Humanities
Course Guide
Mercer Island High School
Title: Humanities
Overview of the course
The broad purpose of the Humanities year-long elective is to expose students to the “canon” of Western literary and philosophical thought. Students read, discuss, and write extensively about the ideas of the most influential philosophers, poets, playwrights, and novelists from Greek antiquity to the modern age. Team taught by faculty from the English and Social Studies departments, students are encouraged to find relationships between the philosophical, literary, and historical texts they are reading and to articulate how these themes help explain or illuminate contemporary issues and events that shape our world today. The course meets one semester of the Social Studies contemporary world issues graduation requirement. In addition, the English Literature and Composition component follows and meets all mandatory and recommended Advanced Placement (AP) requirements. Students should expect a classroom environment that simulates a college-level course, and they are further required before graduating to laugh at and identify any punctuation errors in the following joke: A waiter asks Descartes if he’d like a drink. The philosopher answered “I think not” and disappeared.
Reading List (Social Studies component):
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (excerpted)
Plato, The Apology of Socrates
Plato, Crito
Plato, The Republic
Aristotle, Politics (excerpted)
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (excerpted)
Seneca, Moral Letters (selection)
Epictetus, The Art of Living
Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Job, Ecclesiastes, Matthew, Romans, Hebrews, Galatians
Archibald MacLeish, J. B.
Harold Kushner: “When Good Things Happen to Bad People”
Mary Midgley, “Trying Out One’s New Sword”
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Stephen Junius Brutus, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (exerpted)
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (excerpted)
Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (excerpted)
David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (excerpted)
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (excerpted)
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (excerpted)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (excerpted)
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (excerpted)
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (excerpted)
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (excerpted)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (excerpted)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (excerpted)
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (excerpted)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals (excerpted)
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (excerpted)
Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, Why War (excerpted)
Franz Kafka, selected writings
Woody Allen, selected writings
Bob Dylan, selected writings
V.S. Naipaul, selected writings
Suggested Supplemental Materials:
Peloponnesian War (documentary film)
My Dinner with Andre (film)
Stranger Than Paradise (film)
Pingu, (claymation shorts)
Love and Death (film)
Wild Strawberries (film)
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (documentary film)
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (documentary film)