Intellectual Inquiry Course Offerings for Spring 2011
INQ 120 Living an Examined Life
INQ 120A and 120B Civic Engagement. The respective roles of citizens and their
governments have been philosophic, ethical, and practical concerns in the West since the
Greeks. Students will read sources dealing with the responsibility of citizens to obey, sacrifice,
criticize, and serve. The course will emphasize the value contradictions of the “virtue” and
“results” civic traditions. Students will read, discuss, research, and write about citizenship in
the past and today. Perhaps the chief question that permeates the literature on citizenship is
whether the molding of virtuous civic character is the responsibility of government, the
community, the individual, or whether public judgments concerning civic virtue have any place
in a liberal society at all. Should government be judged by its statecraft, measured by the
beneficial results provided to individuals, or by what some call soulcraft, measured by the
growth in virtue of its citizens? Instructor: CW Hill.
INQ 120AA, 120BB, and 120II Marx’s Philosophical Search for the Good Life in Modern
Societies. What is the good life? How can we live the most meaningful life? How can we fulfill
our highest potentials? For Karl Marx our ability to answer these questions has a direct
bearing on our ability to understand ourselves as participants in a shared, social world with
others. People fulfill and realize their humanity through meaningful work or creative activity,
which allows them to contribute to a wider community. According to Marx, in capitalist
societies most people are denied such a work activity, which leads to their dehumanization and
alienation from their social world. Marx proposed a system of production, which is based on
cooperation rather than acquisitiveness and self-interest to counter the negative consequences
of capitalism. We will follow the early and late Marx’s search for the good life to get a deeper
understanding of key concepts coined by him, such as ideology, alienation, exploitation,
exchange- and use-value and class antagonisms. Instructor: Leeb.
INQ 120C Spinoza: The Ethics of Experimentation. This course understands Spinoza’s
ethics as an “experimentalism.” Despite the fact that Spinoza died over 300 years ago, his
writings remain remarkably prescient for a wide variety of disciplines from religion to
neuroscience. The source of this prescience, however, comes from Spinoza’s recasting ethical
theory in terms of how we might live rather than in terms of how we should live. Freedom in
every aspect of life from the personal to the political to the religious is dependent on a
particular way of engaging with the world. This engagement takes the form of an experiment to
see if what we engage with results in an increase or a decrease in our capacity to affect and be
affected by the world. True freedom, for Spinoza, lies in increasing our capacities. Instructor:
Adkins.
INQ 120CC Learning Liberation. Students will use a social science / education perspective
to analyze the American educational system, specifically evaluating how democratic citizenship
is facilitated or impaired by students' educational experiences. Reading topics will include
social justice, U.S. educational policy, democratic principles, and learning theory. Written and
oral assignments will ask students to make connections between the course materials and
their own experiences with an emphasis on how they might choose to interact with the
educational system in the future. Instructor: Stoneman
INQ 120D The Meaning of Life. What is the meaning of life? In order to answer this
question, one must ask many others; for example, why are we here? Who am I? What is the
nature of reality and the universe? How can I find happiness? What is the truth? What is my
purpose? In this course, students will read multiple sources on a wide range of topics that
attempt to address these “big” questions in life, in a search for meaning and purpose. The
course will move from a broad perspective of historical solutions to these problems (e.g.,
religious, philosophical, social, economical, political) to more contemporary approaches (e.g.,
physics, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience) in an effort to understand “what is the
meaning of life?” Ultimately, the course will focus on how the science of psychology can inform
our understanding of how we come to define our own life’s purpose. While there is admittedly
no one answer to this question, the goal of this course is to use reading and writing along with
open debate and discussions to help students critically assess different value systems as well
as to evaluate/reevaluate their own value system. Instructor: Buchholz.
INQ 120DD and 120FF Leisure & Pleasure in Greece and Rome
How the Ancient Greeks and Romans spent their leisure time and engaged in entertainment
can tell us much about the values they had, not only about leisure and entertainment, but also
about society and culture. This class will investigate several forms of Greek and Roman
entertainment--sports, food and dining, and sex--in order to consider these questions: How did
living a good life connect to pleasure and entertainment? What can we learn about value
systems from Greek and Roman leisure activities? And how do the insights we gain from
studying these ancient societies help us to understand how our own values shape and are
shaped by our choices of entertainment? Specific areas of inquiry include the ethics of combat
sports and killing for entertainment, how social rank and/or gender affects access to leisure,
and the multiple conceptions of sexuality. Instructor: DeVries
INQ 120E In Socrates’ Footsteps: The Philosophical Quest for Right and Wrong. How
should I live? What is the good life? How can I gain my highest potential? These questions were
for Socrates the most important and pressing questions human beings can ask -- and must ask –
as he believed “the unexamined life is not worth living.” By following in Socrates’ footsteps, we
will embark on the philosophical quest to grasp the truth about right and wrong. This means
that we will strive to move beyond popular opinions about the good life, which we too commonly
accept without much thought, and toward knowledge grounded in reasons and evidence.
Instructor: Vilhauer.
INQ 120F Communication in Leadership. An investigation of the traits and behaviors of
effective, ethical leadership and exploration of how one can inspire a values-based organization
with different channels of communication (verbal, non-verbal, written, public, and private). In
this sense, an organization is a “social unit of people, systematically arranged to meet a need or
to pursue a goal.” The theories of leadership and ethics will be explored, and practical
applications (teamwork, oral presentations, writing persuasively) will be utilized to enhance
communication and leadership skill development. All topics discussed have a strong underlying
ethical component. To accentuate this, ethical leadership will be further analyzed through a
unique collection of essays by philosophers, leadership scholars and management theorists.
Students will analyze how an increased understanding of communication enhances their
confidence and self-image as effective leaders. Instructor: Smith.
INQ 120G Love Religions: Mysticism and Morality in the World’s Religions. This course will
examine some of the ways major religious mystical traditions have thought about love, both as
a way of describing the divine, but also as a way to imagine embodying the divine through
examined moral living in the world. We will limit ourselves generally to reading introductory
essays about Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist/Confucian theories of love and associated moral
practices as well as essays about Jewish, Christian and Islamic theories and practices. We will
also read limited selections of primary texts from Asia and from the Abrahamic traditions. In
addition to text-critical work, we will examine cultural expressions around the world of love in
action, of divine love as a mode leading an examined moral human life. Instructor: Rothgery
INQ 120GG The Sectional Crisis and Civil War
For generations of Americans, the paradox of slavery and freedom existed as a daily reminder
of the inherent flaw within the fabric of American society. Could or should this country
endure, as Lincoln asked, “half slave and half free?” In the decades between the American
Revolution and the Civil War, the moral debate over slavery, the constitution and States Rights
divided this national like no other topic in our country’s history. Instructor: M.Miller
INQ 120I Freedom, Ethics, and the Good Life: Do We Decide? This course will explore the
possibility of leading an ethical life and its relationship to a life lived well, “the good life.” This will
be accomplished through an investigation of one of the most interesting and central
philosophical and religious issues, the problem of free will and its relation to moral responsibility.
Topics addressed will include a history of the problem of free will, determinism, freedom, values,
responsibility, skepticism, predestination, the doctrine of karma, reincarnation, and more. The
course material will include readings in western and eastern philosophical and theological
thought—ancient and contemporary, psychology, and cognitive science. Instructor: Kelly.
INQ 120II Marx’s Philosophical Search for the Good Life in Modern Societies. What is the
good life? How can we live the most meaningful life? How can we fulfill our highest potentials?
For Karl Marx our ability to answer these questions has a direct bearing on our ability to
understand ourselves as participants in a shared, social world with others. People fulfill and
realize their humanity through meaningful work or creative activity, which allows them to
contribute to a wider community. According to Marx, in capitalist societies most people are
denied such a work activity, which leads to their dehumanization and alienation from their
social world. Marx proposed a system of production, which is based on cooperation rather than
acquisitiveness and self-interest to counter the negative consequences of capitalism. We will
follow the early and late Marx’s search for the good life to get a deeper understanding of key
concepts coined by him, such as ideology, alienation, exploitation, exchange- and use-value
and class antagonisms. Instructor: Leeb.
INQ 120J Business Ethics: In Absentia or In Repair? This course examines business ethics
from a historical and prospective basis. Students will be challenged to evaluate their own view of
business ethics and reflect on how that preconception has changed by the end of the course. We
will establish what is meant by ethics in the business community, review some examples of
ethics violations and what the business world is doing to address the concerns that those ethics
breaches have uncovered. Throughout the course we will also look at examples of companies that
are doing things the ethical way, and how they should be emulated. We will analyze case studies,
topical readings, films and video clips to formulate our base of understanding, and reflect on that
knowledge in written papers and in oral debate. Instructor: Shaff
INQ 120K Happiness and Goodness. This course explores the relation between living a happy
life and leading a morally good life. We will use ancient and modern classics to identify
conceptions of happiness ranging from the pursuit of pleasure to spiritual fulfillment, as well as
different ways of conceiving moral goodness. Some of these deal with discerning and following
our own interests and others with our relations to others and the bonds of duty that preserve
those relations. By examining the traditions of ethical thought that embody these views and
debating their practical applications we can hope to arrive at a better understanding of the
grounds for our moral judgments. Instructor: Zorn.
INQ 120M Love Religions: Mysticism and Morality in the World’s Religions. This course
will examine some of the ways major religious mystical traditions have thought about love,
both as a way of describing the divine, but also as a way to imagine embodying the divine
through examined moral living in the world. We will limit ourselves generally to reading
introductory essays about Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist/Confucian theories of love and
associated moral practices as well as essays about Jewish, Christian and Islamic theories and
practices. We will also read limited selections of primary texts from Asia and from the
Abrahamic traditions. In addition to text-critical work, we will examine cultural expressions
around the world of love in action, of divine love as a mode leading an examined moral human
life. Instructor: M.Larson-Harris
INQ 120N In Socrates’ Footsteps: The Philosophical Quest for Right and Wrong. How
should I live? What is the good life? How can I gain my highest potential? These questions were
for Socrates the most important and pressing questions human beings can ask -- and must ask –
as he believed “the unexamined life is not worth living.” By following in Socrates’ footsteps, we
will embark on the philosophical quest to grasp the truth about right and wrong. This means
that we will strive to move beyond popular opinions about the good life, which we too commonly
accept without much thought, and toward knowledge grounded in reasons and evidence.
Instructor: Vilhauer.
INQ 120O Character at Crossroads: Literature and the Ethical Dilemma. A story exists
because at some point a decision is made. Something must be done, and consequences will, like
it or not, follow. In the stories of our own lives, similar rules apply. How then can we use our
understanding of literature to prepare us to face the transformative decisions of our lives? How
will we consider consequences? Where might we find potential meanings? And what ultimately
do we owe to each other, ourselves, and the world ? Instructor. M. Hill.
INQ 120P Do Unto Others: An Anthropology of Service. “Service to others” is a
fundamental concept in all human societies. What drives the human desire to serve? This
course focuses on understanding varying definitions of service by investigating the historical,
economic, and social motivations underlying them. To further understand motivation for
service, we’ll read notable ethnographic and biographical depictions of service, analyze
theoretical positions speaking both for and against attempts to improve social welfare, and
engage in a process of self-reflection about our own motivations for service. In order to facilitate
self-discovery, this course requires students to engage in service experiences of their choosing.
6 hours of required service. Instructor: Morris.
INQ 120Q Ethical Traditions. This course will offer a survey of the great ethical thinkers in
a historical context. We will ask the basic questions of human ethical behavior, starting from
"What is a good life?" We will study how such questions and answers have changed over time,
and how different cultures have dealt with them. A particular focus will be on how western
Christianity has addressed these questions in a rapidly changing world. Instructor:
Willingham
INQ 120R Sustainability and Land Ethic
Sustainable management of the earth’s natural resources requires finding a balance between
the often competing goals of environmental integrity, economic prosperity, and social equity.
Our priorities, and the trade-offs that we must necessarily make (both individually and as a
society), ultimately influence our ability to live the “good life” -- however you may choose to
define it. This course will explore different conceptions of the relationship between human
society and the natural world to address the question of whether a “good life” can also be
sustainable. Instructor: O’Neill
INQ 120S Theologians Under Hitler: Confusion, Collaboration, Resistance. In this course,
we will study the various stances adopted by Protestant theologians to the rise of Adolph Hitler
with his Nazi conception of the ‘good’ life, making note of concurrent responses by Catholic and
Jewish theologians. We will explore how theologians, with their own ideas of the ‘good’ life,’
were perplexed, engaged, enthralled, and/or alarmed and motivated to resistance by Hitlerism.
We will role play the parts orally of these theologians and engage in debate with others about
how Christians in Germany of the 1930s should take Hitler and his movement. We will write a
research paper on a theologian of our choice from this period, exploring his stance in depth
and give an oral presentation on it to the class. Finally, we will generalize from this study to
reflect on theological conceptions of the good life and how they ought to intersect with other
conceptions. Instructor: Hinlicky.
INQ 120T Learning Liberation. . Students will use a social science / education perspective
to analyze the American educational system, specifically evaluating how democratic citizenship
is facilitated or impaired by students' educational experiences. Reading topics will include
social justice, U.S. educational policy, democratic principles, and learning theory. Written and
oral assignments will ask students to make connections between the course materials and
their own experiences with an emphasis on how they might choose to interact with the
educational system in the future. Instructor: Stoneman
INQ 120U Exploring Ethics in Communication. This course will begin with an examination
of some major theorists in normative ethics. We will read selections of important works from
Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and Jürgen
Habermas. Additionally, we will read contemporary sources in feminist and pragmatic ethics.
We will then take our knowledge of moral decision-making and begin exploring contemporary
topics in media and communication ethics. These shall include the topics of free speech, public
speaking, political communication and advertising, public relations, blogging, journalism,
photo manipulation, and organizational communication. Through our examination of these
ethical issues, we will continue to explore the uses and limits of the theories analyzed at the
beginning of this course. Students will determine for themselves which ethical system, if any,
largely captures what we think ought to be included in our concept of the person who lives and
communicates with integrity. We will explore the following questions: How ought we to play our
part in all of the interactions we are party to? How should the media cover issues of a sensitive
or potentially harmful nature? How do new technologies and practices impact the ethical
situations in communication? How do our interactions with others reflect and shape who we
truly are? Instructor: Cooper.
INQ 120V Landscapes of Evil in Literature of the Fantastic. Both fantasy and science
fiction can tell us much about the ways in which cultures view good and evil. Perhaps this is
because the origins of both genres can be traced to myths, folktales, allegories, and other
literature which has been used to transmit both cultural values and theological principles. In
this course, we will read and analyze examples of literature of the fantastic, with a focus on the
following questions: In what ways have human cultures defined, located, and rationalized evil?
How have they suggested that the various forms of evil should be met and “remedied”? In the
process of answering these questions, students will develop and articulate their own definitions
of evil and recommendations for dealing with it in their lives and in our contemporary culture.
Instructor: D. Selby.
INQ 120W Human/Nature: Person, Place, Story. “Human versus nature”: this is the
traditional formulation of one of the central themes addressed in literary works. The phrasing
suggests that the essential character of the relationship between human beings and the
natural world is one of conflict. But is the shorthand “human versus nature” an accurate
representation of all the ways writers have understood and represented their own and others’
relationship to nature? We will read various “nature writers” and philosophers whose texts
chronicle and contemplate different human/nature relationships in order to reflect on our own
beliefs and ideas about place, nature, and environment. What do we mean by “nature”? Is it
possible for humans to live in concert with the natural world, or is conflict inevitable? What
values should guide our relationship with the world around us, and what role do story and
symbol play in exploring, cataloging and re(creating) our changing relationships with the
natural world? Instructor: McGlaun.
INQ 120Y and 120Z The Art of Madness: Mental Illness in Life and Literature. This
course explores the concept of madness as it has been historically deployed from the Early
Modern Period to the present day allowing us to see how different philosophical and religious
traditions have discussed the issue of mental illness. By looking at the ways madness has
been understood throughout history, students will investigate the societal marginalization of
those deemed mentally unsound, deviant, abnormal, etc. By exploring the construction of
madness and deviance we also question our own conceptions of normalcy and raise questions
of how an ethical society deals with this issue. The course will further ask students to
investigate their own understandings of madness and insanity as they relate to broader ethical,
philosophical and religious approaches to madness across different historical periods. We will
look at a wide variety of representations that suggest a philosophical approach to madness
demonstrating this term’s engagement with larger social issues as a reflection and critique of
social injustice. Instructor: McGraw.