Introduction to ethical and political philosophy.

This class is intended as an introduction to philosophical questions centering around the individual and society. The six week course is divided into two main sections corresponding to the two different foci that the course title affords, namely, ethical questions that arise from an individual life, on the one hand, and ethical questions that arise from living in a society, on the other. Focusing on the individual we will consider existential problems and questions about the role of religion, of family, and of love. Focusing on society, we will discuss questions about social injustice and its effects on the individual. In particular, we will focus on social injustice as it relates to someone’s class, to someone’s sex and gender, and to someone’s race. We will look at texts from a variety of writes including Confucius, Aristotle, Karl Marx, George Eliot, W. E. B. du Bois, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Virginia Woolf, and Audre Lorde. In addition, as a gateway into these texts we will watch a film each week on that week’s topic. Among the films we will watch are Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Shoplifters,’ Wong Kar-wai’s ‘Happy Together,’ Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite,’ and Kelly Reichhardt’s ‘Certain Women’.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills