Core 101-102: Exploring Human Experience
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University of Richmond
CORE 101-102: EXPLORING HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Syllabus for 2005-2006
Aims of the course
The Core Course must be important: it is the only course that everyone has to take at the University of Richmond. And it must be fundamental: everyone has to take it in his or her first year. What job does this course do that is so important and fundamental?
The Core Course has three overlapping aims:
(1) to expand your knowledge and understanding of different ways in which
thinkers and writers have interpreted human experience;
(2) to develop your ability to engage and compare texts critically through reading,
thinking, and writing, and discussing; and
(3) to establish a foundation for conversations on serious questions, among both
students and faculty, that extend beyond the Core Course itself.
How does it endeavor to achieve these aims?
It pursues the first aim by assigning texts that display a wide array of perspectives on the meaning of life. The guiding assumption for this is that the examination of a variety of approaches to common human problems will give you a more sophisticated understanding of what is involved in making thoughtful sense out of experience. All the texts in the course tend to focus on similar basic questions: Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why do people behave the way they do? To whom or to what do we owe responsibility? But, since the writers of these texts look at these questions from varying vantage points (they live in different times and places, occupy different social positions, have different physical constitutions), they don’t treat them in the same way. In trying to work out why this writer sees the world this way, while that writer sees it that way, you should not only discover new possibilities for interpreting experience, but also develop a sensitivity to the challenges interpretation must confront. The exercise of thinking through various writers’ visions of the world--whether you agree with them or not--should give you a better understanding of the grounds for, and implications of, your own views.
The course pursues the first by having you do hard thinking about hard books. The guiding assumption for this is that one of the best ways to learn to read, think, and express oneself well is to study the work of proven good readers, thinkers, and writers. By analyzing how gifted people think through tough problems on paper--by getting into conversation with very smart men and
women--one gets better at the job oneself. So instead of asking you to master a specific body of information, this course asks you to read and interpret a series of complex literary and philosophical texts. The point is not to learn facts and formulas (although you will learn many new things), but to develop skills: how to absorb difficult material relatively quickly; how to see the way a text works; how to fashion clear, subtle, persuasive arguments for a position. To those ends, the course requires that you do considerable reading, conversing, and writing. Classes are kept small so that you will feel free to join in discussion and enjoy the close attention of your instructor to your intellectual growth.
The course pursues the third aim by maintaining a common syllabus for all sections and drawing its instructors from the entire university faculty. Because every first-year student is pretty much reading the same book at the same time (and more than likely a lot of upper-class students have read the book too), there is always something substantial out there for students to talk about, not just in class, but in the dining center or dormitory. Should we buy this argument for political reform? Should we love or hate this character? What exactly is this writer trying to say? And because the course is not the property of one department--the instructors come from a variety of departments in the School of Arts and Sciences, as well as from the Schools of Law, Leadership Studies, Business, and Continuing Studies--there are faculty all over the University who are in on the discussion. The fact that faculty from a great variety of disciplines will approach the common material in different ways should enrich your conversations about that material: you can learn much by comparing the approach taken in your section with that taken in others. By nourishing this common conversation, the course provides an important undergirding for all other courses at the University: no matter what course a student is taking, the instructor knows that the members of the class have read certain books and discussed certain issues that can serve as a common point of reference for what he or she has to say.
This is a demanding course; but also a rewarding and enjoyable one. It is designed to stretch you intellectually and conceptually and thus provide you a solid foundation both for further study at the University and for reflective living after graduation. What could be more important?
Course work
Your main job in this course will be to read the assigned texts and analyze them in discussion and writing. The minimum writing requirement for all sections of the course is two or three essays per semester, totaling approximately 3000 words (about 12 standard typed pages), that require analysis of texts read in the course. All sections are also expected to have a midterm examination and a final examination, the latter administered during the final examination period at the end of the semester. Examinations may be undertaken in the classroom during designated examination sessions, or they may be administered as take-home examinations. In either case, your instructor will design these examinations to elicit preponderantly discursive and analytical responses from you. You should expect work beyond this minimum. The nature of this work will vary from section to section: your instructor might require more extensive formal essay writing, journal-keeping, the leading of class discussions, participation in electronic discussion groups, drawing, making music, or other activities. A guide to the faculty’s expectations for reading, writing, and studying is on the last page of this syllabus.
Grading
Separate grades will be given for discussion and the writing assignments. Each instructor will determine the relative weight of examinations, discussion, and papers in calculating the final grade, with the stipulation that at least half the grade will rest on discussion and the writing assignments.
Coordinate events
From time to time, films, lectures, exhibits, performances, and the like that illuminate texts or themes in the course will be scheduled. One designated activity each semester, focusing on the visual and/or performing arts, will be required of all students. Information about that activity will be provided on a separate sheet.
Attendance policy
The attendance policy for your section will be set by your instructor.
Honor code
All students in this course are expected to abide by the University Honor Statute. The Core Course requires that students learn how to read the assigned texts and work out their meanings for themselves, in class discussions and on their own, under the guidance of the instructor. The reading of outside sources instead of the texts is a violation of the spirit of the course and will be considered intellectual dishonesty.
Problems
If you have questions or problems that cannot be handled at the level of your section (among these would be scheduling problems), you should contact:
Core Course Coordinator: Ray Hilliard
Office: Ryland 303i
Phone: 289-8289
E-mail:
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SCHEDULE OF TOPICS AND READINGS
On the following pages is the common reading schedule for the course. All sections will read these texts in this order. For each semester, however, your instructor will add one additional text of his or her own choice. Your instructor will provide you a more precise calendar of assignments for your particular section. Be sure to purchase the editions of these texts that are on sale at the campus bookstore: effective discussion will often require a close look at certain passages in the texts, and it is vitally important that everyone in the class be able to turn to the same page and see the same words.
The guiding idea of this course is that giving meaning to human experience is a complicated and difficult business. It is the result of a complex interplay between culture and self. The two are, of course, very much intertwined: culture shapes the self, and the self shapes culture. But to help us think things through better, in the first semester (“The Claims of Culture”), we will be principally interested in how culture helps us give meaning to human experience and what it asks of us in return; in the second semester (“The Sense of Self”), we will concentrate on how a sense of self contributes to our search for meaning, yet adds complications of its own.
- THE CLAIMS OF CULTURE
This semester we’ll be thinking about two ways that culture helps us give meaning to human experience: first, by offering us modes of inquiry we can use to devise, question and justify coherent systems of belief and values; and second, by creating and preserving the communities in which we live. In each case, we’ll consider both the claims culture makes for itself (that is, what it claims to offer us) and the claims it makes upon us (that is, what it demands from us in return). We’ll be working to understand: What do we mean by culture? How does it help us make sense of human experience? Where does it come from? The first unit will set up the basic problem addressed by the entire Core Course: How do we find meaning when we see problems everywhere? The second unit will focus on how and why we make communities, how we order those communities, and what claims they make on us all.
- Inquiry, Belief and Values
The problem of coherence. We begin with a story about growing up in a place where the bewildering pace of change sets loose competing beliefs and values, calling cultural coherence into question. We then follow three different modes of inquiry as they attempt to satisfy the human need for an integrated, consistent, and intelligible view of the world: first, reasoned philosophical inquiry into the nature of love and the power of transcendent ideals, seeking foundations for a system of values and beliefs that is universally valid; second, scientific inquiry propounding the theory that the human race is a mere product of chance, evolved under pressures of natural competition, whose values and beliefs serve nothing more than the impersonal interests of survival; and third, a personal, introspective inquiry about moral obligations in the context of extreme social crisis and in the face of human mortality.
We’ll ask such questions as: How do we go about making sense of the world? What are we doing here? How are our modes of inquiry related to our beliefs and values? Where do we get those beliefs and values? How much control do they give us over our lives and our destinies? What do we do when they come under attack? What roles do reason and faith, instinct and desire, science and culture play in our search for meaning and coherence? How is the search for meaning complicated by subordination of one culture, one race, one class or one gender to another?
1. Naguib Mahfouz, Fountain and Tomb (Egypt, 1975)
2. Plato, Phaedo, Symposium (Greece, 4th century B.C.E.)
3. Charles Darwin, selections from On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man (Britain,
1859, 1874)
4. J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (South Africa, 1990)
- Solidarity and Discord
The problem of community. In this section we’ll read an ancient but enduringly influential Indian epic in which both social and cosmic harmony are shown to depend on the readiness of individual human beings to fulfill their ethical obligations toward one another; a theory that culture is only a veil to conceal our more basic economic divisions and our alienation from our true natures; a philosophical inquiry into the origins and maintenance of inequality between men and women, and the underlying relationship between nature and culture; and a story about the perils of navigating a complex cultural landscape at a time when rapid economic change has thrown traditional values askew.
Our reading will raise such questions as: What holds communities together and what breaks them apart? To what extent do we determine our own natures and to what extent are our natures determined by a divinely ordained cosmic order or by our social context? How possible is it to see clearly what motivates or limits us? What are the real factors or conditions that determine the shape of our cultural life? What role does family life play in community and culture? Can there ever be love without domination? What does our sense of community have to do with our understanding of who we are and what, if anything, we have in common?
5. The Ramayana, trans. Ramesh Menon (selections) (India, 4th century B.C.E.; trans. 2001)
6. Karl Marx, selections from The German Ideology, Communist Manifesto and Capital (Europe,
1846-1894)
7. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (selections) (France, 1949)
8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (U.S.A., 1905)
- THE SENSE OF SELF
This semester the principal question we’ll be asking is, What role does a sense of self play in giving meaning to human experience, and what problems does it cause? We’ll be working to understand: How do we arrive at a sense of self? Is it something we find or something we create? What do we do when it’s called into question? How much do we owe to the self and how much do we owe to others? And how can the claims of self and others ever be reconciled? We’ll first consider the role of human will in the making of personal identity, then explore the relationship between a sense of self and a sense that we belong somehow to circumstance and time.
- Identity and Will
The problem of autonomy. Here we read a story about what it means to live without a sense of personal autonomy and free will, and what it takes to create one; an autobiographical account of a gifted man’s struggle with a divided will, drawn on one hand to personal ambition and worldly pleasures and, on the other, to self-denial and divine love; a theory on a will to power and a will to truth, one that critiques Judeo-Christian moral values as inauthentic and calls for transcending them; and a story that, while exploring complex ideas about good and evil, asks whether we control our fates or whether they are determined by forces beyond our control, and that examines the tension between the private self and the public self, between personal morality and the demands of civic life.
These readings raise such questions as: How much does a sense of self have to do with happiness? What does identity have to do with material conditions? How free are we to be what we choose? Can we be autonomous actors, or are we at the mercy of the world we’re given? Should human will be subjugated or liberated? Should we indulge our desires and try to fulfill them, or distrust and deny them? How are we to find solid grounding for the self in a world governed by doubts and uncertainties?
1. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (U.S.A., 1977)
2. Augustine, Confessions (selections) (North Africa and Italy, circa 400)
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (selections) (Germany, 1887)
4. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (Soviet Union, written 1928-1939, published
1966-1967)
- Circumstance and Time
Our final section begins with a play that explores issues of identity (male versus female, the private self versus the public self, the role of language and self display in our attempts to order experience and act on the world, etc.) in relation to the interaction of two very different cultures. We then move on to a theory that we are creatures locked in endless conflict—conflict within the self, conflict between desire and culture, conflict that has made us what we are and limits our prospects for the future. Next, we take up a poet’s explorations of necessity and freedom, of ways that circumstance and time define, disguise and deny the self, but also of possibilities for self-creation, our power to imagine an alternative civilization and transform the laws of history. We conclude with a story that, from the perspective of an increasingly “globalized” world, provides a provocative or unsettling perspective on such issues as the relationship between sexuality and identity, the notion of a profoundly divided self, and the experience of selfhood in relation to a banal or everyday reality that is often disturbed by manifestations of the uncanny.
Some of our questions this time will be: How much of what we are and become is under our control? Can we ever be completely happy? How are we to deal with social systems that thwart and oppress our sense of identity and selfhood? How can we preserve our sense of self when we’re caught up in circumstances beyond our control? If we can’t control our fates, how can we demand responsibility? Can we ever know ourselves apart from history and culture? To what extent is the self inevitably a mystery?