As the summer winds down I am hoping for some lazy days to try and get a headstart on my Fall reading list.  I've attached the daunting list of books we'll be reading this Fall.

I am looking forward to the course this year.  The reading list will be a challenge but there are many books on it that were on my private reading "To Do" list as a teenager.  I had started a few of these books in my young adult years but it is easy to move onto lighter reading when there is no commitment to work your way through a dense text.

I found when I was reading Plato's Phaedrus for our July 6-7 introductory seminar, that having to come up with a thoughtful question about what I'd read forced me to really think about what I was reading and what I wanted to get out of it.  It was a lot more work than I had anticipated from such an innocuously thin book.

Here is the Fall list:

LS 800 – Reflections on Reason & Passion I

Fall 2012

Wednesdays 5:30-9:30

This course explores a variety of texts that express or reflect upon the human passions and upon the relationship between those passions and the realms of action, will, and reason.  While there is some chronological coherence in the ordering of the texts, the primary intent is to examine issues and themes that reflect human experiences, feelings and behaviours.

Course Requirements:

Following an introduction and a review of contextual issues by the instructors, each week one or more students will be asked to present the salient points or issues (as they relate to passion and reason) raised in one of the readings, followed by general discussion and debate.  The week after the class, the student responsible for the animation of the discussion will submit (via e-mail to the class) a two/three page summary of the presentation and the class discussion.  In addition there will be two short (5-10 pp) written assignments over the course of the term and students will keep a journal of responses to texts and seminars.

Week 1 (5 Sept)  Bhagavad Gita

               Bible, Genesis

Week 2 (12 Sept) Plato, Symposium  

               Sappho, Poetry

Week 3  (19 Sept)Euripides, Medea

              Aristophanes, Lysistrata

Week 4 (26 Sept) Sophocles, Antigone

               Racine, Phedre

              

Saturday – (29 Sept)     Lucretius, On The Nature of Things

Week 5   (3 Oct)          Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

               Mencius

Week 6 (10 Oct)         Dante, Inferno

               Rumi, Love Is A Stranger

Week 7 (17 Oct)         Shakespeare, King Lear

               Machiavelli, The Prince

Week 8   (24 Oct)       Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond

ˆ              De las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Saturday (27 Oct)  Descartes, Discourse on Method

               Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis

Week 9  (31 Oct)    Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

               Moliere, The Misanthrope

Week 10 (7 Nov)   Kant, “What Is Enlightenment””

         Hume, Enquiry Concerning the   Principles of Morals

Week 11 (14 Nov) Rousseau, Origins of Inequality and Reveries of a Solitary Walker

Week 12  (21 Nov) Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Travels in Sweden and Norway

                   

Week 13 (28 Nov)  Goethe, Faust: Part I