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Listed in: Political Science, as POSC-59
Thomas L. Dumm (Section 01)
(GP, PT) This course is an exploration of the connections between the experience of ordinary life and the judgments humans and citizens make concerning good and bad, and competing goods. We will use as the core text Stanley Cavell’s Cities of Words, which organizes themes concerning moral reasoning around a series of thinkers-Emerson, Aristotle, Plato, Rawls, Nietzsche, Locke, Mill and others-and couples each thinker with a movie from the classic age of American cinema. While we will be relying on Cavell’s study as a primary source, students will also be reading essays by the thinkers Cavell identifies. Each week we will discuss the reading in the first class exclusively, and then screen the film prior to the second class meeting, when we will broaden the discussion. Not open to first-year students. Spring semester. Professor Dumm.