David Egan Philosophy

Past Courses

How Should We Live? Answers from the Ancient World

The middle centuries of the first millennium BCE were a time of radical upheaval in civilizations across Eurasia. Philosophers and sages from Greece to China challenged traditional modes of thought and worked to imagine radically new ways that individuals and society might flourish. We, too, find ourselves in a time of upheaval—politically, environmentally, and with the shock of a global pandemic. In this course, we read some of those ancient texts with modern eyes and ask whether the answers those thinkers found might fruitfully apply to some of the questions we face today. Participants consider texts from ancient Greece, India, and China that ask probing questions about what it means to be human and how we can find peace and happiness in a turbulent world.

The Philosophy of Love and Friendship

Love takes many forms. Some say it is the most important thing in life. Poets and pop singers can’t stop talking about it.

So what is love? And why does it matter so much?

This course investigates various forms of love and friendship, drawing on a mix of ancient and contemporary philosophers for guidance. We consider Greek conceptions of love and friendship, the Chinese Confucian ideal of family reverence, and the Buddhist ideal of loving-kindness, as well as more recent philosophical work on love and friendship. We ask what makes us love the people we love, whether we can or should have reasons for loving as we do, whether and how love is related to ethics—and whether true love is possible at all. 

“Know Thyself”: Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Literature and Philosophy

Since its beginnings, philosophy has understood itself in comparison with literature—and more often than not in competition with it. In Book X of Plato’s Republic, the philosopher Socrates alludes to an “ancient quarrel” between poetry and philosophy and argues for the banishment of poets from his ideal philosophical republic. This course takes Plato’s argument as a focal point: we work to understand why he wanted to banish poetry, whether he was right to do so, and what lessons we can draw from this argument today. In the process, we will ponder the sometimes competing claims of philosophy and literature as sources of wisdom. Besides writings by Plato, we read Sophocles’ great tragedy Oedipus the King and consider more recent responses to the question of what, if anything, we can learn from literature. 

An Introduction to Philosophy in Ten Dangerous Ideas

The best philosophers are unafraid to follow a line of reasoning wherever it might lead. Sometimes their reasoning leads them to surprising places. This course offers an introduction to philosophy by way of ten arguments that challenge us with bold, and sometimes unsettling, conclusions. Our survey covers philosophers from the Greek, Chinese, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions, as well as contemporary thinkers.

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