COURSE Code: PHIL 025
3 Credits
Course Description
What is this thing called love?
Erotic love and sexual passion. Brotherly love and love of all human kind. Love of beauty and ideas. Love of God. This course will explore these forms of love from the core perspective of another form of love, philosophy, love of wisdom.
Questions examined include: Can we define love, or does it exist, like beauty is said to, in the eye of the beholder? Are there some people and things we should love or are we free to love whom and how we choose? Is love a feeling that we ?fall into? or a life choice we make for good or bad reasons? What are the sources of various beliefs about love - religion, myth, cultural tradition, science, personal experience, reasoned consideration?
How do these sources influence the beliefs themselves? And what about sex and lust? What are the natures and purposes of various forms of sexual desire? Must sex be related to love? Is it natural in all its forms, only in some, or is it entirely a product of culture or of choice?
Since in this course we deal explicitly with mature and sometimes controversial themes, it is important that students come to class with an open mind.
