Relig Existentialism

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

An examination of existentialism as an orientation that provides meaning for human beings in particularly disorienting terms, particularly with regard to anxiety, meaninglessness, alienation, and finitude. The fall 2024 course will begin with a reading of William James for a basis in the theory of religion as orientation. It will then focus on the existential imagining of the self, most centrally by a thorough reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science and The Genealogy of Morality. Paul Tillich’s The Courage To Be will present a very influential religious existentialism. We will finally read Maggie Nelson’s very influential work in Queer Theory/Memoir to discuss whether and to what degree it might be considered existential. I want to give you a trigger alert: her book is very explicit. Finally, we will look at cultural forms of the existential orientation in three films.