9:30-10:45A   MW   SY 004

Although the scope of the modern is indefinite, this particular course
will be concerned exclusively with works from the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. In class discussion we shall consider a variety of
works-literary, philosophical, and scientific; the common thread will be
consideration of what these famous works indicate about what is to be
human: Are we the creatures of an omniscient and benevolent God, or do we
exist withing a merely natural (as against supernatural) order of things?
In what do human goodness and human evil consist, and what are their
sources? Is there a single way in which it is best for all human beings to
live and, if so, what is it? The works to be discussed include Part II of
Goethe's Faust, selections from Marx and from Darwin, Melville's story
"Benito Cereno," Nietzsche's philosophical masterpiece Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Freud's essay Civilization and its Discontents, selected
poems by T. S. Eliot, Kafka's stories "The Metamorphosis" and "A Country
Doctor," Primo Levi's memoir Survival in Auschwitz, Beckett's play Waiting
for Godot, and Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. There will be two short
(approximately five-page) papers, and a final paper of approximately
fifteen pages, on topics to be announced; there will be no examinations.