Ecological Existentialism

Catalog description

This course, while philosophical in orientation, provides an interdisciplinary reflection on the existential question of how to live endings (personal, collective, ecological), here and now, today. To do this we will draw from innovative work being done in a variety of disciplines: philosophy, psychology, history, literature, art, thanatology, and anthropology among them. At the heart of the course is the constructive work of collecting, creating, and weaving together new conceptual language, new metaphors, new paradigms, to support and inspire us in the living of endings. The course undertakes this task by putting at least two scales of inquiry in creative tension with one another.: setting the personal, biographical, existential arc of a life in conversation with the global, historical, political implications of the ongoing ecological crisis. Students should complete the course with an informed, applied, interdisciplinary understanding of living endings.