Philosophy of Love & Pleaure

[owl_of_minerva]

A non f-locked post, just for fun.

This summer I'm teaching an introductory freshman course on philosophy; it's a required core course, so I have a lot of non-majors. I've taught this course a number of times before, and I've decided to totally revamp the syllabus. Instead of focusing on the nature of the soul & freedom, I'm going to focus on love & pleasure.

So far, I have the following (mostly in excerpts): Plato, Phaedrus and Symposium; some Biblical bits from OT & NT; Augustine in excerpt (any specific recommendations are good!) ; Aquinas in excerpt on the nature of love & friendship (already know which bits I'll use); Descartes in excerpt from Passions of the Soul; a little Freud (from Civilization & its Discontents?); Kierkegaard excerpts from Diary of a Seducer and Works of Love.  Anything obvious I'm leaving out?  Any further suggestions?   Keep in mind this is a very very very intro-level course, and since it's only over 5 weeks, students don't have that much time to absorb.   Given the heavy Christian emphasis (which is inevitable given I'm required to include medieval philosophy), any commentary on love from non-Christian sources would be great, too. Is there any Buddhist stuff on love or pleasure that would be fun?

Comments

[owl-of-minerva.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree with you on both counts (and I usually teach parts of the introduction to The Second Sex in this course, actually). It's just that if we spend time on physical love in the class, I want it to be as crystal clear as possible, so that students aren't mystified & I don't run into any unfortunate misunderstandings.

(Freshmen are capable of very bizarre thought processes)

[eve-prime.livejournal.com]

Unfortunate misunderstandings are bad.