Sections offered FALL 2019:
#31980 |
FREDERIC LIEBER |
MW 11:15am-12:30pm |
HU 111 |
CLASS NOTES: Satisfaction of the English composition requirement; COLL Intensive Writing section, COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
The Declaration of Independence considers the pursuit of happiness a right along with life and liberty. Two hundred-plus years later, happiness is still a popular pursuit. Happiness books appear frequently on best seller lists. There is a Journal of Happiness Studies.
We conduct our own pursuit of happiness in philosophy, history, religion, psychology, social science, literature, and the arts. We are guided by three questions: what are common themes and meanings in the history of happiness, how have they developed, and how do we evaluate them? Students will investigate happiness in their major or minor disciplines, or a discipline of interest.
We read Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Bible, Descartes, Montaigne, Kant, Rousseau, Beethoven, Blake, Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, Matisse, Freud, Max Weber, Willa Cather, Camus, the Dalai Lama, Wallace Stevens, James Wright, Robert Nozick, and Jonathan Haidt.
Students write two five-page papers and a final paper. There are no exams.