Sections offered FALL 2019:
#33855 |
HERBERT MARKS |
SECOND EIGHT WEEKS
|
HU 108 |
CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit; IUB GenEd A&H credit. This class meets with CMLT-C 200.
How do you define the “good life”? How can one live “authentically”? These questions engaged the ancient Greeks, who developed such concepts as “pleasure,” “happiness,” and “virtue,” no less than the op-ed columnists of today. We’ll begin by comparing the answers of classical philosophy, especially Epicurus, for whom true happiness meant freedom from anxiety and pain, and biblical “wisdom,” especially Ecclesiastes, which dismissed all striving, whether for wealth, love, or learning, as “mere breath” or “vanity.” Most of our time will then be devoted to two writers whose ideas about how to live were inseparable from their thoughts on writing itself: Montaigne, who responded to the political crises of his day by developing the “essay” as a vehicle for self-reflection, and Henry James, who in his novels depicted the conflict between new-world virtue and old-world pleasures with incomparable subtlety and nuance. Written work: two short papers and a class presentation.