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Zee R Perry

Metaphysics of Physical Quantities, Laws of Nature, and Space-time
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Texts and Ideas:

What is a good human life?

Course Description:

The main aims of this course are as follows:

What does it mean to be a human being? And how does one live a good human life? These are questions that get at the core of the human condition, and have been addressed, more or less explicitly, in many of the arts, humanities, and even the sciences. This class will serve as a means for students to explore these questions and various attempts to answer them. We will be reading and discussing important works of literature and philosophy from the ancient world up to the present that speak to these questions in some way or another.

These will include philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Marx and Engels, Frederick Douglass, as well as works of literature by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut, Camus, Kafka, and more. In some of these works, our questions are tackled in a fairly straightforward manner; in others, they are addressed more indirectly, through the presentation of a particular way of life or individual lived experiences. We will be examining these writings with the goal of broadening and deepening our understanding of possible answers to our questions in the hope that this will bring us closer to answering them for ourselves.

Instructor: Dr. Zee R Perry, Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice in Philosophy, NYU Shanghai

Email Address: zee.perry@nyu.edu

Work Phone Number: +86 16621668372

Office Location:  (currently remote) 1555 Century Avenue, Office 1256 (12th floor)

Office Hours: (currently remote) Friday 9:45 – 11:00am or by appointment

Class Meeting Location:  (currently remote)

Class Meeting Times: M/W 9:45 – 11:00am

Teaching Assistant: (none!)

Recitations: (none!)

Syllabus

PDF Version

 

Class Schedule

Week/Date Topic and Reading Assignments
Week 1 – 8/30 and 9/1
(Self Report Week 1)		 Introduction, Logistics              (Class Recording)

Plato, The Apology                  (Class Recording)

 None
Week 2 – 9/6 and 9/8
(Self Report Week 2)		 Plato, Crito                                (Class Recording)

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (selections)     (Class Recording)

 None
Week 3 – 9/13 and 9/15
(Self Report Week 3)		 Plato, Symposium 172a-198a (to the end of Agathon’s speech)     (Class Recording)

Plato, Symposium 198a-end    (Class Recording)

 None
Week 4 – 9/22
(Self Report Week 4)		 (Class Recording)
Montaigne “Of Friendship”, and “Of Cannibals”;(Optional - “That to study philosophy is to learn to die”,  Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Ibn Sina –The Book of Healing (selections) ‘Floating Man’)		 Assigned 9/20: First Paper

(First Paper Prompt)

(RECORDING) Explaining the Paper Prompt & Standards)
Week 5 – 9/27 and 9/29 Shakespeare, The Tempest (Additional Resources on Brightspace)     (Class Recording)

Shakespeare, The Tempest (continued)   (Class Recording)

 Due 9/30: First Paper

Assigned 10/1: Second paper

(Second Paper Prompt)
Week 6 – 10/11 and 10/13

(Self-Reports on Brightspace)

 Bertrold Brecht – The Life of Galileo (Scientific and Historical Background)   (Class Recording)

Bertrold Brecht – The Life of Galileo (Philosophical and Political Significance)    (Class Recording)

 Due 10/13: Second Paper
Week 7 – 10/18 and 10/20
(no Self-Report this week)		 Kant ‘An answer to the question: what is enlightenment?’ &  Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto  (Class Recording)

Midterm Exam Review, Midterm Exam becomes available 10/22  (Review Session Recording)

 Midterm Exam starts on 10/22
Week 8 – 10/25 and 10/27
(Self-Report on Brightspace)		 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, chapters 1-5  (Class Recording)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, chapters 6-11  (Class Recording)

 None
Week 9 – 11/1 and 11/3
(Self-Report on Brightspace)		 Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapters 1-10  (Class Recording)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapters 11-20   (Class Recording)

 None
Week 10 – 11/8 and 11/10
(Self-Report on Brightspace)		 Tolstoy, Master and Man   (Class Recording)

Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own, chapters 1-3   (Class Recording)

 Assigned 11/10: Third Paper
Week 11 – 11/15 and 11/17
(Self-Report on Brightspace)		 A room of one’s own, chapters 3-6  (Class Recording)

Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, chapters 1-8  (Class Recording)

 None
Week 12 – 11/22 and 11/24 Survival in Auschwitz, chapters 9-16   (Class Recording)

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, chapters 1-66    (Class Recording)

 Due 11/26: Third Paper
Week 13 – 11/29 and 12/1
(Self-Report on Brightspace)		 Cat’s Cradle, chapters 66-127   (Class Recording)

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, An Absurd Reasoning   (Class Recording)

 Assigned 12/1: Fourth Paper
Week 14 – 12/6 and 12/8
(No more Self-Reports!)		 Sisyphus continued, The Absurd Man, Absurd Creation, The Myth of Sisyphus   (Class Recording)

Semester Review, Final Exam Discussion, Feedback

 Due 12/14: Fourth Paper

 

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