Suffering the
World: Ancients and Moderns –
Literature,
Religion and Philosophy.
Syllabus for
English 386 and HTH 300
What -- if anything -- does suffering signify? Are
we justly punished for our sins and, even if so, were they sins we could have
avoided? Is bodily suffering purely destructive to the human spirit or can it
be redemptive? Can we comprehend, much less accept, the pain, individual and
collective, that seems at times to fill the world? Is suffering just another
word for physical pain, or is suffering an experience distinct from
the experience of pain? These are ancient questions
that humans have never stopped asking, and no two imaginative writers or
philosophers have come to the same conclusions. We shall read the texts and
debate the issues of suffering and cosmic justice as they have been argued in
imaginative and philosophical texts.
Imaginative texts will include: the Book of Job, the Book of Ecclesiastes (Qohelet), Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, the Gospels
according to Mark and John, Voltaire’s Candide, the “Grand Inquisitor”
section from Dostoevsky's The
Brothers Karamazov, and The Plague by Albert Camus. Philosophical texts will include:
Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Suffering of the World,” selections from Friedrich
Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals, Simone
Weil’s essay “Affliction” and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain.
Required Textbooks ordered at QC Bookstore:
Raymond Scheindlin, trans. and ed.: The Book of Job (WW Norton; ISBN-10:
0393319008)
The New
Sophocles: The
Theban Plays. Ed. Bernard Knox, Trans. Robert Fagles. (Penguin;
ISBN-10: 0140444254)
Voltaire: Candide,
or Optimism. Translated
by John Butt. (Penguin; ISBN-10: 0140440046)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov.
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; ISBN-10:
0374528373)
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy and On
the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Francis Golffing. (Anchor; ISBN-10:
0385092105)
Albert Camus: The
Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert (Vintage; ISBN-10: 0679720219)
Other materials by Leibniz, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Weil and Scarry will be posted on BlackBoard.
Required
Writing
Term paper of 10 pages exploring your own approach
to the problematic of suffering.
Final examination on the required
readings.
Required
Participation
This is a seminar and not a lecture course.
You are expected to have the readings done for each class and to have your own
questions about or opinions on them. Class discussion is required and
will be graded.
Class
Time
Class will meet Wednesdays from 1:40 to 4:30 pm
with a 20 minute break.
Tentative
Schedule
January 28: Introduction to the course.
Prelude to the Book of Job: the creation myth of the “fall” and the various
theodicies in the Hebrew Bible.
February 4: The Book of
Job
February 11: The Book of Job continued.
February 18: Qohelet (Ecclesiastes).
February 25: Sophocles: The Oedipus at Colonos
March 4: The Gospel according to Mark:
The problem of suffering in the messianic context. (Please read also the Passion narrative in
The Gospel according to John)
March 11: Voltaire: Candide; Leibniz: Theodicy
March 18: Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, Book V: Pro and Contra
March 25: Dostoevsky: Book VI: The Russian Monk
April 1: Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy (Silenus; Dream
and Intoxication; The institution of Tragedy); also read Schopenhauer: “On the
Suffering of the World.”
April 8 and 15: Spring Vacation
April 22: Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals, Essay III
April 29: Albert Camus: The Plague
May 5: Simone Weil: “Afflliction” and Elaine
Scarry: The Body in Pain, chapter 1
May 12: General discussion on the problem of
suffering.
May 19: Takehome finals returned; Final discussion