Contemporary Civilization

C1101, Section 27 TR 11:00-12:50 Kent 424

Professor Brad Abrams IAB 1230, TH 2-4 854-6287, bfa4

TO BULLETIN BOARD

Required Texts:

Plato. Republic. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1992.

Aristotle. The Politics. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1998.

Epictetus. The Handbook. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1983.

Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. Oxford/New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

Al-Qur’an. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1984.

St. Augustine. City of God. London/New York: Penguin, 1972.

Niccolo Machiavelli. Selected Political Writings. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1994.

Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed. The Protestant Reformation. New York: Harper, 1968.

*Thomas More. Utopia. Mineola, NY: Dover Thrift, 1997.

René Descartes. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.

Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1993.

Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. New York: Norton, 1997.

John Locke. The Political Writings of John Locke. New York: Mentor, 1993.

Contemporary Civilization Reader. New York: American Heritage, 1999.

* - denotes readings available at Labyrinth Books (112^th between Broadway and Amsterdam)

 

SYLLABUS

PART ONE: GREECE AND ROME

7 September. Introduction and organizational meeting.

9 September. Plato. Republic. 327a-368c (pp. 1-42). [P]
                      Study questions.

14 September. Plato. Republic. 368d-480a (pp. 43-156). [P]
                      Study questions.

16 September. Plato. Republic. 484a-541b (pp. 157-212, Books VI &VII). [P]
                       Study questions.

21 September. Plato. Republic. 543a-621d (pp.213-292, Books VIII-X). [P]
                       Study questions.

23 September. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Note changed readings: Book One: 1.1-.81, 1.94 (pp. 1-23, 32-3)
Book Two: Complete (pp. 33-53)
Book Five: 5.1-5.41, 5.81-5.93 (pp. 116-23, 134-7)
Book Seven: 8.1-8.74 (pp. 198-207)
Book Ten: Complete (pp. 266-98)
[Butler Reserve]

                       Study questions.

28 September. Aristotle. Politics. I, II:1-5, VII:1-3, VIII:1-3 (pp. 1-36, 181-7, 227-31). [P, Books I-II]

                       Study questions.

30 September. Epictetus. The Handbook and "Hellenistic Philosophy." In: CC Reader.

                       Study questions.

PART TWO: MONTHEISM.

5 October. Holy Bible. Genesis: 1:1-9:17, 11:31-13:18, 15:1-18:33, 21:1-23:20, 25:7-25:10. Exodus: 1:1-6:13, 7:1-11:10, 13:17-14:31, 15:22-20:18, 31:18-34:35.

7 October. Holy Bible. Matthew, Romans.

12 October. Augustine. City of God. I: Preface-1, IV:1-4, VIII:1-12, XIV, XIX. [P, Book XIV or XIX]

                        Study questions.

14 October. Al-Qur’an. 1, 114, 112, 75, 68, 63, 56, 26, 17, 2-4.

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REVISED SECTION

19 October. Al-Qur’an. 1, 114, 112, 75, 68, 63, 56, 26, 17, 2-4.

21 October. "Medieval Philosophy." In: CC Reader.

26 October. Medieval Politics: Selections from Marsilius of Padua. Defensor Pacis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980. 3-97, 425-32. [These pages and introductory material in Butler Reserve]

28 October. Midterm Exam.

     Midterm Study Questions.

2 November. Election Day. No class. Vote and Study. Drafts are due to your assigned readers by 5:00, either via e-mail or in person.

PART THREE: THE NEW WORLD, NEW SCIENCE, NEW RELIGION, AND NEW PHILOSOPHY

4 November. Luther. "The Freedom of a Christian Man," "On Governmental Authority," and "Friendly Admonition to Peace concerning the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants," and "The Twelve Articles of the Peasants." Calvin. "The Institutes of Christian Religion" and "The Schleitheim Confession." In: Hillerbrand, pp. 3-28, 43-86, 129-36, 143-6, 178-221. [P, "Governmental Authority" or "The Institutes."] Drafts to be returned.

9 November. Machiavelli. The Prince. [P] Paper #1 due.

END OF REVISED SECTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11 November. De Las Casa. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. 3-56, 127-30. De Sepulveda. ‘Democrates Alter…," de las Casas. "Thirty Very Juridical Propositions." In: CC Reader.

16 November. Galileo. "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina." In: CC Reader. Descartes. Discourse Concerning Method. [P]

18 November. Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy. [P]

23 November. Thomas More. Utopia. [P]

25 November. Thanksgiving. Eat. Sleep. Get ready for finals.

30 November. Leviathan. Introduction through Chapter 16. [P]

2 December. Hobbes. Leviathan. Chapters 17-21, 29-30, 32-3, 46, 47, Review. [P]

7 December. Locke. Second Treatise. Chapters 1-9, 18-9. [P] Draft of Paper #2 due.

9 December. Locke. "A Letter Concerning Toleration." In: Political Writings and David Hume. "Of the Original Contract." In: CC Reader. Drafts to be returned.

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13 December. Paper #2 due in my office.

17 December. Final Exam. 12:30-3:30.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. ATTENDANCE: The whole of CC is designed for you to the opportunity to meet and discuss the readings. If you fail to attend, you harm not only yourself but also your classmates. For this reason, more than three unexcused absences will lower your grade. Also note that four unexcused absences are grounds for dropping you from the course.

2. PARTICIPATION: CC courses are discussions, not lectures. This means that your active and informed involvement in the class is crucial. You are expected to do the readings completely and carefully, and, moreover, to think about them before class, such that your participation in the discussion is intellectually stimulating. This also makes the class much more rewarding and enjoyable. I expect everyone to come with at least three questions/comments on the readings for each session. These may be points with which you particularly agreed, with which you particularly disagreed, or points that made no sense to you. As the moderator, I reserve the right to call on you at any time and ask you to present one of your prepared comments. I also reserve to right to make this requirement a written one, and ask you to begin handing in your questions at the beginning of class.

3. PRESENTATIONS: You will be expected to act as a sort of co-chairperson with one of your colleagues for two sessions. This entails an especially careful reading of the materials and the assumption of a leading role in the class. You will be expected to talk for ten minutes or so each about the work in question, to present topics for discussion and to answer questions raised by your classmates. The way this might divide up is that one person discusses the background to the work (assuming it’s not day #2 on the work), and the other asks questions to lead the class through the argument, with both raising questions for discussion. N.B. "Background" does not mean reading a list of meaningless dates from the author’s life. It is important that Plato was a student of Socrates, and was deeply affected by his trial and the course of Athenian politics at the time (both of which you might go into), it is not important that he wrote A in year X, then B in year Y, then C in year Z, etc. PLEASE do not bore us this way.

4. PRÉCIS: You will be required to submit a written, one-page précis for 5 of the 14 works above that are followed by a "[P]". This should consist of (a) a few sentences describing the starting position and aim of the author’s argument, (b) an outline-format explication of the most important steps in that argument, and (c) a few sentences on how successful you believe the author was in proving what he or she set out to demonstrate. The goal of the précis is to get you to become consciously aware of the structure that arguments take, such that you can both begin to reproduce the logical structures themselves, and see them almost subconsciously in the materials you read for other classes. Once you have completed five, you may submit additional précis: I will count only the five highest grades.

5. PAPERS: Two short (5-6 pp.) papers will be assigned. I will present a set of possible paper topics about two weeks before the due date. At the same time, I will hand out a sheet explaining what I am looking for in your paper. You are encouraged not to pick one of the suggested topics. I am leaving the choice in your hands in order that you have the opportunity to write about works and issues that interest you, not me. I will, of course, discuss topics with you either during office hours or via Email. Further, you are required to turn in drafts of your papers. Your collected drafts will be shuffled and dealt out to your fellow students, who will read them and write comments. Because I see the ability to read others work and provide constructive criticism as a valuable skill almost no matter what you will do in life, your editing work will affect how I see your paper grade. This means that taking the time to try and help one another is important for your grade, and, besides that, you might learn something that improves your own paper on the second draft. As far as grading is concerned, if student A writes helpful comments on student B’s paper, which student B integrates, both grades are helped (and B’s even moreso if he or she writes helpful comments for C). If A writes helpful comments which B ignores, A’s grade is helped, but not B’s. I will explain this again in class.

6. MIDTERM: The midterm will cover the material through the medieval works, and will be organized in the following manner: a) choose eight of twelve quotations, and tell me the author and work; b) choose four of those eight, and tell me in a paragraph the significance of the relevant quotation for the work in question and its broader significance; c) answer one of two essay questions.

7. FINAL: The final will have the same format as the midterm. Parts a) and b) will cover only materials read after the midterm, but the essay questions -- you will have to choose two out of four -- will be cumulative.

8. GRADE CALCULATION:

Class participation (including presentation(s)): 30% Precis: 10% Papers: 20%

Midterm: 15% Final: 25%

9. PREPARING FOR CLASS: Many of the works we’ll be reading are difficult. Therefore I would advise leaving a reasonably large amount of time for preparation. Some things (say, Plato or Descartes) you may need to read more than one time. I have tried to keep the more difficult readings shorter where possible.
     I strongly recommend marking the texts where important arguments are made, or where you violently agree or disagree with the author (or if he/she seems to be making no sense). Assuming you purchase them, these books are your property - mark them up. When paper time comes, you may very well find that the questions and ideas you scribbled in the margins add up to a theme you might address. A good idea is to both mark the text for important or valuable passages, but also take notes on a separate pad of paper. Much of this you should be doing to prepare your précis. This is just advice -- develop your own system for learning the structure of a text and developing (and remembering) your responses to it.
     After reading a text, however, your job isn’t done. The only way to be prepared for class, and for this to be a lively and intellectually exciting experience, is to sit and think about the arguments both as you read them and after you have finished. Take the time to digest the work, think about what you agree with or disagree with, and why this is the case. From here, coming up with three things to say should be a piece of cake. Then all you have to do is show up, and talk about what’s on your mind.

10. THE NET. There is lots of interesting and even valuable material on the internet for use in preparing for your presentations, and for understanding the works better in general. Give it a go; look around at some of the sites and see what you find. If you find something interesting, let the rest of the class know.