ETHICS AND TOLSTOY / REES 408/605 / STEVEN SHANKMAN
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the greatest and most influential masters of the novel. The Russian literary classics of the nineteenth century, including the fiction of Tolstoy, made a profound impression on Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), perhaps the greatest modern philosopher on the nature of ethical obligation and its relation to what it means to be human. We will carefully read Tolstoy’s shorter fiction as well as his final novel, Hadji Murád, paying special attention to what Tolstoy’s fiction has to say about ethics understood in Levinas’s sense: my inescapable responsibility for a unique and irreplaceable other. We will read Ethics and Infinity, a reasonably accessible and brief series of interviews with Levinas, and we will look for connections between Tolstoy’s fiction and Levinas’s thought.
GREEK AND ROMAN EPIC / CLAS 301 / MARY JAEGER
The field of classics embraces Greek and Roman culture from the prehistoric to the medieval periods. This class focuses on analysis of the heroic tradition and epic themes in the Homeric poems, the works of Hesiod, and the Aeneid. Emphasis on literary criticism and intellectual history.
ETHICS / PHIL 102 / CAROLINE LUNDQUIST
The fundamental assumption behind this course is that reading, writing, thinking and talking about ethics can help us to become better people, live richer, more meaningful lives, and inspire us to work together to improve our world. Hence the chief purpose of this course is to foster an ongoing engagement with meaningful ethical questions.
We will begin by examining a selection of potential “threats” to ethics, including relativism, egoism, false consciousness and moral luck, and then consider whether or to what extent moral theories can help mitigate those threats and guide our ethical thinking. Along the way, we will consider numerous questions that have historically posed, and continue to pose, serious challenges to ethical philosophers and philosophical laypeople alike. We end by applying our tentative beliefs and conclusions to a selection of contemporary moral issues.