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World Philosophy
Course Number(s): 4307G1021
Open to: 9, 10
Credit: 1
Content: This course will introduce, compare, and contrast a basic overview of American,
European, and Eastern ways of thinking from both contemporary and historical contexts. It
will include tenets in ethics as they are derived, perceived, and practiced in different
situations and locations.
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Critical Content/Concept Web
Unit Topic:
Metaphysics
Conceptual Lens: Finding Meaning
Grade:
9th – 12th
Unit Overview
Characteristics of humanity are
considered as students analyze factors
that give meaning to life.
Identity
Human Nature
Unit Topic:
Suggested Time Frame: 6 weeks
Thought
Metaphysics
God
Purpose
Happiness
Good Life
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Metaphysics
Lens: Finding Meaning
Enduring Understandings
1. The concepts of good, evil, conscience, soul, dualism, the
mind, responsibility, and choice shape human nature.
2. Personal identity is a reflection of perception, change,
continuity, physicality, thought, memory, and experiences.
3. Logic, faith, criticism, and experience define humanity’s
understanding of God.
4. The crafting of a good life considers happiness, pleasure,
duty, desires, selfishness, fate, freedom, and choice.
5. Finding purpose may rely on artifacts, function, planning,
intrinsic value, and virtue.
Guiding Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
What is a person?
What is human nature?
What is personal identity?
Is thought requisite to personhood?
What is a meaningful life?
What is the history of humanity’s belief in God?
What is a good life?
What is a purposeful life?
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Metaphysics
Lens: Finding Meaning
Students will know…
1. The ideas of Camus, Descartes, Hegel, Heraclitus, Hobbes,
Hume, Locke, Plato, Reid, Russell, Ryle, Sartre, Thomson,
Tooley, and Turing related to human nature.
2. How Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Bentham, Confucius, Daly,
de Beauvoir, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Mohammed,
Nietzsche, Paley, Pascal, Sartre, the Upanishads, and Voltaire
defined a meaningful life.
Students will be able to…
1. Use literature to enrich meaning.
2. Evaluate the merit of source materials.
3. Employ a variety of sources to extend understanding.
4. Associate and critically examine related source
information and topics.
5. Use charts, graphs, illustrations, notes, outlines, and
summaries to analyze, interpret, and organize ideas,
opinions, readings, and discussions.
6. Make deductions and inferences based on an analysis
of source materials.
7. Analyze multiple interpretations of concepts.
8. Categorize information based on criteria.
9. Identify cause and effect relationships.
10. Utilize problem solving strategies.
11. Offer opinions of beliefs, convictions, and feelings.
12. Enumerate relationships between categories of
information.
13. Participate in cooperative learning groups.
14. Secure factual information relevant to decision making.
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Critical Content/Concept Web
Unit Topic:
Ethics, Sociopolitical Theory
Conceptual Lens:
Grade:
Good, Evil, Justice
9th – 12th
Unit Overview
Origin of Good and Evil
Good
Justice and morality are studied
as students analyze goodness,
social and political policy, and
rights.
Suggested Time Frame: 6 weeks
Unit Topic:
Ethics,
Sociopolitical
Theory
Society
Choice
Rights
Justice
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Ethics, Sociopolitical Theory
Lens: Good, Evil, Justice
Enduring Understandings
1. Ideas associated with change, conscience, evil, goodness,
instinct, obligation, and right and wrong determine morality.
2. Motivations for being good are a result of beliefs about duty,
ecocentrism, equality, forms of life, justice, punishment, and
reward.
3. The function of good is defined through evaluations of
choice, nihilism, obedience, pleasure, poverty, utilitarianism,
and virtue.
4. Justice is based on ideas of compensation distribution,
egalitarianism, libertarianism, meritorianism, natural law,
retribution, and social contracts.
5. The ideas of individual and human rights have evolved from
the following considerations: Autonomy, conflicts, duty,
feminism, individual and group interests, interference,
justification, Marxism, and restorative justice.
6. An evaluation of distribution, forms of government,
multiculturalism, self-interest, and the relationship between
economics and politics are necessary to the construction of a
good political society.
Guiding Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
What are good and evil?
What are the origins of good and evil?
What is goodness?
Why is goodness a choice?
What is a just society?
What is justice?
What are rights?
What is good social policy?
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Ethics, Sociopolitical Theory
Lens: Good, Evil, Justice
Students will know…
1. How Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero Descarte, Donne
Hippias, Hobbes, Kant, King Jr., LaBossiere, Leopold,
Machan, Milgram, Plato, Russell, Singer, and William of
Ockham viewed morality.
2. The sociopolitical theories of Aquinas, Bentham, Bookchin
Dworkin, Fei, Foucault, Gilligan, Havermas Hobbes, Kant,
Kropotkin Kymlicka, Locke, Marx, Macpherson, Mencius, Mill,
Nielsen, Nozick, Plato, Rawls, Rousseau, Schumpeter, Taylor,
Tzu, Wollstonecraft.
Students will be able to…
2. Use literature to enrich meaning.
2. Evaluate the merit of source materials.
3. Employ a variety of sources to extend understanding.
4. Associate and critically examine related source
information and topics.
6. Use charts, graphs, illustrations, notes, outlines, and
summaries to analyze, interpret, and organize ideas,
opinions, readings, and discussions.
6. Make deductions and inferences based on an analysis
of source materials.
7. Analyze multiple interpretations of concepts.
8. Categorize information based on criteria.
9. Identify cause and effect relationships.
10. Utilize problem solving strategies.
11. Offer opinions of beliefs, convictions, and feelings.
12. Enumerate relationships between categories of
information.
13. Participate in cooperative learning groups.
14. Secure factual information relevant to decision making.
15. Create and organize oral, written, and visual
presentations of philosophical information.
16. Employ persuasion and compromise to accommodate
conflict.
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Critical Content/Concept Web
Unit Topic:
Aesthetics, Epistemology, Logic
Conceptual Lens:
Grade:
Perception
9th – 12th
Unit Overview
Perception is considered as
students evaluate artistic
expression and understanding.
Suggested Time Frame: 6 weeks
Knowledge Skills
Critiquing Knowledge
Unit Topic:
Aesthetics,
Epistemology, Logic
Origins of Knowledge
Good and Bad Art
Defining Art and Beauty
Artistic Value
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Logic
Lens: Perception
Enduring Understandings
Guiding Questions
1. Critical thinking is based on deduction and induction, intrinsic
value, identifying fallacies of reason, logic, and reasoned
conclusions, which are skill-based attributes of knowledge.
2. Philosophers critically evaluate human understanding based
on the ideas of justification, realism, relativism, skepticism,
and truth.
3. The origins of knowledge are derivatives of experience,
idealism, mysticism, pragmatism, realism, reason, relativism,
and solipsism.
4. Content, context, criteria, experience, disinterest,
emotionalism, formalism, institutionalism, instrumentalism,
and style shape conceptions of artistic beauty.
5. Art is a function of meaning, purpose, value, and truth.
6. Whether art is considered good or bad depends on several
factors: The artistic process, censorship, critical review, and
propaganda value.
9. What are knowledge skills?
10. How do philosophers think critically about knowledge?
11. What are the origins of knowledge?
12. What are art and beauty?
13. How can you know what is beautiful art?
14. Does art have value, purpose, meaning, and truth?
15. Is there good art and bad art?
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Grade: 9th – 12th
Subject: World Philosophy
Unit: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Logic
Lens: Perception
Students will know…
1. The nature of knowledge based upon readings from Aristotle,
Berkeley, Descartes, Dewey, Dharmakirti, Gettier, Hegel,
Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Mill, Plato, Plontinus, Pyrrho, Russell,
Spinoza, Vasubandhu, and Whorf.
2. How Aristotle, Bell, Dewey, Hume, Kant, Marx, Plato, Tolstoy,
Wilde, and Yu evaluated artistic expression.
Students will be able to…
3. Use literature to enrich meaning.
2. Evaluate the merit of source materials.
3. Employ a variety of sources to extend understanding.
4. Associate and critically examine related source
information and topics.
5. Use charts, graphs, illustrations, notes, outlines, and
summaries to analyze, interpret, and organize ideas,
opinions, readings, and discussions.
6. Make deductions and inferences based on an analysis
of source materials.
7. Analyze multiple interpretations of concepts.
8. Categorize information based on criteria.
9. Identify cause and effect relationships.
10. Utilize problem solving strategies.
11. Offer opinions of beliefs, convictions, and feelings.
12. Enumerate relationships between categories of
information.
13. Participate in cooperative learning groups.
14. Secure factual information relevant to decision making.
15. Create and organize oral, written, and visual
presentations of philosophical information.
17. Employ persuasion and compromise to accommodate
conflict.
17. Write research essays.
18. Use references and citations.
19. Utilize computers, the community, and libraries to
conduct research.
20 Support analysis with evidence.