Just received this e-mail from one of my favorite professors. I consider it an honor to be on his short list of students he would like to have (twelve others on the email list).

As I look forward to teaching the newly-resurrected PHIL 201 course next Fall, I thought I might try to persuade a few good discussants and old friends to consider taking it, so as to build a good base for successful and lively discussion in the course. You folks are the folks I’d like to have in there, if it fits your needs. PHIL 201 is now re-certified with Gen Ed credit (under the Humanities/Fine Arts rubric), and of course it’s also 3 hours toward the major or the minor if that interests you. So if either of those paths would help meet your educational needs . . . .

We’ll start with some of the Platonic dialogues, focusing on the character of Socrates (some overlap with PHIL 101 here), then we’ll discuss the late ancient Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus (no one else at UTC, or maybe in TN!, teaches this text), then we’ll do Descartes’ Meditations (some overlap with PHIL 353 here), then we’ll do all of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (a great text on philosophy of religion), and we’ll finish
by doing C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain (another understudied text) along with a variety of selections on theodicies in response to the problem of evil. The two overarching themes are skepticism (Sextus vs. Descartes) and evil (Hume vs. Lewis and the other theodicists). Two short papers and two exams. And a good time for all.

Best,
BR

I think I will have to take this class.

Tags: C. S. Lewis, David Hume, Descartes, e-mail, Philosophy, Sextus Empiricus, Socrates, UTC