Sections offered SPRING 2024:
33476 |
TIMOTHY FORT |
TuTh 1:15-2:30 pm |
HH 1000 |
This class meets with HON-H 300.
This course looks at what appeals to the affective dimension of human nature. We look at three such sources, each embedded within culture. One of those is play. Sports provides a window into the ways in which we ethically (and spiritually) grow. The second is religion itself: how do religions provide the norms for cultures around the world that people rely on for cues of how to behave? The third is music. Music appeals to our emotions and is idiosyncratic to individuals and cultures. It has also been called the universal language and so it provides a capstone to our inquiry. In this course, we want to examine these cultural touchstones, recognizing the high stakes that are involved in them and to leave the course with a better understanding of the cultural norms that inform culture and that also provide ways for cultures to find common ground, especially in business.
We will explore whether ethical business conduct contributes to peace. I am not the first to make the argument that trade and economic development may lead to peace, but I am one of the first people to write about the particular actions businesses might take to make peacebuilding happen.
History, of course, shows that cultural interaction can also lead to war and/or exploitation. Those dangers are present in international business too. But business may also provide a way for individuals and cultures of great diversity to learn to converse about the things they commonly value.
In approaching this course then, one goal is to sensitize students to the content of that diversity. To that end, we will deal not only with philosophical notions of the good, but religious ones. Indeed, the last half of the class will provide a survey of major spiritual traditions from around the world.
A second goal is to see how some have attempted to integrate religion, business and peace. Corporations practicing the kinds of virtues that, I have argued, lead to peace are also exactly the kinds of organizations that also provide a forum for individuals of different beliefs to work together by either finding a common ground or, if no common ground exists, to still find ways to frame differences in constructive terms of diversity rather than in threatening poses that trigger defensiveness.
A third goal is to show how commonly accessible, non-sectarian sports and music further provide a way for us to access, to develop, and to share ethical wisdom.
I teach an MBA version of this class as well and the video summary of it is equally applicable to this case (it’s just with a different name). And, I sing in the video and in the class. Yes, I do. Take a peek at the video and find out. Even better, enroll in the class and find out!