The Compass Courses offer you an opportunity to explore the division of Arts and Humanities. They are offered on different themes each year, but they share a unique structure. The class is taught by three professors in three modules of study. You will have a chance to study with each professor, experience a range of approaches to the theme, and learn the methods and structures of different disciplines. Compass Courses are designed to guide you through various options for study in Arts and Humanities and to serve as a gateway to the rich offerings at Berkeley. They are part of the freshman experience, advancing a common journey of discovery and building an intellectual cohort among students new to Berkeley's expansive possibilities.

In the present age beset by disruptive technologies and rising geopolitical tensions, it is more urgent than ever to rethink the most fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and where do humans belong in the order of things? We need multiple analytic perspectives, and we need to foreground positions that are generally neglected in Western humanistic discourse. This Compass Course introduces students to the ideas and visions of what the human is and should be in three major non-European traditions - the Chinese, the Indian, and the Islamic. Produced by long and dynamic histories, these three traditions are driving many global social, political and technological developments in today’s world.

We will seek to understand the distinctive ideas developed in each tradition about the origins of the human, about human society and political community, about human difference and common humanity, and last but least, about the place of the humans in the natural world. We will also explore how these ideas, crystallized into the core values of each tradition over the centuries, are being revitalized in modern times and can be mobilized to meet the challenges facing humanity today. Course material includes foundational texts of these traditions (e.g. Islamic, Hindu, and Confucian scriptures), philosophical and literary classics (Avicennan philosophy and the Muslim theology and ethics of Ṭūsī, the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, the Taoist classic Zhuangzi), as well as modern texts that showcase the significance of ancient ideas and visions for today’s world.

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Requirements class fulfills