Kevin L. Hughes, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Office: SAC 128

Extension: 9-4728

Email: Kevin.Hughes@villanova.edu

We spent last semester examining ancient, medieval, and renaissance texts in the hopes of invoking their assistance in the understanding of freedom. We discovered, I think, that ancient thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and even the authors of the Bible, seemed to think more in terms of the question of happiness than the question of freedom. But all seemed to offer some perspective on what sorts of freedom might be essential to the happy life.

But in letting our driving root question be about freedom, we show ourselves to be ‘moderns.’ It’s in the period of time we generally still call ‘modern,’ beginning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that we begin to see such explicit and intense reflection upon what it means to be ‘free,’ even as an end in itself. It’s this new way of phrasing the existential questions that we will explore in the course of the Spring semester. We’ll cast our net broadly, since the modern exploration of the conditions of freedom extends into economics, politics, religion, and culture, and it deals with such modern notions as individual rights, equality, democracy, and liberalism. Those of you who are interested in politics and American history will find yourselves on more familiar turf this term.

We’ll do this, however, with an Augustinian twist (just when you thought it was safe to go back to Core Humanities…). Remember, Augustine’s conviction in the City of God is that what made Rome succeed – its love of glory for the city – is precisely what led to its own collapse, since any effort to make something we do with all our limitations into an ‘Eternal City’ is doomed to failure. So we might benefit from taking a hard, sober look at the sorts of ideas that we may take for granted (democracy, equality, rights), and see if they contain within themselves some tragic contradiction, some seed of their own collapse. It’s only then that we might take stock, here at the beginning of a new millennium, of what hopes and fears we might hold for the modern vision of freedom.

Our challenge in the last semester was to get outside of ourselves a bit, to engage with cultures whose assumptions and practices were so different from our own. We’ll still have to do that a bit here (the 1600s were a bit different from the 2000s), but, more often than not, our task will be almost the opposite – to try to get some decent critical distance on the principles that are just assumptions of most modern people.

So much for a thematic sketch. Our procedural goals as a class will be:

Getting the Big Picture: This is a Core Humanities Seminar. Don’t forget that this means it’s a Seminar, meaning that you will have an active responsibility for how our class proceeds -- whether it’s fun or boring, whether it’s productive or a waste of all our time, whether we learn something together or spin our wheels. That’s what the education gurus call discussion-intensive.

The course is reading-intensive. That means first of all that we’ll do a lot of reading together, and the class will be a tedious bore for all of us if only one or two people in the class have read the stuff. Bottom line: Read the stuff. But it also means that we want to read what we read carefully, to follow an argument, to ask difficult questions, to find problems and/or solutions in the text. We want reading to be more than turning the pages.

It’s also writing-intensive. In the course of the semester, you’ll probably write more than thirty (30) pages reflecting on the readings we’ve done. Much of this will come in the form of short, 2-3 page papers on a particular text or problem, and you’ll have the opportunity to re-write the material. Understand that a paper is really a process, not a product. Its a process by which you wrestle with a difficult or interesting dimension of a text and develop your own take on it. You will understand the material better when you write about it. Bottom line: Start early. Write carefully. Come talk to me about it as you write.

Nuts and Bolts: The course will meet 3 times a week, MWF at 10:30. Occasionally, we will assemble with the other sections of the Visions of Freedom program as a large group during the regular class time. Students are expected to attend all sessions. In addition, several hall-related or class-related gatherings will be scheduled outside of classroom hours, and these are mandatory as well. In the event of an absence, the student is responsible for any information or material missed. More than six (6) total absences will lead to failure of the course. I will give you sufficient notice about the final examination; do not make reservations to go home until your examination time is confirmed with me.

We also need to get together one-on-one a minimum of two times in the course of the semester. I’ll be sure to make appointments with each of you twice as we go, but I encourage you to stop by with questions or just to chat during my office hours or any time I’m around. Also, email is a great way to communicate. During the week, I check my email several times a day, and hopefully by mid-semester I’ll be checking on the weekends as well.

Since this is a reading-intensive, writing-intensive, discussion-intensive seminar, your preparation of the reading, contribution to the class discussion, and paper and exam grades will all contribute significantly to your final grade.

In order to ensure the flexibility of the seminar, reading and writing assignments will be announced when appropriate. Major writing assignments will be announced at least a week in advance. All written work turned in to me should be word-processed. Always keep a disk-copy AND a hard copy of all written work. If any assignment should get lost or misplaced in the flurry of paperwork this semester, it is your responsibility to supply another copy immediately.

M 1/15 Introduction

W 1/17 Hobbes Leviathan, chapter 13

F 1/19 Leviathan, chapters 14-15.

M 1/22 Leviathan, chapters 17-18, 21

W 1/24 Leviathan, chapters 29-30, 32, 43

M 1/29 Locke, On Property

W 1/31 Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 2, Book IV, chapter 9

M 2/5 Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1

W 2/7 Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1

M 2/12 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Part I, chapters 3,12

W 2/14 Democracy, Part I, chapters 3,12

M 2/19 Democracy, Part II, Book I, chapters 2,5

W 2/21 Democracy, Part II, Book II, chapters 2,4,5,7

M 2/26 Lincoln, Peoria Speech

W 2/28 Lincoln, Peoria Speech

M 3/12 Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

W 3/14 UTC, continued

M 3/19 Marx, Alienated Labor

W 3/21 Marx, Alienated Labor

M 3/26 Communist Manifesto

W 3/28 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

M 4/2 Weber, continued

W 4/4 Weber/Ivan Ilyich

M 4/9 Ivan Ilyich

Easter Break

W 4/18 John Paul II, Centesimus Annus

M 4/23 JPII

W 4/25 JPII

F 4/27 Visions Faculty Lecture: Dr. Werpehowski, On Catholic Social Thought

M 4/30 Tying it all together…

All students are expected to adhere to the most rigorous standards of academic integrity. Everyone will have the opportunity to read and discuss the university's policy on academic integrity, and there will be sufficient time to clarify any ambiguities with me. Do not assume that you know what is and is not plagiarism. Check the policy, and ask me if you have any questions. For the first offense, students who plagiarize or cheat on any assignment will receive an F either on the assignment or for the whole course, depending upon the gravity of the offense. At that time, a letter will be filed with the student's dean. Second offenses may result in dismissal from the university.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Penguin Classics, ISBN 0-140-43195-0)

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-8795-705-1)

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (HarperCollins, ISBN 0-060-9152-26)

Fehrenbach, ed. Abraham Lincoln: A Documentary Portrait (Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-804-7094-67)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (HarperCollins, ISBN 0-060-8061-84)

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (Penguin Classics, ISBN 0-140-44508-0)

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Regnery, ISBN 0-895-26417-X)

John Paul II, On the One-Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (Centesismus Annus) (USCC/NCCB: 1-555-86436-8)

 

 

One of the touchstone pieces – something that pulls together many of the themes we’ve discussed -- for the Modern course will be Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It’s an amazing book -- melodramatic, to be sure, but also bold and passionate. But it’s a bit long, so, rather than load it all onto you at once, we’ll be reading it as we go, in the course of the semester. We won’t discuss it explicitly in class until after Spring Break, but I think you’ll see that it will flow into our conversations as we go.

So we’ll plan to bite off four chapters a week, and we’ll several pages in the journals each week. The journal should address the relevant portion of UTC in some way throughout, but you should also be thinking across texts. Ask yourself if Hobbes fits here, or whatever. Ask yourself, "How has the story developed in this section?" or "What themes emerge here?" or "Are there points of contact with what we’re discussing in class?" or "Are there points of contact with what we read last semester?" Or use the novel to discuss "Freedom and Racism."