Faculty First Year Seminars 197LLC8 - Human Condition East and West

What does it mean to be human? Where do men and women ?fit? in the universe? What is the good life? What is evil? What is the nature of the Divine? No matter what you choose as a major in college or your career plans, you will have to think about these questions sometime in your life. In this course we will join a great conversation and learn from Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic-Sufi, Stoic, and Christian thinkers in a grand exploration of these questions and much more. We will spend two weeks each reading and discussing some of the most profound and thought provoking short books in world literature. In the course of our conversation, we will gain some insights into how different peoples have thought about the human condition at different times in history, even as we also approach greater wisdom ourselves.

Freshmen Only