal Satires;
Lucian, Philosophers for Sale
\5. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
\6. Augustine, Confessions
\7. Koran
Song of Roland
\8. Dante, Divine Comedy, Inferno,
Purgatorio (1-5, 25-33);
Paradisio, (1, 4, 6, 8, 10-13, 18, 20, 24, 29, 33)
\9. William of Ockham, Summa Totius Logicae, (I,12)
Sentences of Peter Lombard, (i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K)
Aquinas, Five Proofs from the Summa Thelogica
Meister Eckhardt, German Sermons
\10. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Pardoner, Miller, Wife of Bath Tales)
Luther, On the Freedom of the Christian,
\11. More, Utopia
\12. Machiavelli, The Prince,
Mandragola
\13. Cervantes, Don Quixote, (I- Dedication, Chap. 1,2,4,8; II- Dedication, Chap. 74)
\14. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
\15. King Lear
HUMANITIES 308 THE MODERN WEST
Summer Reading = Hobbes, Spinoza, Goethe
\1. Montaigne, Essays,
\2. Descartes, Discourse on Method
\3. Pascal, Pensees
\4. Hobbes, Leviathan (Books I and II)
\5. Spinoza, The Ethics
\6. Locke, Second Treatise
\7. Moliere, The Misanthrope, Tartuffe
\8. Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 1 pin factory and invisible hand
\9. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
\10. Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience
\11. Hegel, Philosophy of History, (Introduction)
\12. Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
\12. Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
\13. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling;
Either/Or, Volume 1, (Diapsalmata, The Rotation Method)
\14. Mill, Utilitarianism
Marx, Theses on Feuerbach
\15. Dickens, Hard Times
HUMANITIES 309 CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION
Christmas Reading = Dostoyevsky, Mann, Tolstoy
\1. Tolstoy, War and Peace
\2. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
\3. Nietzsche, The Gay Science
\4. Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis,
Civilization and Its Discontents
\5. Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
\6. Weber, Science as a Vocation
Politics as a Vocation
\7. Huxley, Brave New World
\8. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
\9. Mann, Dr. Faustus
\10. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Lecture on Ethics
\11. Piaget, Structuralism
\12. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis
\13. Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
\14. Rawls, A Theory of Justice
\15. McCarthy, Blood Meridian