2022-2023 Academic Year

Fall 2022

EASN 205 Confucius & Confucianism
Cross-listed with PHIL 205-01.It is often said that that, some 26 centuries after the life of Confucius, China remains a Confucian culture. This may well make him the most influential philosopher in human history. This course will closely read Confucius's Analects, as well as other texts attributed to Confucius. We will then read ancient followers such as Mencius and Hsün Tzu and examine their rich atmosphere of philosophical debate. The course will finish with the neo‐Confucianism of figures such as Wang Yang‐Ming, whose profound philosophy was also influenced by Taoism and Buddhism.

PHIL 205 Confucius & Confucianism
Cross-listed with EASN 205-02.It is often said that that, some 26 centuries after the life of Confucius, China remains a Confucian culture. This may well make him the most influential philosopher in human history. This course will closely read Confucius's Analects, as well as other texts attributed to Confucius. We will then read ancient followers such as Mencius and Hsün Tzu and examine their rich atmosphere of philosophical debate. The course will finish with the neo‐Confucianism of figures such as Wang Yang‐Ming, whose profound philosophy was also influenced by Taoism and Buddhism.

PHIL 215 Existentialism
A study of existentialist thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus, who treat the human condition as irreducibly individual and yet philosophically communicable, and for whom the experience of the existing individual is of primary importance in issues ranging from one's relationship to God to the inevitability of death. Prerequisite: one prior course in philosophy or permission of the instructor. Offered every two years.

JRNL 250 Opinion Journalism
The opinion pages of the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian and similar publications are among the most widely-read and discussed sections of those newspapers. Are the opinion writers journalists? They are certainly not reporters, though there may be reported aspects in their work. This class will talk (relatively briefly) about the nature and history of opinion journalism, and read intensively in the stuff that comes out as the class is proceeding. Well ask questions such as what sort of topics, strategies, argument styles, and voices make an opinion column convincing or effectively provocative. We will also have a look at popular (as opposed to scholarly) criticism, or evaluations of books, music, drama, art and the like, and discuss what makes a review useful or fair or worth reading. Students will work toward producing columns and reviews that could be submitted for publication.