Philosophy of the Person I: Nature, Civilization, Technology and the Good (original) (raw)

Abstract

In this course we study what a person is by examining the nature of civilization. The course prepares students for philosophical research on the themes of the course by engaging key concepts and developing core skills. The course helps students learn to think, speak, read, and write well through concrete engagement with texts and media. There is a special emphasis on classroom participation, regular assignments, and group work. The course consists of four units. In the first unit we examine and begin to question four founding myths of civilization: human helplessness, war, free will, and the fall from perfection. Each of these, or the response to them, is related to law. In the second unit, we focus on how to discover premises or laws of our lives and our civilization, challenge them, and respond to them. These premises form a systematic unity or structure that we can examine, and which actively determines our thought and action. In the third unit, we discuss what particular technologies are by looking at their effects. In particular we look at how their structures necessarily relieve, reconfigure, numb, and control their users. In the fourth and final unit we examine the relationship between technology and civilization, concentrating on the novelty of the concept of technology, and its effect on the concept of justice and the experience of the good. Since nature and civilization are inseparable realities, to get a grip on them we take up the central question of their relationship, and challenge the viability of the distinction between them.

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