"If there is no God, then everything is permitted?" Moral Life in a Secular World
HIST 395
Fall 2019
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
REES 344, RELI 393 |
| Course Cluster: Christianity Studies |
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov famously poses the question of what would happen to mankind "without God and immortal life," asking whether this means that "all things are permitted." Made famous by Dostoevsky, the question of whether we can be moral without God has always haunted secularism and has consistently been the most vocal criticism of unbelief. From papal condemnations of secularism and "godless Soviets," to the contemporary consensus that belief in God is evidence of moral goodness and its absence a sign of a broken ethical barometer, the assumption has been that transcendental authority is all that stands between us and moral abyss. When the atrocities committed by "totalitarian" regimes are cited as evidence of this, it is only the most radical articulation of a broader narrative of secular modernity.
One of modernity's master narratives is that people go from being under the care of the church to being under the care of the state, and our focus will be on historical cases where the question of secular values was explicitly engaged by the state. We will examine individual and collective articulations of morality in three prominent models of secularism: American civil religion, French laïcité, and Communist official atheism. What constitutes the moral foundation of a world without God? Can religion's moral and spiritual function be performed by a different kind of belief system? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS HIST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (HIST-MN)(HIST)(REES-Social Sci)(RELI-MN)(RELI) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
1. Jonathan P. Herzog, THE SPIRITUAL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: AMERICA'S RELIGIOUS BATTLE AGAINST COMMUNISM IN THE EARLY COLD WAR (Oxford, 2011).
2. Mark Lilla, THE STILLBORN GOD: RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE MODERN WEST (Vintage, 2008).
3. Hugh McLeod, THE RELIGIOUS CRISIS OF THE 1960S (Oxford, 2007, 2010).
4. Samuel Moyn, THE LAST UTOPIA: HUMAN RIGHTS IN HISTORY (Belknap, 2012).
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly response papers, research prospectus |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
No late papers; no incompletes. Only COL and CSS students can take this course pass/fail. All other students must take this course for letter grade. |
| Instructor(s): Smolkin,Victoria Times: ..T.... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: PAC422; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 1 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 1 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 3 | 1st Ranked: 3 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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