COURSE SYLLABUS
SRP/PHL/ENG 435

LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND ECONOMICS:

CRITICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF COMMERCIAL LIFE

GENERAL INFORMATION

Professors:

• Dr. Patrick Murray (Philosophy)
• Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta (English)

Course: SRP/PHL/ENG 435, Call #6193 (SRP), 5438 (PHL), 1871 (ENG)

Class Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:45 PM

Class Room: Business Administration Building (BA), Room 218

Course Dates: Thursday, August 27-Thursday, December 10, 1998

Office Hours:

• MWF 11:00-12:00, T Th 2:30-3:30 (Murray)
• T Th 11:00-12:00, 2:00-4:30 (Fajardo)

Offices:

• Humanities Center (HC) Room 106 (Murray)
• Hitchcock Comunication Arts (CA), Room 304 A (Fajardo)

Office Phones:

• (402) 280 1787 (Murray)
• (402) 280 2522 (Fajardo)

Email:

• jpm@creighton.edu
• fajardo@creighton.edu

WWW Home Pages:

• http://puffin.creighton.edu/phil/murray.htm
• http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/worldlit/fajardo.htm
  

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Drawing on contemporary work in critical theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, and rhetoric, this course examines the relations of philosophy, economics, and literature through an assessment of the representation of economic phenomena in selected literary and philosophical texts. The course will explore 1) how an analysis of such texts can reveal underlying social forms such as private property, the commodity, wage labor, and capital; and 2) how these ethically consequential forms tie in with problems of poverty, unequal distributions of income and wealth, overconsumption and depletion of natural resources, competition and conflict, and social instability.

TEXTS

• Patrick Murray, ed., Reflections on Commercial Life: An Anthology of Classic Texts from Plato to the Present (Routledge, 1997)
• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Norton Critical Edition, 1990)
• Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (Viking Critical Edition, 1996)
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Viking Critical Edition, 1997)
• Miscellaneous handouts
  

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1) Writing Portfolio (70%)

Students will be required to write a minimum of 2-3 pages (approx. 250-300 words per page) before each class session. The writing should be in essay style and addressed to discussion of the issues raised by the readings assigned for that particular class. While the precise emphasis of the writing will be up to each student, the instructors will provide a variety of questions intended to motivate thought and reflection. Students are invited to answer any of those questions and to formulate and pursue questions of their own. All writing however must be clearly relevant to the assigned readings and the concerns of the class. All essays should be typewritten and must be brought to class and submitted to the instructors whenever required. At midterm and the end of the term, students must submit the entire portfolio of their writings for evaluation.

2) In-Class Work and Participation (30%)

In addition to the writing portfolio, the instructors will assess and grade each student's overall involvement, development, and accomplishment in the course. This grade will take into account all aspects of a student's performance, including attendance, class participation, class preparation, contributions, effort, attentiveness, interest, improvement, responsibility, etc.

3) Make-up Work, Attendance and Other Policies

Make-ups/extensions for a missed deadline will only be given in cases of documented serious illness or other valid, non-frivolous excuses such as documented participation in official University sports or academic/service events (it will be up to the instructors to determine and decide on the acceptability of an excuse). An attendance measurement will be calculated equal to the percentage of total class time attended. The course grade may not exceed that percentage (i.e. if the student attended only 75% of the class time, the course grade may not be higher than 75 or C, on a 0-100 point scale where 90-100 = A, 87-89 = B+, 80-86 = B, 77-79 = C+, 70-76 = C, 60-69 = D, and 0-59 = F). Notice also that, at the discretion of the instructors, any student missing more than 30% of the total class time may fail the course. All students in the class are expected to observe the University's guidelines on student conduct as described in Creighton University's Student Handbook (see "Code of Conduct," and especially the section on "Academic Misconduct" dealing with problems of plagiarism, cheating, etc.).

READING AND DISCUSSION SCHEDULE

Click here for Course's Guiding Questions and Concerns

(click on the individual subjects for further study questions)

Thu Aug 27

• Introduction
  

Tue Sep 01

• Genesis 1-3, Tantalus, Midas, (handouts)
  

Thu Sep 03

• Selections from Plato's Republic, Book I
  

Tue Sep 08

• Selections from Aristotle's Politics, Book I
  

Thu Sep 10

• Selections from St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, Chapters XXX (wealth) and CXXXIII (poverty) and Summa Theologiae, Questions 66 (theft and robbery) and 77 (cheating, buying and selling)
  

Tue Sep 15

• Dante's Inferno Cantos XVII (usury) and XIX (simony) (handout); Ezra Pound's Canto XLV (usury) (handout); selections from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, Questions 78 (usury) and 100 (simony)
  

Thu Sep 17

• Selections from Friedrich Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Sixth Letter)
  

Tue Sep 22

• Charles Dickens, Hard Times
  

Thu Sep 24

• Charles Dickens, Hard Times
  

Tue Sep 29

• Selections from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government ("Of Property")
  

Thu Oct 01

• Selections from David Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary ("Of Commerce" and "Of Refinement in the Arts")
  

Tue Oct 06

• Selections from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, I: 1-2, V: 1
  

Thu Oct 08

• John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy ("Of the Grounds and Limits of Laisser-Faire or Non-Interference Principle")
  

Tue Oct 13

• Selections from Karl Marx's Capital I:1-2, 4 (pp. 256-264, 274-282)
  

Thu Oct 15

• Selections from Karl Marx's Capital II:4, 6 (pp. 282-291)
  

Tue Oct 20

• FALL BREAK
  

Thu Oct 22

• FALL BREAK
  

Tue Oct 27

• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
  

Thu Oct 29

• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
  

Tue Nov 03

• Selections from Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class ("Pecuniary Emulation" and "Conspicuous Consumption")

Thu Nov 05

• Selections from Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ("The Spirit of Capitalism")

Tue Nov 10

• Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
  

Thu Nov 12

• Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
  

Tue Nov 17

• Selections from Simone Weil's Oppression and Liberty ("Sketch of Contemporary Social Life")
  

Thu Nov 19

• Peter Taylor, "The Old Forest" (handout)
  

Tue Nov 24

• Selections from Daniel Bell's "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism"

Thu Nov 26

• THANKSGIVING BREAK
  

Tue Dec 01

• Selections from Jean Baudrillard's Selected Writings ("Consumer Society")
  

Thu Dec 03

• John Updike, "A&P" (handout)
  

Tue Dec 08

• Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron" (handout); Ralph Ellison, "King of the Bingo Game" (handout)
  

Thu Dec 10

• Conclusion. Evaluations (bring a #2 pencil)