Religious and Philosophical Themes in Literature

In this class, we work through the question "What makes a life worth living?" by considering some of the answers we find in literature. In the first half of the semester, we focus on the broader questions: What, if anything, is human nature? What does that tell us about human flourishing?  To that end, we read works by Sartre, CS Lewis, Dostoevsky, Wiesel, and Hesse  as we consider a diversity of viewpoints. After the midterm, we turn our attention to two broad questions: what is the role of work in human flourishing? and what is the impact of technology on human work? Here, we pay particular attention to human communities. These readings typically include: Berry, Shamsie, Ishiguro, and Sophocles.