Students will become acquainted with the main questions, contexts, and issues pertaining to humanity and humans as individual and social beings, in an interdisciplinary and reflective manner that goes beyond the disciplinary boundaries of the humanities. Students will engage in contextual, analytical, and critical evaluation of central issues, challenges, discourses, and questions facing individuals and communities through historical as well as structuralist perspectives. Students will be able to compare/contrast different historical, ethical, and philosophical approaches to these various central human issues and questions. Students will perform critical readings of and discussions on relevant primary sources from various historical, philosophical, and ethical contexts, and various fields of the humanities.
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1.Identify different historical, ethical, and philosophical approaches to the main questions, issues, and challenges humanity and human beings have had to face pertaining to categories such as “survival in nature,” “order/disorder in society,” and “individual wellbeing”;
2.Appraise in an analytical and critical manner how and why these differing historical, ethical, and philosophical approaches have emerged due to different historical contexts;
3.Formulate informed personal, intellectual, and critical viewpoints and ideas on historical and contemporary developments pertaining to humanity and humans.