THIS COURSE HAS CONCLUDED. THE FOLLOWING LESSONS ARE PRE-RECORDED VIDEOS FROM THE LATE FALL OF 2021.
Text to be purchased:
Plato, Symposium, trans. S. Benardete (University of Chicago, 2001) [ISBN: 0226042758]
I will provide .pdfs of all other assigned texts.
Lists of Texts per Week:
Week 1: Basic options; reductionism
John Paul II, Fides et ratio, Prologue (pp. 1–9)
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, chh. 1–2 (pp. 1–20)
Week 2: Modern dualism
Descartes, Meditations (at least I–III [pp. 13–35], but perhaps a bit more)
Week 3: Aristotelian hylomorphism
Aristotle, On the Soul, selections
Week 4: Seeing the human through the lens of eros: a Platonic approach (I)
Plato, Symposium (through Agathon’s speech and Socrates’ reply)
Week 5: Seeing the human through the lens of eros: a Platonic approach (II)
Plato, Symposium (from Socrates’s speech to the end)
Week 6: The human as created: Aquinas’s anthropology (I)
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 76, aa. 1,4,5; q. 90 (about 12 pages?)
Week 7: The human as created: Aquinas’s anthropology (II)
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, qq. 91–92 (about 12 pages?)
Week 8: Wojtyla’s personalism
Wojtyla, “Thomistic Personalism” and “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being” (about 18 pages)
Responses