E102 B || Winter 2013 || Thinking about Self ||

11:00 am – 12:20 pm Tuesdays & Thursdays in PCB 1200 ||

A. Van Sant || ajvansan@uci.edu ||

Class Mailing List: 23394-W13@classes.uci.edu

Office: 144KH

Office Hours: Tuesday, 12:30-2:30 (extended if students are there)

What is the self?  A simple yet very difficult question.  The “self” can be defined as “a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness.” On the other hand, we speak of “a former self” or say we feel like “our old selves,” as if the self varies from one time to another. In this course we will read 3 fictions that centralize the representation of a self—John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678 (a spiritual allegory), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, 1719 (a fictional travel account), and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, 1741, (a novel written in letters). We will also examine illustrations of these fictions to ask what kind of self is delineated in them.  In addition, we will consider some philosophical treatments of our question by Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus), Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume (selections from the web).
            Students will write a very short paper and a longer paper and take a final.  Students will also write informally to discover their own thinking.