Syllabus

David H. Calhoun
 

Contact David H. Calhoun by email: 
calhoun@gem.gonzaga.edu

From the time of the Greeks, love and friendship have played important roles in philosophical investigation of ethics, political theory, and even theories of knowledge. Analysis of the phenomena of love and friendship reveals a great deal about human desire, the structure of human psychology, character, concern for others, and religious devotion. In this course we will study several influential accounts of love and friendship, noting the implications of each view for issues such as happiness and the good life, proper treatment of others, and self-love. Readings will be from a diverse group of authors, including such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and C. S. Lewis.
 

Philosophical Knowledge. This course is intended to acquaint students with some of the most significant theories of love and friendship in the history of philosophy, to help students develop a sophisticated sense of some of the most critical problems concerning love and friendship, and to highlight the links between theories of love and friendship and other philosophical topics--ethics, theory of reality. and theory of knowledge. Finally, the course is structured to give students an opportunity to reflect on and further develop their own understanding of the nature and value of love and friendship.

Philosophical Development. This course begins with the presumption that all students--and all human beings--are philosophers, insofar as they are concerned about basic questions of reality, knowledge, and truth. For this reason, an important objective of the course is to promote philosophical inquiry on the part of students by active interaction with significant philosophical texts and ideas.

Philosophical, Reasoning, and Communicating Skills. Like any philosophy course, Love and Friendship is intended to aid students in the development of specific philosophical and academic skills. As a result of the work in this course, students should be able to read philosophical texts more closely and carefully and to express their own positions more clearly both verbally and in writing. In particular, we will work to develop skills of friendly philosophical inquiry in our group and class discussions.

Grades will be based on the following:

1. Course participation (about 20%): attendance, preparation for class, contribution to class and group discussions. NOTE: because of the compressed schedule of summer courses, any absences will have a detrimental impact on the course grade; more than two absences will result in automatic failure of the course.

2.  Discussion preparation journals (about 25%): one-page summary of or critical response to daily reading assignment.  On days with more than one reading assignment students will be expected to make some specific reference to each of the readings in the journal entry.  Journal entries will be collected at the beginning of each class (no late journals will be accepted), and will be graded on a scale of 0-4.

3.  Free Reading Reports (about 15%).  At the end of each unit of the course, students will have the opportunity to select and report on some source (philosophical, dramatic, fictional, etc.) that sheds light on the sort of love we have studied in that unit.  The Free Reading Report should be longer than a typical journal entry (about 2-3 pages).  Students will be graded on the quality and helpfulness of the content they report on as well as on the clarity of the report itself.

4.  Short papers (about 40%): Sudents will be allowed to choose the number of papers to write, and will choose whether to write on specific thinkers, or to compare different thinkers on particular issues.  These papers should be argumentative essays, essays in which you state, explain, and defend some claim or thesis regarding the topic.  Papers should summarize and explain the views of the thinkers you have read, and involve some critical response to those views.  The Essay Topic Approval Form and the Paper Guidelines below will give you important information about how to structure your paper.

THERE ARE FOUR CONDITIONS FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS:  (1) students must complete a Essay Topic Approval Form and have it signed by the instructor prior to submitting a paper; (2) no more than one paper may be submitted in any week; (3) at least one paper must be submitted by the end of the second unit of the course (Thursday, June 15); and (4) absolutely no papers will be accepted after the final Tuesday class meeting.
 

Paper Guidelines

A philosophy paper should begin with a clear introduction that defines the issues to be discussed and indicates the approach you will take and the position you will defend in the paper. Your position may be interpretive, concerning the best way to understand a difficult point in the text, or analytic, involving a critical appraisal of some key assertion made by the author. In either case you should articulate a clear thesis that states your position and sets out the task and objectives for your paper. The body of the paper is devoted to two tasks: the first, exposition, has to do with setting out your selected problem (e.g., what is the real object of love in Platoís view?) and stating the positions of the relevant author(s) on the subject, including, to the extent necessary, explaining what the author(s) means. The second task is evaluation, which involves critical reflection on the views presented by the author(s). A well-constructed paper closes with a conclusion that summarizes the main points discussed in the paper and states the result of the paperís research.

Since the point of the papers is to help develop your own understanding of and perspective on the primary texts, not to report what other interpreters think, I would prefer that you focus on the primary texts in your papers. Of course, if you do choose to use secondary sources, it is imperative that you give proper credit for any ideas that you use from them. Any use of any undocumented source in the research or writing of your paper constitutes plagiarism, which is a serious academic offense with very serious consequences. The penalty for plagiarism will be a zero grade for the paper, and may also include other consequences as a result of the Universityís academic dishonesty policy. If you have any questions about plagiarism do not hesitate to ask. Other forms of academic dishonesty (such as presenting work done by someone else as your own) will be dealt with in similar ways.

While you need not use secondary sources, you should support your interpretations of the primary texts by reference to specific passages of those texts. Quotations that support your interpretations should be explicitly identified as such with quotation marks, and fully documented with parenthetical notes, footnotes, or endnotes.

Common Paper Problems

Use this list of key problems to check your paper before you submit it. In comments on your paper I will refer to this list (by letter) to indicate some of the more common problems.

A. Pages of your paper should be numbered.

B. Titles of books should be underlined or put in italics type.

C. Quotations or closely paraphrased ideas from a book should be properly cited to give credit, like this (Plato, 86d).

D. Paragraphs should be coherently structured to cover a single theme or closely related group of ideas. Single paragraphs should ideally not be more than a half-page or so long.

E. Don't try to summarize the entire book (or large chunks of it) in a point-by-point way. Select out what you believe are the most important ideas and arguments, and critically respond to them.

F. While I am not an English teacher, I expect papers to be proofread carefully so that grammar and spelling are consistently correct, and so that sentence structure is clear and readable. In particular, I am a stickler about proper use of apostrophes. Learn to use them!

G. Your introduction should introduce the issue of your paper, briefly explain the positions you will discuss, and also, in a thesis, state clearly what position you will adopt and defend in the paper.

H. A good paper critically discusses the views of the philosopher you are explaining. An excellent paper builds on this critical discussion by developing the ideas further in some way (for example, imagining how Plato might respond to your criticisms, showing how some idea of his might be altered or developed, or applying your critical discussion to examples or problems outside of the text).

Each unit of the course ends with "free reading assignments." On these days each student will select some reading that discusses the sort of love discussed in that section of the course. Your discussion preparation entry for the day should summarize and critically respond to the reading selection you have made, and, ideally, should compare and contrast the views in your reading to the assigned readings on the same topic The objective of the "free reading assignments" is twofold: (1) to enrich our discussion of the different types of love by drawing on as wide as possible a range of readings, and (2) to help us to develop a summary sense of our own views on the types of love we discuss.

I want you to choose readings that are interesting to you, but I am willing to help you identify specific issues you want to explore and to locate relevant readings. Here are some ideas to get you started:

For Erotic Love:

ïrecent psychological treatments of erotic/sexual love

ïfeminist discussions of the power relationships in contemporary sexual love

ïthe role of social institutions (such as marriage) in erotic love

ïmajor literary treatments of erotic love

For Friendship:

ïcontemporary discussions of the role of friendship in social relationships

ïfeminist treatments of friendship, especially female friendships

ïany of the selections in the Pakaluk book that are not required readings

For Charity:

ïcontemporary theological treatments of charity

ïnon-theological/non-theistic discussions of unselfish love

ïsociological or psychological studies of the reasons for altruistic behavior

ïethical analyses of altruism

Plato, Symposium, trans. by Nehamas and Woodruff (Hackett)

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Lewis in reading schedule)

Michael Pakaluk, ed., Other Selves: Philosophers on Friends (Hackett; OS in reading schedule)

Supplementary readings on reserve in Foley Library and available online (see Course Schedule)