Philosophy and Literature: East and West
Course Description and Syllabus
Texts: Mack, et. al. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.
Welcome!
Course Description:
This one-semester honors course serves two purposes: (1) as a general introduction to the definition, branches, principles and
practice of Philosophy; and (2) as a survey of classic world texts that address major philosophical issues. The reading list, for the sake
of economy, is structured around art and religion—two philosophic fields that are in historic transition at this time. The course format
will consist of writing and discussion of how texts (often ancient) analyze and represent the aesthetic and religious issues that we face.
A Word on Writing
A primary aim of the course is to develop college-level writing skill. To that end, we will write six to ten essays (5-7 pp) and a
longer research paper (15-20 pp), all submitted on Buzzword. Discussion topics will be drawn directly from the readings; writing
topics will be in an open forum of collaboration, and will serve as regular focal points for individual commentary. Students can expect
their essays to be projected on the SmartBoard for collaborative review, discussion, and instruction.
History and the Concepts of East and West
The selection of texts for any course is a difficult matter, for no other reason than time: there is one semester to present the
texts. Over the years I have chosen selected representative texts from the Western and Asian traditions in-particular, as they have
served as those most influential on those two great traditions; and in fact, the history of the world to this date has been driven largely
by these two traditions. However history is clearly in a critical transition point, I have chosen to expand the scope of the course to
include some very significant texts from Russia, Japan, the Middle East, and the Africa. As we find ourselves pulled together by
technology and trade, we also are being pulled apart by countering social and religious forces. It is the purpose of the course and its
readings to affirm our connectedness, while acknowledging the forces that threaten it. The selection of The Norton Anthology of
World Masterpieces marks therefore a transition point in the history of the course, and permits me to expand it to a wider array of
texts that may not fall neatly into the Western and Eastern categories. The scope of the text also gives me the opportunity to “flex” the
curriculum to follow a line of thought (as often occurs) that the class has taken. We cannot “cover” the book in one semester, let alone
a year. It is our resource for study, an “open” book for us to choose from as we will.
The Structure of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces
Parts and Sweeps (see Contents) that permit comparison.
The texts are organized into large chronological periods (parts)
Parts are subdivided into periods (sweeps) that represent major literary and philosophical traditions.
Maps, Timelines, and Glossaries
Maps reinforce our sense of geographic place.
Timelines reinforce historical connections.
Pronouncing glossaries help us pronounce words in unfamiliar languages.
On the History of the Course
The first form of this course in Philosophy began in 1973, when I began teaching a Senior Honors ten-week mini-course at
Commack High School in Long Island. At that time, it was called Philosophy and Literature, and later, it became a study of three great
dialogues of Plato. From 1974-84, three additional, semester-long courses were added to the Philosophy curriculum at Commack H.S:
Philosophy and Literature East and West; Contemporary Moral Issues; and Philosophical Thinking. These courses were part of the
S.C.A.L.E. Program co-sponsored by the Long Island University, each of which bore three college credits, granted by Long Island
University Philosophy Department, and guaranteed by the New York State Department of Education. I co-taught the course with
Professor Arthur Lothstein, of Long Island University.
Also at that time I was Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the C.W. Post College of Long Island University and Adjunct
Professor of Philosophy at Dowling College. During that period, I taught college courses in American Philosophy, Bio-Medical
Ethics, Existentialism and Phenomenology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, and Informal Logic. Additionally, I was on the
Committee for Ethics, Society and Medicine in collaboration between C. W. Post Philosophy Department and the Cornell University
Long Island Hospital, where I was a Lecturer on Medical Ethics.
After that period, I moved to Western Massachusetts, and finally in 1997 I revised the course for my school, Mohawk Trail
Regional High School, and in collaboration with the Science Department at that school, introduced an Environmental Ethics
component to the course. There were numerous occasions where the course was co-taught with Mr. William Kiendzior, recent finalist
for the EPA Award for Distinguished Service to the Commonwealth.
In 2003, I brought the course to WSHS as a yearlong survey, divided up into separate semesters for the Western and Eastern
literature, directly from the model I used for the SCALE program. In 2006, when we semesterized the courses in the English
Department, we gained the opportunity to reach a much wider range of students with the course, who could now take it for graduation
credit. Since then, it has been a popular course with students from many walks of life, and has now become a tradition in the school.
Many graduates of the course have chosen to reap the benefits of this course in such areas of study as medicine, criminal justice, law,
journalism, literature, writing, and communications. The course has generated college philosophy majors, of course. Most of all, it is
the hope that all of those who leave here have become better thinkers.
The Larger Topics for Analysis
Philosophical and Religious Studies
What is a canonical text? To what extent are its applications cultural and universal?
What is the role of a text in establishing a philosophical and religious tradition?
What are the varieties of religious experience, and how do we explain them?
How literally must we interpret religious texts in the context of change? To what extent is a canonical text a “living document”?
How does one find religious meaning in a secularized world?
How should a person view sickness, aging, and death?
Aesthetic issues in theory and practice: some questions we will weigh and consider.
What is taste? How and to what extent is it culturally determined?
Is art mimetic or ideal? Should it reflect the world as it is or ought it to reflect an image of perfection?
Does art play a role in the formation of morality?
Is it possible for formal questions to exist independently of political positions? Is the judgment of a work of art always relative or
are there works of universal excellence?
What is the nature of the creative process?
The Reading List
Canonical Texts/The Image of Perfection: Is vs. Ought
The Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament
Confucius, Analects
Aristotle, Poetics
Sophocles. Oedipus the King
Chuang-Chou, The Chuang-Tzu
The Bhagavad-Gita
The Koran
Establishing Traditions
Augustine, Confessions
Dante, The Divine Comedy.
Petrarch, Sonnets 3, 62
Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil
Varieties of Religious Experience/Art and Creativity
Medieval India: The Age of the Devotional Lyric
Basho, The Narrow Road of the Interior
Mahfouz, Zaabalawi
The Leiden Hymns
Woolf. An Unwritten Novel
Critique of Orthodoxy/ Politics and the Nature of Judgment
Voltaire, Candide
Goethe, Faust
Machiavelli, The Prince
Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
Baudelaire, “A Carcass”
Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
The Search for Meaning in a Secularized World/Art and Morality
Montaigne, Essays
Flaubert, A Simple Heart
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Cao Xuequin, The Story of the Stone
Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience
Wordsworth. “The World is Too Much With Us”
Dostoevsky. Notes from the Underground
Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Structure of Our Syllabus
We will work in two-week blocks: one, dedicated purely to discussion of the literature; and the second, where the discussion feeds the
drafting and publication of writings, due at the end of each second week. It will proceed in that manner throughout the semester, as
indicated below. Writings will address philosophic questions raised by the reading and discussion.
Canonical Texts / The Image of Perfection: Is vs. Ought
Unit
1
2
3
Topics
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Perfection &
imperfection
Will & obligation
Sacred & profane
Fields of Philosophy
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Fate & Free Will
Divinity & Individualism
Spirituality & Secularity
Absolutism & Relativism
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Aesthetic Issues in
Theory and Practice
Establishing Traditions
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4
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Varieties of Mysticism
and Religious
Experience
Art and Creativity
Readings from The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces
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Discussion/Writings
Map/ Invention of Writing & Early Lit/ Timeline (2-9)
Bible/OT (48-52); Genesis 1-11 (52-60)
Aristotle. Poetics (520-24)
Euripides. Medea
Plato. The Apology
Map/ Poetry & Thought in Early China/Timeline (526-33)
Confucius, Analects (545-55)
Chuang Chou. Chuang Tzu (555-65)
Map/ India’s Heroic Age/Timeline (566-75)
Bhagavad-Gita (612-24)
Map/The Rise of Islam and Islamic Literature/Timeline
(860-7)
The Koran (871-4; 887-8)
Augustine, Confessions (722-36)
Dante, The Divine Comedy.
Petrarch, Sonnets 3, 62
Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil (2420-32)
Rilke. Duino Elegies (2714-17; 2719-23)
Writing 1
Medieval India: The Age of the Devotional Lyric and
timeline 1411-18)
Poems of the Virasaiva Saints (1419-29)
The Rise of Popular Arts in Premodern Japan (2103-7)
Basho, The Narrow Road of the Interior (2108-34)
Mahfouz, Zaabalawi (2881-93)
Ancient Egyptian Poetry, & The Leiden Hymns (42-8)
Woolf. An Unwritten Novel (2735-46)
Writing 4
Writing 2
Writing 3
Unit
Topics
Readings from The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces
Discussion/Writings
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Critique of Orthodoxy
Politics and the Nature of
Judgment
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Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (2264-73)
Pushkin, “The Queen of Spades” (2284-2305)
Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” (2871-81)
Montaigne, Essays (1502-23)
Writing 5
6
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The Search for Meaning
in a Secularized World
Art and Morality
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China’s Middle Period, Map, and Timeline
T’ao Ch’ien poems (818-58)
Wordsworth. “The World is Too Much With Us” (2273-5;
2284)
Dostoevsky. Notes from the Underground (2363-2420)
Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych (2432-2476)
Writing 6
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Unit Activities
Work
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Bible (OT)
Creation
The Fall
First Murder
The Flood
Language Origins
Topics for Discussion, Writing, and Outside Study
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What is significant about God’s forbidding knowledge of good and evil?
What is the role of the serpent in human corruption? Is it a way of passing the buck?
Cain and Abel represent two ways of life: farmers and pastoral nomads. What is the point of
contrast here?
What is the reasoning behind creation stories?
What attitude toward city life is expressed in the story of the Tower of Babel?
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Sophocles, Oedipus
Rex
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What is the symbolism of the theme of sight and blindness?
What are the limits of our ability to use our intelligence to control the world?
Trace the pattern and discuss the significance of (a) Oedipus the Hunter; (b) Oedipus the
plowman; (c) Oedipus the sailor-herdsman. How are these three images of human progress from
wildness to civilization?
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Aristotle, Poetics
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Confucius, Analects
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Evaluate the notion that poetry expresses the universal, and history expresses the particular.
How does Oedipus (or any other tragedy) match up with Aristotle’s conception of the wellmade tragedy?
Why can’t the Masters simply say what they mean? Compare the methods of Confucius, Jesus,
and Socrates.
Analyze the sayings that support hierarchial rule and evaluate them.
What is the attitude toward human nature that emerges from the Analects? Would Machiavelli
agree, for instance?
What is the moral philosophy of the Analects?
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Chuang Cho,
Chuang-Tzu
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Bhagavad-Gita
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The Koran
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If Chuang Cho is teaching the relativity of perception and values, and thus go beyond caring,
then why write the book?
What do we learn, by this point, about the relation between poetry and prose?
What is the nature of the self, if it may not depend on shape?
What is the role of thought in defining being?
How is Arjuna’s moral dilemma universal?
How does his dilemma dramatize the dilemma between sacred duty and personal spiritual
goals, or between family and state?
How can we, under any conditions, justify war and violence?
What does Krishna mean by “action” and the “fruits of action”? Is Krishna (or any other
incarnate divinity) a superhero?
Extrapolate a philosophy of “moral standing” from the Bhagavad-Gita.
Compare the accounts of Joseph, Moses, or Noah in the Koran with those of the Old Testament.
What is the Koranic attitude toward women in Suras 4, 12, and 19.
How do Islamic perceptions of Heaven and Hell differ from those of Christianity and Judaism?
How does the Koran make the case for itself as an immortal work, the actual word of God?
What is a jinn? Compare the role of demons as an alternate order of creation in Chinese,
Japanese, or Western literature and art.
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Augustine,
Confessions.
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Dante. Divine
Comedy
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Petrarch. Sonnets
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Baudelaire, Flowers
of Evil
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Rilke, Duino Elegies
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Borges, “The Garden
of Forking Paths”
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Poems of the
Virasaiva Saints
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Can we identify in these times with Augustine’s sense of sin?
What is the difference between confessing directly to God and to his intermediary or a secular
counselor?
How do religious and cultural considerations affect the nature of confession?
What is the suitability of the various penalties for sins in the Inferno?
What is the reason for the differences between Upper Hell and Lower Hell?
How do Dante’s perspectives compare or contrast with those of today?
What is contemporary/universal in Cantos XXI and XXII?
How do we explain the concept of the afterlife in world culture?
Compare and contrast the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet structure.
Evaluate the code of beauty in Petrarch’s sonnets in relation to codes of beauty in Islamic,
Indian, Chinese, or Japanese poetry.
Explain the varied attitudes of elation and despair in the poems.
How is Baudelaire’s poetry an exemplar of the Symbolist movement in French art and
literature?
How are women characterized and imagined in his poetry?
Compare his view with Petrarch’s view of women.
What is the role of light in Archaic Torso of Apollo?
What does the Archaic Torso of Apollo say about the role of art?
Why does he choose to emphasize the role of the sexuality of the statue?
How should we interpret the command at the end of Archaic Torso of Apollo?
What does Rilke want from the angels? Who are they?
How does Borges use the idea of the labyrinth as the frame for his story?
What questions about the nature of time are posed here?
What conclusions can we draw from this about the writing of history?
What do the poems of Mahadevihakka convey about her conception of the relation between
body and soul?
Comment on Govindadasa’s use of the language, imagery, and conventions of Sanskrit love
poetry for the description of religious emotion.
Compare Mira’s religious eroticism with that of Mahadvviyakka. Comment on the roles of
gender and religious mythology.
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Basho, The Narrow
Road of the Interior
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Mahfouz, Zaabalawi
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Do you agree that the best haiku fuse the eternal and the changing?
How do Basho’s haiku comment on the Buddhist concept of impermanence?
How is the experience on the road illustrative of the essence of the religious practice?
Why does the narrator want or need to find Zaabalawi?
What is “that illness for which no one possesses a remedy”?
Describe the stages of the narrator’s quest.
Why does it culminate in the dream at the Negma Bar?