Semester:
Fall
Offered:
2023
How can the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky help us think differently about everyday moral dilemmas that are often seen as the prerogative of religion, politics, or philosophy?
This course considers how Tolstoy and Dostoevsky take up moral inquiry in their fiction, introduces students to philosophical texts that informed their major fiction, and asks why the novel as a literary genre may be a good forum for the discussion of ethics. We will read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and The Brothers Karamazov, as well as selected texts from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others.
See also: Ethics & Civics