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    PHILOSOPHY

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    Stark Jr.
    This document discusses the topic of human philosophy as it relates to death. It explores how philosophers from Plato to Heidegger have recognized how indifference towards death contributes to inauthentic existence. The purpose is to foster sustained reflection on key questions about the reality and meaning of death through discussion of philosophical and religious texts.

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    PHILOSOPHY

    Uploaded by

    Stark Jr.
    27 views3 pages
    This document discusses the topic of human philosophy as it relates to death. It explores how philosophers from Plato to Heidegger have recognized how indifference towards death contributes to inauthentic existence. The purpose is to foster sustained reflection on key questions about the reality and meaning of death through discussion of philosophical and religious texts.

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    This document discusses the topic of human philosophy as it relates to death. It explores how philosophers from Plato to Heidegger have recognized how indifference towards death contributes to inauthentic existence. The purpose is to foster sustained reflection on key questions about the reality and meaning of death through discussion of philosophical and religious texts.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    27 views3 pages

    PHILOSOPHY

    Uploaded by

    Stark Jr.
    This document discusses the topic of human philosophy as it relates to death. It explores how philosophers from Plato to Heidegger have recognized how indifference towards death contributes to inauthentic existence. The purpose is to foster sustained reflection on key questions about the reality and meaning of death through discussion of philosophical and religious texts.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    HUMAN PHILOSOPHY

    Philosophy concerns itself with what is often taken for


    granted, overlooked or denied. Death is one such reality
    in modern Western culture. Although we know for sure
    we will die, the harshness of death's inevitability is
    softened by the uncertainty of the where, the how and
    the when. And it is precisely that series of contingencies
    which makes it possible for death to remain so
    intransigently alien, distant and ignored. For the most
    part, we only approach the matter of death in the third
    person: not we, not you, but "others" are those who die.
    Yet, as long as death is conceived as something that
    happens only to others or as an event occurring only at
    the end of one's life, it will remain impermeable and
    irrelevant. Philosophers from Plato to Heidegger have
    recognized how this attitude of indifference towards
    death contributes to an inauthentic existence.

    Peering into death may not be easy, but it need not


    constitute a morbid fascination; in fact, this course is
    really about life, but life as illuminated through the prism
    of death. Throughout the semester, we will be in
    conversation with philosophical and religious texts that
    explore death and its ultimate meaning for life. The
    purpose of this exercise is not simply to acquire a
    collection of trenchant remarks on death from an
    assortment of well-known sages but rather to foster,
    both within and among ourselves, a sustained reflection
    on key questions such as: What exactly is death? - Is a
    metaphysics of death or ratio mortis even possible? -
    How have ancient philosophers (such as Plato and
    Aristotle) as well as contemporary philosophers (such as
    Kierkegaard and Heidegger) reflected on the reality of
    death? - How does the challenge of death (and its threat
    of discontinuity) get transposed into a higher continuity
    by the major religious traditions? - Is religion, as Hume
    suggested, merely a compensatory strategy for dealing
    with our fear of death? - Or are religious traditions really
    about authentic conversion to a new way of seeing,
    thinking and acting? - What is the relationship between
    mortality and morality? - What is it that ultimately makes
    life's activities meaningful?
    Typical Readings:
    Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
    Plato, Phaedo
    Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
    Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
    Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical
    Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate
    Hume, Dialogues and Natural History of Religion
    Heidegger, Being and Time
    Bowker, The Meanings of Death

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