Pitzer First Year Seminar #03 The Examined Life
----Fall 2009------TTh 2:45-4:00---Location: BD 208 -----
Instructor:	Brian Keeley, Pitzer College
Office:	Broad Hall 107
Office Hours:	T: 10:00-11:00, Th: 5:30-6:30, and by appointment
Email:	brian_keeley@pitzer.edu
Phone:	74235
Course Website:	“http://mugwump.pitzer.edu/~bkeeley/class/fys/fall09/fys_fall09.htm”
Sakai Site:	“http://sakai.claremont.edu”

Summary: Western Philosophy’s first hero, Socrates of Ancient Athens, is reputed to have claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Of course, talking about such “examination” is easier than actually doing it. In this seminar, we will conduct a Socratic examination of our own lives by reading about and writing about other such examinations. In doing so, we’ll consider a number of classic and contemporary philosophical and popular texts (as well as a few films). All these works contain advice on how (and why and whether) to live an intellectually-engaged life and we will examine them to extract such wisdom as we can find there and apply to our own lives.

Required Texts:

The Trial and Death of Socrates (3rd Edition) by Plato (Author), John M. Cooper (Translator), G. M. A. Grube (Translator, Ed.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Robert Pirsig,
The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
Rainer Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
St. Exupery The Little Prince
Hoffman, The Tao of Pooh
Kierkegaard, The Present Age
Some readings on Sakai

Assessment: In-class participation (10%) + Initial paper, 3 pgs (5%) + 2^nd paper, 4 pgs (20%) + 3^rd paper, 6 pgs (20%) + Movie & Existentialism reflections (20%) + research paper, 12 pgs (25%)

	Topic	Reading	Assignment/Film
Week 1	Introduction
T 09/01	Introduction to the class	Nagel, “Death” (Sakai)
Th 09/03	Death: The High Cost of Living	Nagel, “Death” (continued)
Week 2	Socrates
Tuesday	Trial…	Euthyphro	*The Cruise*
Thursday		None	Paper #1 due
Week 3
Tuesday	…and…	Apology
Thursday	…Death of Socrates	Crito, Phaedo
Week 4	Kerouac
Tuesday	After On the Road	The Dharma Bums (1-120)	*Shortcut to Nirvana*
Thursday	Writing Center Tour and External Studies visit	None
Week 5
Tuesday	Discussion & poetry day (From Japhy Ryder and Ike O'Shay)	none (Gary Snyder & Mike McClure poems to be read in class)	Paper #2 due
Thursday		The Dharma Bums (120-244)
Week 6		Pirsig
Tuesday	Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance	ZaMM, Part 1 & 2	*My Dinner with Andre*
Thursday	ZaMM	ZaMM, Part 3
Week 7
Tuesday	ZaMM	ZaMM, Part 4
Thursday	ZaMM	Discussion continued
Week 8
Tuesday	NO CLASS (Fall Break)
Thursday	Discussion Day	none	*How to Draw a Bunny*
Week 9		Three Books in Two Weeks
Tuesday		St. Exupery, The Little Prince	Paper #3 due
Thursday		Hoffman, The Tao of Pooh
Week 10
Tuesday		Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Thursday	continuing	Discussion continued	*The examined life*
Week 11		Existentialism & The Internet
Tuesday	Camus	The Myth of Sisyphus (sakai) Sartre, “Existentialism” (sakai)
Thursday	Nagel, again	“The Absurd” (sakai)
Week 12
Tuesday	Kierkegaard	The Present Age (first 2/3rds)
Thursday		(read last 1/3)
Week 13
Tuesday	Dreyfus	“Nihilism on the Information Highway” (sakai)
Thursday	No CLASS	Turkey Day
Week 14
Tuesday	continuing	Discussion continued
Thursday	TBA	TBA	Research paper drafts due
Week 15
Tuesday	TBA	TBA
Thursday	TBA	TBA
Finals			Final research paper due 5pm, Tues, 15 December