Philosophy 390, The Meaning of Life,
Fall 2002, 6-9 p.m. Thursdays in Founders Hall 203; CRN 40234; Prof. J.W. Powell, ph. 5753

While is it doubtful that we will work out complete answers to all these questions, I'm convinced we can make progress on all of them. Making progress does not mean we'll meet expectations--it's a mistake, though, and maybe one based on failure of nerve, to regard the questions as impossible or to claim there are no answers. Granted, the questions are hard--you will only frustrate yourself if you do not concentrate and keep clarifying the arguments we'll look at.

Some of you know that I have some particular interests in this philosophical problem. In general I use methods in philosophy which emphasize worrying about whether there are mistakes in setting up philosophical problems. I think the issues we work on often depend on our acceptance of questionable assumptions, or depend on our being too uncritically guided by abstract or simple models, depend on ignoring whether there are examples of the things we suppose we are talking about? In general, I think these methods tend to lead to dissolving philosophical problems rather than solving them. But I like the problem of the meaning of life, and I look forward to thinking through whether the problem can survive application of the methods I usually use.

Texts and Materials: There is no required text to purchase. Reading materials will be put on the Web via Blackboard, handed out in class or placed on reserve in the library. Students are expected to read all these handouts and web-based materials; students who do not read them will show that fact in their essays. The reading load will vary in difficulty and in number of pages per assignment, but you will have assignments at least a week ahead of our discussions of them. Sometimes we'll have to get along with no readings at all. Throughout, we will be emphasizing clarification of issues, description and evaluation of arguments, and we will spend time on methods early on. Finally, the text and materials are important, but reading them is not a substitute for attending class--the crucial part of this course is what happens in the classroom in lecture and discussion, and in your writing. Don't skip class. This is not a course you may take by remote control over the Internet or by doing the readings and thinking in a solitary way.

Grading: There will be five essay assignments, one of which may be met by substituting a class presentation. On the second (3 Sep), fifth (24 Sep), eighth (17 Oct), twelfth (14 Nov), and fourteenth (5 Dec) class meetings I will distribute three or more questions. Each student will choose one of the three and write a 1200-1700 word essay due at the beginning of class the following week. There will be no makeup assignments (presentations to the class may not be used to make up missed assignments). That is, you must do a class presentation before you skip an essay assignment. Presentations to the class may be on any relevant topic, but must be proposed and approved at least a week ahead. All essays will be made available to all the class, preferably by e-mail. I'll hand out and discuss my grading criteria with the first assignment. Grades will be the average of your grades on essays (and the presentation if you do one), with one essay dropped if your grades are improving at the end. Outstanding discussion in class or via e-mail may result in raising your grade one third of one letter, i.e. from a B- to a B or from a B+ to an A-. Essay assignments toward the end of the course may include a chance for you to write your own question. Students who miss classes are responsible to get notes from other students and to come to my office hours to get handouts. I do not give Incompletes.

The essays: Most questions will be in the form of a quote containing an argument on our current topics. Unless you have a better idea, I recommend essays use a three-part structure, as follows: I. describe the argument in the quote including discussion and clarification of the issue to which it is addressed; II. tell what you think the speaker should have said and provide support; III. give the best objections to your own views and respond thoughtfully to them. The length, fifteen hundred words, is roughly six or seven pages of traditionally-typed, double-spaced text. Note, however, that the page on goals attached to this syllabus is 800 words, about half the length of your essays (so, you can squeeze 1500 words onto two pages by using small margins and fonts). When you submit your essays by e-mail, paste your essays into the message rather than send attachments. Be sure to leave me margins for comments if you have to submit hard copies. Do not double-space or waste paper on a separate title page or folder.

Schedule: (This is really tentative, it will be revised as we go; students will help choose later topics.)

Weeks Topics and readings . Essay assignments (weeks two, five, eight, twelve, and fifteen)

1. Intro and methods; Meaning as moral worth; Describing arguments, clarifying issues; Plato's Apology. Tobias Wolff, "Bullet in the Brain."

2. The Meaning of Life is to be found via religious faith, simplicity, work. Leo Tolstoy's A Confession. First essay assignment (due via e-mail before beginning of third class).

3. Faith, simplicity, work, continued. Tolstoy, continued. His basic argument, its strengths and weaknesses. Foreshadowing other answers (science takes a hands-off approach, philosophers find the whole thing incomprehensible, rationality is in over its head with the question, nihilism as a threat). (1st essay due.)

4. No Meaning of Life is to be found, but each individual must construct her/his own meaning. Sartre, from "Existentialism is a Humanism;" Stephen King, "All That You Love Will Be Taken Away;" Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. Sartre's argument, comparison and contrast with Tolstoy, and objections; literature versus philosophy.

5. Life is meaningless and all proposed answers to the question are only attempts to fool ourselves. Freud, excerpts, various sources; Nihilism in Tolstoy, Sartre, McGuane (from Nobody's Angel). Nihilism in science. Kurt Baier, "The Meaning of Life."
6. Whatever makes us happy is meaningful. William James, from Talks to Teachers. Aristotle, from the Nichochamean Ethics. Second essay assignment.

7. Problems with happiness: William Gass, "The Obliging Stranger." Attacks on Mill's and Aristotle's utilitarianism. (2nd essay due.)

8. Eastern and other traditions: Searching for a meaning blinds us to the meanings; Chuang Tzu, from The Inner Chapters; Lars Hertzberg, "Religion without doctrine or mysticism or belief." Lao Tsu and commentators on what cannot be spoken; Delusion vs. Truth in Transfiguring the Commonplace. Going without the question after you've worked hard on it.

9. Literary Sources: "Open your eyes." Wordsworth's "spots of time": "Now We Are Six," "Intimations of Immortality," "The Elfin Pinnace." Crawdad Nelson, "Salmon As a Working Man." Beckett, Waiting For Godot.Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. Third essay assignment.

10. Literary Sources Continued: Shakespeare's Hamlet. Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. The book of Ecclesiastes. (3rd essay due.)

11. Significance and the feeling of significance. William James, on mystical conversions, from The Varieties of Religious Experience. Wittgenstein's lecture on ethics.

12. There are problems with the question. Freud, "Moses and Monotheism," John Wisdom, "Gods" and "On The Questions of the Meaning of Life." A. J. Ayer, from The Meaning of Life. Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Lecture on Ethics." Fourth essay assignment.

13. Rehabilitating the question (if we can). We are on our own for this part. (4th essay due. Note that next week is Thanksgiving recess, no meeting.)

14. Synthesizing and responding to what we have done. Fifth (final) essay assignment.

15. Evaluating our final essays

16. (This is finals week. No meeting.)

On goals: The University and the College of Arts and Humanities asks faculty to review courses in the light of General Education Goals. Some of the adopted goals turn out to fit or even to be shaping ideas for this course. Indeed, I have many moments where I think the philosophy department is the only place on campus competent to address them; here they are.

--We will develop an understanding of how humanistic approaches are important to an overall understanding of human experience. For instance, a scientist may work away at discovery of the causes of AIDS or homosexuality or sexual violence, but it is a philosopher, working within the humanities, who works to make us aware of what counts as a cause, how our concept of cause is structured. We will see many instances of these distinctions in this course.

--We will understand how scholarly questions and writing in the humanities are different from scholarship in other fields, and how those other fields may connect with philosophical or other humanistic scholarship. For instance, we are going to read works about sex and love by some long-dead philosophers and then point out how our interest in their arguments and issues is different from the interest of a historian.

--We will become able to question the relationships between generalizations and examples, especially in connection with our work on general philosophical questions. For example, our work on the question of what is natural and unnatural in sex will first concentrate on putting together possible answers, but then will shift to the question of how general we are requiring each answer to be, and what kinds of assumptions underlie those answers. Understanding the status of exceptions in our work is a part of understanding what philosophy is. General claims in philosophy have to be argued for in ways which are not addressed by, say, anthropologists.

--We will be working consistently through the semester to identify our own resources for providing good answers to the philosophical problems. That is, we are not going to limit our possible answers to those provided by dead white European males--instead we will stretch to imagine other alternatives. We will regard ourselves and our own imaginations as important resources in our work.

--We will increase our awareness of, and come to terms with, the environment of ideas around us which shapes possibilities we might otherwise take for granted. We will also look in the mirror--note our own reactions to this environment of ideas. For instance, in our work on the question of whether love is a lie, we will read works by people who disagree with each other profoundly, and our reactions of agreement and disagreement, or of scorn or admiration, our wanting the answer to turn out one way rather than another, may help or hinder our ability to think independently about the question.

There are some by-the-way parts of meeting those goals. Accordingly, we are going to also work on the following:

--We will learn the lingo. We will learn the vocabulary of argument, and clarify those terms we use everyday which are philosophically loaded. Philosophy is one place where clarity of language is absolutely necessary, and our work to show what words do and how they mark distinctions from each other helps to clarify how crucial clear thinking, writing, and speaking are to the humanities.

--We will be active. This does not mean students have to talk out every class, but it means passivity and memorization which might work in other disciplines don't here. Worse, passivity shows you don't get it. We will worry and take the stakes seriously and find cause for enthusiasm and feel attacked and feel as though what we have to say on these matters, matters.

--We will raise our standards of discussion. We will pay attention to how arguments fail and how they could be made better. We will watch ourselves fail and do better. We will become enlightened about the possibilities of doing better and failing. We will become more demanding--this comes with being educated.

--We will keep paying attention to how people have been unfairly robbed of their voices by others with more power. We do this in order to take arguments seriously no matter who gives them voice. We will insist that arguments work not because the arguer has the right number of limbs, the right skin color or sexual plumbing or money, but because they are good arguments. We will note arguments which have been discounted unfairly because they came from women or minorities or otherwise marginalized people.

I have been thinking recently about what higher education is for. I've written more on this subject and published an article I'll be glad to share if you ask.