AP/HUMA 3021 6.00
Exegesis in Select Philosophical Texts
In this course we examine the relationships among two sets of discourses: philosophy, religion, and literature, on the one hand; faith, reason, and atheism, on the other hand. We do so in order to assess the thesis that the apparently disparate approaches taken by these discourses to conceiving the breadth and diversity of human expression are connected by their commitment to the inviolable singularity of both self and other – to the idea that the self has no existence outside the other and thus no existence outside the values of diversity and inclusiveness of the other. But does this mean in turn that the self, in order to be itself, must, from the beginning, be other than itself? Does it mean that philosophy has a faithful core? Does it mean that faith has a self-critical rationality? Does it mean that atheism rests on – begins and ends with – a faith? Does it mean that literature is equally rational and faithful? Overall, the course addresses itself to the question of whether a focus on the idea that the self’s inviolable singularity is constituted by and inseparable from the other and, indeed, from its own otherness, provides a humanistic basis, a humanistic methodology, for thinking about that which constitutes both single individuality and the connections among individuals – a basis and a methodology for working through our multiple, and often conflictual, relationships.