258 Honors Spring 2008 Reading List

Required Reading, Honors 258

Each of our texts examines philosophical and cultural premises related to our culture's continuing attempt to define and shape what it means to be a "civilization", and the possible effects of those premises on the lives of individuals living both inside and outside the so-called “civilized world”. Each of the texts uses fiction to represent very real historical, political, religious and technological events and trends, and all are also fairly didactic and rhetorical; each attempts to form and influence public opinion. Each is, then, a representation, an empirical exercise and an argument.

Each of the texts addresses the question “how then should we live?” How should we live our lives -- not simply as individuals, but as individuals caught up in complex, conflicting social/historical/political/economic webs. Each examines the ethical life – the life lived in relationship to others both inside and outside one's own community and culture, examining the boundaries of freedom and responsibility, the self and the “other”.

Reading will come from full texts, listed below, as well as various sources made available on-line, listed/linked from the Schedule Page.

Full Texts:

Voltaire, Candide • ISBN: 0140440046

Shelley, Frankenstein • ISBN: 0553212478

Conrad, Heart of Darkness (3rd Ed) •ISBN: 0-393-95552-4

Achebe, Things Fall Apart • ISBN: 0385474547

Woolf, A Room of One's Own • ISBN: 0156787334

Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern • ISBN: 0802132758