 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0618-1068-07 | Guided Reading: Descartes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The primary aim of the 'Guided reading' course is to provide the students with various reading and writings skills required analyze and evaluate to philosophical texts. Under the supervision of the course instructors, the students engage in a close and careful reading of one of the most central texts of modernity, Descartes’ “Meditations.” Through a close analysis of this canonical text, followed by a class discussion, the students are well acquainted with the foundations of Cartesian philosophy. The main goal of the course, however, is to advance the students’ abilities of reading and interpreting various forms of philosophical arguments, and of expressing themselves clearly in both writing and speaking. Besides its intrinsic merits, Descartes’ “Meditations” also serves to exemplify various strategies and lines of argument employed in other philosophical texts as well. The course focuses on exposing the logical and argumentative structures of the text, its implicit assumptions and commitments, as well as its rhetoric, its appeal to linguistic devices, and the various contexts wherein it can be posited.
Course requirements: attendance (mandatory); weekly reading and participation in class; short writing assignments throughout the semester.
The course ends with an exam. The final grade is composed of the final exam (40%), and the grades awarded for the short writing assignments (60%).
Course requirements: attendance (mandatory); weekly reading and participation in class; short writing assignments throughout the semester.
The course ends with an exam. The final grade is composed of the final exam (40%), and the grades awarded for the short writing assignments (60%).