02.001 Global Humanities: Literature, Philosophy, and Ethics

“Philosophy will have conscience of tomorrow, commitment to the future, knowledge of hope, or it will have no more knowledge.”

– Ernst Bloch

Theme: Better worlds, contested futures – “What makes the world better?”

All of us are constantly dreaming. We dream of what we have, what we want, and what we fear. As thinking things, we dwell among potential futures and alternative pasts so that we can make sense of the present. Sometimes these dreams come alive and extend beyond ourselves to encompass friends, family, and society. Yet, no imagined world is neutral – all visions of a “better” world embody and encode specific values, assumptions, exclusions, and fears.

The world of literature is a gateway into these contested imaginations. By reading great works from different times and places, we can look into history’s greatest minds and encounter radically different answers to urgent questions: What counts as better? Better for whom? At what cost? What kinds of lives, environments, technologies, or futures are being made possible – or foreclosed – by the values and ideals that we hold?

This course requires you to consider the friction between competing visions, and you will be asked to make intellectual links: between texts that may initially appear distant from one another, between the texts and your own personal assumptions, and between these the texts and your projects in your STEM and design practice.

We will read classic works of world literature and philosophy from the last two and a half thousand years that imagined radically new worlds and ways of living. Some of these will be utopias, better worlds, some will be dystopias, terrible worlds, and others will be something in between. They invite us to examine how ideas of progress, innovation, justice, efficiency, freedom, and human flourishing are made and contested. There are no easy answers, but your task is to develop the interpretative and ethical capacity to ask: What makes the world better?

Learning objectives

1. Summarise and appraise critically the content of assigned readings.
2. Interpret the various, multi-layered meanings of classic texts by recognizing and assessing previous interpretations and developing new ones.
3. Identify meaningful connections between texts from different periods and places.
4. Effectively communicate arguments in writing and speech.

Measurable outcomes

1. Regular short responses ask students to engage critically with the week’s readings.
2. A final paper tests students’ ability to understand and compare two or more classic texts and to put forward their own synthetic interpretation of these works.
3. A midterm writing exercise assesses students’ ability to understand and creatively interpret the texts studied.
4. Throughout the semester, assignments and class participation (presentation) evaluate students’ ability to communicate their thoughts and arguments in writing and speech.

Course requirements