9:30-10:45	TR   BH 331

**Carries Cultural Studies**

"If I hadn't spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the
Trafalmadorian, "I wouldn't have any idea what was meant by ‘free
will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and
I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on earth is there any
talk of free will."  	— Vonnegut

On other planets, there is presumably no talk of free will because the
inhabitants view the behavior of intelligent beings the same way they
view the behavior of other bodies in the natural world, namely, as the
product of physical laws. But here on earth, free will has long been a
topic of discussion because of its role in conceptions of human
dignity and in explanations of the origin of evil. Human suffering has
often been seen as a divine punishment for transgressions, and the
question  of whether a given punishment was fair has been seen to
depend on whether the transgressor freely chose to commit an evil or
sinful action. And this freedom to choose evil has been seen not as
curse, but as one of the things that links the human to the divine.
Moreover, it has been argued, to view humans as lacking free will is
to view them as no better than machines.  This conception of free
will, however, has been challenged in various ways.  It has been
argued, for example, not only that a good god would protect his
creatures from the consequences of free will, but even that God could
only be good if he himself lacked free will and was guided by
principles that he had not invented.

The course will examine ways in which this debate has challenged
writers who have undertaken the task of explaining human or divine
behavior, or the task of explaining evil. We will be particularly
interested in examining the relationship between philosophical
arguments and imaginative literature. Can a narrative or a play make a
cogent case for or against a philosophical principle or theological
commitment? The tentative reading list includes writings on free will
and evil by St. Augustine, Hobbes, Bayle, Hume, and J. S.  Mill, as
well as the following works:

	Genesis	
	Aeschylus, The Oresteia
	Racine, Phèdre
	Pope, Essay on Man
	Voltaire, Candide
	Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
	Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
	Sartre, The Flies