Syllabus - Great Literature 109 - Introduction to Philosophy

🎓 Course Overview

Focus: The “Great Questions” of existence, ethics, reality, and knowledge. Goal: To engage with the history of Western philosophy through its most accessible yet profound texts, tracing the evolution of thought from Ancient Greece to Existentialism. Level: Undergraduate / Introductory.

📚 Reading List

1. The Symposium — Plato
2. Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle
3. Meditations on First Philosophy — René Descartes
4. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding — David Hume
5. The Social Contract — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
6. Utilitarianism — John Stuart Mill
7. Fear and Trembling — Søren Kierkegaard
8. Beyond Good and Evil — Friedrich Nietzsche
9. The Problems of Philosophy — Bertrand Russell
10. Existentialism Is a Humanism — Jean-Paul Sartre

🧠 Key Themes

• Metaphysics: What is real? (Plato, Descartes, Russell)
• Epistemology: How do we know what we know? (Descartes, Hume, Russell)
• Ethics: How should we live? (Aristotle, Mill, Nietzsche)
• Political Philosophy: What is a just society? (Rousseau)
• Existentialism: What is the meaning of life? (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre)

📝 Assignments

• Pre-Reading: Contextualize the philosopher and the problem they are solving.
• Reading: Track arguments, premises, and conclusions.
• Post-Reading: Analyze the enduring relevance of the arguments today.