Self & God Fall 2004

CSEM 280 Sec.04 (3.0 Credit Hours)

DeBartolo 113

M W 04:30-05:45

 

Prof. Svitlana Kobets

German and Russian Department

Office: 302 Decio Hall

574-631‑7188

 

 

 

Through our reading of a variety of works representing different times, cultures and societies, we will explore various paradigms of the human understanding of selfhood, its essence and its place in society. Our readings will include masterpieces of Eastern and Western civilizations spanning Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modernity. In the first half of the semester we will explore attitudes toward the selfhood as expressed in classical Greek philosophy (Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Diogenes), documents of early Christian asceticism (life of St. Anthony and Sayings of the Desert Fathers) and biographical writings of Medieval Europe (St. Francis of Assisi). We will continue discussing Christian tradition as we will read and discuss Dostoyevsky`s The Brothers Karamazov. After considering European civilization and Christianity we will turn to Eastern spiritual traditions including the teachings of Taoism, Hinduism and Islam (Lao Tzu`s Tao Te Ching, The Bhagavad-Gita, poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi). In the second part of the course we will address European Modernity. First we will consider findings of psychoanalysis and discuss their importance for twentieth-century social and aesthetic thought (Freud, Jung). The quest for the individual self and spirituality under totalitarian regimes will be the focus of our discussion in the latter part of the course. We will read a novel by the Russian anti-utopian writer Zamiatin. The Nobel Prize winning novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, will conclude our course. Issues important to our discussions will include the individual and society, freedom and submission, self-awareness and the failure of self-knowledge.

 

 

Plato. Apology, Crito from The Trial and Death of Socrates. Hackett ISBN 087220554-1

Epictetus. The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness.

ISBN 006251346

Diogenes and the Cynics: Life and Epistles of Diogenes (Course Packet)

 

II. Christianity: Ascetic Quest for Selfhood and God:

Peter Brown, The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity. (Course Packet)

Asceticism in Late Ancient Christianity from: E. Clark, Reading the Renunciation (Course Packet)

Life of St. Antony

Sayings of the Desert Fathers in: Thomas Merton (ed.) The Wisdom of the Desert ISBN 0811201023

Life of St. Francis of Assisi ISBN 0385029004

Film: Franco Zeffirelli?s Brother Sun Sister Moon

Fedor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Victor Mair. Bantam

The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna`s Counsel in Time of War, translated by Barbara Stoller Miller. Bantam Books

Esposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path "Muhammad and the Quran: Messenger and Message." (Course Packet)

Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. Harper San Francisco

 

IV. Self in Psychoanalysis:

Guy, Peter. The Freud Reader. "An Autobiographical Study." (Course Packet)

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death: "The Present Outcome of Psychoanalysis." New York: Free Press Paperbacks, (Course Packet)

Ramachandran, V.S. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind: "Preface" and "The Phantom Within." New York: William Morrow. (Course Packet)

Carl Gustav Jung, "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious."(Course Packet)

Carl Gustav Jung,"Aion: Phenomenology of the Self " (Course Packet)

 

Zamiatin, Eugine. We

Darker Shades of Red: Soviet Propaganda from the Cold War -- exhibit of Soviet propaganda posters from 1940s to 1990s (Snite Museum)

 

Pasternak, Boris. Doctor Zhivago

Film: David Lean, Doctor Zhivago