Foundations of Critical Thinking and Writing II: Anlysis and Synthesis

Catalog description

Organized around major thinkers and core concepts, this foundational seminar examines alternative conceptions of ethics and explores their implications for social justice. The goal of this seminar is to provide students with a theoretical foundation capable of informing and enriching their socially-engaged intellectual pursuits, through a critical engagement with both classic texts and contemporary theories. Following Aristotle, our guiding assumption will be that ethical reflection is a process of reflective dialogue between one’s current beliefs and assumptions, and more complex ethical problems and theories designed to spur not only thought, but self-reflection. We will begin with the classical understanding of ethics and justice, and then examine how beliefs about the individual’s relation to the community change given modernity’s assumptions about atomized individuals. From there we turn to more recent theories of ethics and justice that have emanated from excluded voices: justice as a form of caring for others, and as a means for transforming the social reality to recognize the identities of groups.