EXISTENTIALISM & RELIGION

Instructor: Dr. Jeff Robbins
Office: HUM 307D

email: robbins@lvc.edu

When philosophy and life are intermingled, we no longer know if we look to philosophy because it is life, or if we cling to life because it is philosophy.--Emmanuel Levinas

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.--Albert Camus

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.--Jean-Paul Sartre

Whatever its ultimate meaning, the universe into which we have been thrown cannot satisfy our reason-let us have the courage to admit it once and for all.--Gabriel Marcel

If it were conceivable that one might be damned by obeying God and saved by disobeying him; I would nonetheless obey him.--Simone Weil

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. -Paul Tillich

One might say that I am the moment of individuality, but I refuse to be a paragraph in a system--Soren Kierkegaard

It seems to me that the meaning of a person's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he's a person and not a piano key. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky


Book List:
REQUIRED:
Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (a selection from the Stambaugh translation)
Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
Jean-Paul Sartre, Essays in Existentialism OPTIONAL:
Paul Tillich, Courage to Be
Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Related Websites:
Existentialism in General:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/8877/main.html
http://userzweb.lightspeed.net/~tameri/tframes.html
http://www.eleven38.com/aletheia/
Arendt:
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~mcneil/arendt.htm
Kierkegaard:
http://www.denmark.org/kierkegaard.html
Heidegger:
http://www.webcom.com/paf/ereignis.html
Camus:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/pwiRenl/ht/indexa.htin
Sartre:
http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/philo/sartre.html
Course Schedule

1. Introducing Existentialism:
Read Kaufmann Introduction: "Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre"
Read Walker Percy: "The Delta Factor"
Read Annie Dillard: "The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure"


2. The Responsibility of Existentialism:
Read and Discuss Hannah Arendt
First Response Paper Due


3. What is Existentialism?:
Read and Discuss Sartre


4. From What to How:
Read and Discuss Kierkegaard
Second Response Paper Due


5. Why Philosophy?:
Read and Discuss Camus

 
6. The Question of Being:
Read and Discuss Heidegger
Third Response Paper Due
Exam: 11/19

 

Reviews Due


7. Religion and Existentialism:
Group Presentations on Tillich, Weil, and Buber.
Presentations

Final Class

Final Papers and all make-up work due

 

  • Course Objectives:
    The title of the course is best thought of as a question, thus the series of questions that make up the semester schedule. As such, there are no preestablished objectives other than the basic requirement that this course be an exercise in thinking. By thinking, you will be in an ongoing and multi-layered conversation with the authors and texts we will be reading, with fellow classmates, with the instructor, and last but not least, with yourselves as you think the questions that question the nature of existence and religion. The greatest aim of the course is that we find ourselves in collaboration with one another, a collaboration that culminates in an appreciation of the possibilities of thinking and community, as well as a greater recognition of the responsibilities of a thoughtful existence.

    As a course-in-question there is a built-in element of flexibility. In other words, your presence, participation, and consideration matter not only to yourself and your grade, but even more, to the class as a whole as we together realize the peculiar promise of a university education.

    Finally, as we begin to think, the objective is that we discover a world that is, but not entirely, of our own making, and a subject matter that is, but not wholly, thinkable. Existence will be rendered existential. And religion will be thought theological.