HUMA 1301 | lcmc

HUMA 1301: Introduction to the Humanities I

This web page will serve as your portal to the class where you can get a copy of the syllabus, assignments, and all of the readings, music, artwork, and so on that make up the content of the course. There is no $200 textbook to buy, but if you are like me, you make just love hard copies enough that you'll incur printing charges (apologies for that).

Important note: Many of the pieces on here are not of my creation (meaning they link you to other sites). Because of this, there may be times that a link dies, collapses, or otherwise becomes unavailable to you. If this happens, drop me a line. Because I like hard copies, even if the site is no longer available or another didn't rise to the challenge and take its place, I'll be able to upload a copy.

Syllabus

Honors Syllabus

Paper #1

Paper #2

Origins and Overview Texts and Materials

Are the humanities even relevant? Every summer with the a new college year looming (if not more often), it seems someone is arguing for the importance of the humanities (and no, it isn't humanities peeps). Last summer "The Atlantic" ran a piece and this summer "The Harvard Business Review" is in the fray. Many exist, but these are indicative.

Atlantic

HBR

Erasmus

Wikipedia introduces Erasmus:

Erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among humanists he enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists".[3] Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will,[4] The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.

Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation, but while he was critical of the abuses within the Catholic Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope, emphasizing a middle way with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, rejecting Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus remained a member of the Roman Catholic Church all his life,[5] remaining committed to reforming the Church and its clerics' abuses from within. He also held to the Catholic doctrine of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favor of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road ("Via Media") approach disappointed, and even angered, scholars in both camps.

Erasmus died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city.[6] A bronze statue of Erasmus was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.

Philosophy Texts and Materials

WIkipedia's introduction to Nietzsche:

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900.

Nietzsche's body of work touched widely on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew early inspiration from figures such as Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Goethe. His writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Some prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; his genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality, and his related theory of master–slave morality; his aesthetic affirmation of existence in response to the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; his notion of the Apollonian and Dionysian; and his characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. In his later work, he developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal return, and became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health.

After his death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became the curator and editor of her brother's manuscripts, reworking Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating his stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism, 20th century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. His thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s, and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th and early-21st century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, psychology, politics, and popular culture