AREA II

"This was the best academic experience of my life. It's not like school because everyone wants to learn, even the teachers. You also make great friends and meet lots of different and interesting people." – Spanish student, 2006


Area II, Philosophy, is not so much a course on classical philosophy and philosophers as a course in critical, creative, philosophical thinking and questioning, in which brief readings and other texts from writers and thinkers past and present are offered only to spur the students' curiosity and the development of their own voices and ideas. The students are asked to examine their received knowledge and deeply held beliefs, pay attention to the functioning of language in the development of ideas and societies, and investigate the very nature of thought and of the mind. A typical class might be a reading and discussion section, a sensory-deprivation exercise, a game, a film, or a walk around campus—wherever the imaginations of the instructor and students lead. Ultimately, Area II hopes to provide the students with a set of intellectual tools with which they may consider their academic and artistic endeavors, as well as their personal beliefs and values, in a more thoughtful light.

Area II offers a series of provocative films to challenge the viewers' ideas about film, as well as raise a number of philosophical questions for discussion. Recent selections have included:

  • Baraka
  • The Waking Life
  • The Apostle
  • Donnie Darko
  • Pi
  • Bamboozled

Examples of Texts:

  • Neil Postman, "Defending Against the Indefensible"
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, excerpts
  • Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, excerpts
  • Plato, "The Allegory of the Cave," Book VII, The Republic
  • The Tao Te Ching, the Therigatha, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Old and New Testaments, excerpts
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, excerpts
  • John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, excerpts
  • Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It, excerpts
  • Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, excerpts