ARTS OF LIVING AND ETHICAL AGENCY

Credit Hours: 3 · Graduate

This graduate seminar analyzes the long western tradition of “philosophy as a way of life” and its attention to spiritual exercises. From ancient philosophy and late ancient asceticism to twentieth-and-twenty-first philosophers and scholars of religion, we will interrogate the interconnection between theory and practice, reflection and action, what we know and how we shape ourselves. We will look at how forming a way of life is itself an art – where (1) technical training in philosophical and religious communities includes bodily, affective, and reflective practices which allow for (2) individuals to forge their own dispositions towards acting, feeling, and thinking that challenge social norms.