MODL3980-01.Topics: Freedom and Terror.Su16.Grell,Erik

Erik Grell

Document Type

Syllabi

School

CLA

Department

MODL

Course Subject

MODL

Course Number

3980

Course Section

01

Course Title

Topics: Freedom and Terror

Academic Term and Year

Summer 2016

Credits

4.00

Hamline Plan Letter

H, W

Area of Study

MODL, PHIL

Course Description

What can I know? What ought I to do? What might I hope? In the face of the challenges of modernity and the catastrophes of history—a history indelibly stained with terror, violence, and genocide—human beings often appear woefully incapable of answering these questions. This course will examine philosophical texts from the eighteenth to the twentieth century that outline possibilities for human agency. We will particularly examine conceptions of agency as they unfold in states of danger, when human beings are faced with terror, oppressed by totalitarian or problematic political structures, or continually confronted with the threat of violence. Some of the questions we will be asking include: what is freedom, how is it possible, and why is it valuable? What is the nature of commitment, and how does one evaluate commitments that give us identities? How do we confront evil? What is political action and what intellectual and cultural resources do we have to prevent lapses into political and ethical barbarism? At the dawn of the twenty-first century, after a century of bloodshed, catastrophe, and terror, can we still live up to the promises and the potential of what it means to be a free human being?

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