Professor J. Vernon
jvernon@yorku.ca
Office Location:  S427 Ross

What is the meaning of life? Perhaps more importantly, what is the meaning of my life? Do pain, suffering, loss, and death rob life of its meaning, or render it absurd? Or, to the contrary, does what makes life difficult to bear in fact more precious and meaningful? What is the best, or most authentic way, to live a life?

This class presents a survey of varied philosophical approaches to the interconnection of life, death, and meaning. It also offers general introduction to Western philosophy through an investigation of questions concerning the nature and meaning of life. The first half of the course deals with texts from the ancient world, while the latter half treats philosophers from the 20^th century. Thinkers we will cover include Socrates/Plato, Epictetus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Martin Luther King. Because we are on a compressed semester, tutorial sessions will be divided into two distinct discussions on different texts/lectures on each day, separated by a short (precisely timed) break. During the week of the mid-term exam, the exam will occupy the first session; then, after the usual break, discussion of Thomas Nagel’s article will begin.

Note: Because this is a course that concerns some of the most profound and difficult problems of human existence, the readings we will consider will touch upon topics that can be quite discomforting. This fact should be kept in mind both before students decide to take the course, and as we all work to ensure respectful dialogue about them throughout the term.

Lectures will be online and asynchronous (that is, they will be recorded on video). The lectures for each week will be uploaded to eClass by midnight of the Friday preceding that week. Tutorials will be in-class, on campus, as listed in the course calendar. They will be divided into sessions, with a short break, each dedicated to one of the readings.

The mid-term will be held in tutorials, and tutorial participation will be graded in three ways: 1) attendance (1 mark for each non-test week attended, max of 10%); 2) the submission of written questions for discussion (1 mark for each substantial question concerning each lecture/accompanying reading(s) for the week, submitted to your TA at least 24 hours before tutorial, max of 10%); participation in class discussion (graded by your TA, max of 10%).

All texts are online resources; see the links given for each week on the syllabus.

Mid-Term Exam – 15%

Final Exam 30%

Term Paper – 25%

Tutorial attendance/participation – 30%

Lecture/Reading Schedule:

Week 1

Intro. to Course; Lecture/Tutorial a) “The Dispute Of a Man with his Ba”: https://mjn.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/egyptian/texts/corpus/pdf/Dispute.pdf; Lecture/Tutorial b) Plato, Apology: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/04.%20Apology.pdf

Week 2

Lecture/Tutorial a) Plato, Crito: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html; Lecture/Tutorial b) Epictetus, The Handbook: https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

Week 3

Lecture/Tutorial a) Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus”: http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html; Lecture/Tutorial b) “The Principal Doctrines”: https://blogs.ubc.ca/phil102/files/2013/08/Epicurus-PrincipalDoctrines-epicurusinfo.pdf; mid-term review

Week 4

Lecture/Tutorial a) Mid-Term Exam; Lecture/Tutorial b)  Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd”: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absurd%20-%20Thomas%20Nagel.pdf.

Week 5

Lecture/Tutorial a) and b) Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

Week 6

Lecture/Tutorial a) Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, (Chapter 1: Ambiguity and Freedom): https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch01.htm;

Lecture/Tutorial b) Martin Luther King, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life”: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/three-dimensions-complete-life-sermon-delivered-unitarian-church-germantown; “The Drum Major Instinct”: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/drum-major-instinct

Essays Due

Final Exam (scheduled by the university)

The primary objective of the course is to familiarize students with some of central ideas of in different Western philosophical traditions concerning life, death, and meaning. Students will also learn how to scrutinize texts for arguments that support a central thesis, as well as construct their own strong arguments for their position concerning questions of deep philosophical import.