Thinking about the End: Philosophy and Death
$ 150.00
Course fee includes access to:
- PDFs of course readings
- Weekly reading guides
- Ten video lectures (approx. 1 hour each)
- Links to other online resources
Description
The one thing most certain about life is also one of the hardest to think about: that it will end. The mind has a tendency to recoil at the very thought of death. Holding this thought in view with clarity, courage, and sensitivity is very difficult. Over the ten weeks of this course, we will try to do just that.
We won’t do this alone. We will grapple with questions and answers offered up by a diverse group of thinkers, from ancient Greece, Rome, India, and China, and from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Among the questions we will ask are: Is death something we have reason to fear? Would an immortal life be desirable? (How) does death give meaning to life? And how might an encounter with death change a person’s perspective on life?
Course content:
Session 1: Epicurus and Lucretius
Session 2: Thomas Nagel, “Death”
Session 3: Excerpts from the Zhuangzi
Session 4: Bernard Williams, “The Makropulos Case”
Session 5: Nick Bostrom, “The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant”
Session 6: The Kaṭha Upaniṣad
Session 7: Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife, Lecture 1
Session 8: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division 2, chapter 1
Session 9: Denise Riley, Time Lived, Without Its Flow, preface and postscript
Session 10: Val Plumwood, The Eye of the Crocodile, chapter 1
