Why Fight?

Catalog description

What justifies the use of force? No democratic citizen is exempt from considering this question, but our answers are often contradictory jumbles. To gain clarity we will explore the works that laid the moral foundation for the modern way of war, from the Bible and the Iliad to the thought of Karl Marx. In this interdisciplinary course you will discuss poems, plays, films, histories, and philosophical accounts about war in the Western canon and beyond. Its subtitle could be “From Zeus to the Atom Bomb,” because we will be traveling from the Classical to the Nuclear Age. Combining the techniques of literary studies, philosophy, history, and religious studies, we will strive to understand our own responses to arguments, works of art, visions, and fantasies about the nature of war. How have these cultural forms influenced the crucial decisions of human beings, and how do they impact our thinking now? We will also consider scientific explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of warfare, wondering whether natural science alone can explain human conflict. Lastly, we will consider if we have entered a “post-modern” phase of war, with the War in Ukraine as our object of consideration, a war documented in dizzying detail on social media.