SELF, SERENITY, AND VULNERABILITY: WEST AND EAST SPRING 2012 LAW 46261A ETHICAL REASONING 20 THURSDAYS 5 TO 7, HAUSER

104 Roberto Mangabeira Unger Areeda 226 Telephone: 617-495-3156 E-mail: unger@law.harvard.edu Office Hours: Fridays 2:00pm-4:00pm Faculty Assistant: Heather Houston, 617-496-1764, hhouston@law.harvard.edu

This course is a comparative inquiry into certain forms of moral consciousness and their metaphysical assumptions in the high cultures of Eurasia. We organize discussion around a broad background concern as well as a focused foreground theme. The background concern is the meaning or meaninglessness of human life: comparison of some of the ways in which philosophy, religion, and art in the West and in the East have dealt with the fear that our lives and the world itself may be meaningless. The foreground theme is the contrast between two answers to the question-how should I live my life? One answer, valuing serenity achieved through disengagement from illusion and vain striving, is: stay out of trouble. Another answer, prizing the acceptance of vulnerability for the sake of self-construction and self-transformation, is: look for trouble. The second answer has come to play a major part in the moral and political projects that command attention throughout the world today. We seek to understand this second answer and to assess it in the light of speculative ideas that have been prominent in Western and Eastern thought. Conversely, we use our chosen theme to explore how Western and Eastern speculation have dealt with the limits of insight into what matters most. To these ends, we consider exemplary writings from several
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traditions: modern European, ancient Greek, Chinese, South Asian. SELF, SERENITY, AND VULNERABILITY PART I: MAJOR APPROACHES TO LIFE IN WORLD HISTORY January 26 -- The foreground theme of the course: the related contrasts between staying out of trouble and looking for trouble, between taking time, history, and individuality seriously and dismissing them as illusory or less than fully real; between hoping to humanize society and hoping to reconstruct society and to divinize humanity. -- The background theme of the course: our response to the irreparable flaws in human life mortality, groundlessness, insatiability. -- Religion and philosophy: what have been and what can they become. -- The religious revolutions of the Axial Age. What they had in common. Their achievements and limits. February 2 -- Three major orientations in the history of religion: overcoming the world, humanizing the world, struggling with the world. The relation between metaphysical assumptions and existential imperatives in each of them. Karl Jaspers, The Axial Period in The Origin and Goal of History, pp. 121 February 9 -- The relation of this inquiry to the concerns of moral philosophy. Consequentialist (Utilitarian), Kantian, and contractarian approaches in moral philosophy. The nature, sources, and limits of their ethical universalism. The relation of ethical universalism to nihilism. Derek Parfit, Summary in On What Matters, volume I, pp. 1-28 Krzysztof Michalski, Nihilism in The Flame of Eternity: An Interpretation of Nietzsches Thought, pp. 1-15 Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Universal Grid of Philosophy in the Self Awakened, pp. 243-256

PART II: OVERCOMING THE WORLD, HUMANIZING THE WORLD, STRUGGLING WITH THE WORLD (By March 8, you should have read Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Passion: An Essay on Personality. This reading may help you engage the argument of the course.). February 16 Overcoming the world: transcending the will and discounting the appearances. -- The perennial philosophy: its devaluation of the phenomenal world of time and distinction. -- Radical and moderate forms of the devaluation. -- Manifestations of this devaluation in contemporary philosophy, science, and art. -- The moral consequence of transcendence of the will, assimilation to impersonal divinity, and desire for indifference to change and to suffering. Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. I, pp. 29-40, 93-124, 153-187 Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, pp. 375412 Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion After Idolatry, pp. 126-151 February 23 Humanizing the world: Confucius. -- Away from the precipice: creating meaning in a meaningless world. An antimetaphysical metaphysic. -- The spiritualization of our role-based relations and claims upon one another. -- Confucianism as an exemplary instance of this view. -- Criticism of the moral and psychological consequences of these ideas. The Analects of Confucius Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: the Sacred as Secular March 1 Humanizing the world: modern expressions. -- Contemporary secular humanism and the ethic of social and professional roles. -- Persons and roles: the modern criticism of this orientation.

Emile Durkheim, Moral Education, pp. 1-126 Jean-Paul Sartre, Bad Faith in Being and Nothingness, pp. 70-94 Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Three Ideas of Work in Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task, pp. 26-35 March 8 The struggle with the world: the religions of salvation. -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as canonical expressions of the struggle with the world. -- The themes of infinity and of love within Christianity; the relation between them. -- The unfinished social, moral, and cognitive agenda of Christianity. Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World, chapter 1 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 432-470 Karl Rahner, A Short Formula of Christian Faith in Theological Investigations, vol. IX, pp. 117-18, 121-26 (reprinted in A Rahner Reader, ed. Gerald McCool, pp. 205-211) March 15 - SPRING RECESS March 22 The struggle with the world: the secular projects of personal and political liberation. -- Self-transformation and social transformation. -- The affirmation of the reality of time, the openness of history, the depth of the individual, and the possibility of the new. -- The moral and political implications of this view. -- The uncertain programmatic direction and doctrinal content. -- The revolutionary influence on the world, through the secular projects of emancipation (liberalism, socialism) and the worldwide popular romantic culture. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, chapters 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 March 29 The three orientations to life compared.

Friedrich Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil (to be read chiefly for its bearing on the subsequent classes) SECTION III NEXT STEPS April 5 How do we choose? Reason and risk in the choice of orientations. -- Confronting nihilism and skepticism. -- The proper relation between metaphysical assumptions and moral orientations. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Self-Creation and Affiliation, pp. 96-121; Solidarity, pp. 189-198 Plato, The Republic, Book X, 614-621 (the story of Er) Pascal, Penses, Diversion, pp. 66-72; Wager, pp. 149-155 Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, pp. 142-168; 200-213 April 12 The circumstance and direction of a future religious revolution. April 19 Conclusion: mortality, groundlessness, insatiability, and hope in the past and future of religion. READING ASSIGNMENTS There are six assigned books. All books are paperbacks and available for purchase at the Harvard Square Coop and on Amazon. The Analects of Confucius (translated by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr.), Random House Herbert Fingerette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, Waveland Pr Inc Damien Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Penguin Classics Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Passion: An Essay on Personality, Free Press Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, Harvard University Press

WRITING REQUIREMENTS During the semester undergraduates will write two brief papers. The first paper will be due in class on March 1. The second paper will be due in class on April 5. Each of these papers, on topics to be set, will respond to a major problem or idea discussed in the course up to that time. Each will be between 6 and 10 double-spaced pages long. Each will count for 20% of the final grade. In lieu of a final examination, all students will write an extended take-home examination. This final paper or examination will provide them with an occasion to respond to a central aspect of the argument of the course. It should have a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 20 double-spaced pages. The topic or topics will be described in class on April 5. The final examination paper will be due by 4 p.m. on April 30 (no extensions). It will count for 50% of the final grade for undergraduates. 10% of the final grade for undergraduates will be attributed to participation in section. The grade for all graduate students, including law students, will be based entirely on their final take-home examination, which will be for them the only writing requirement in the course.