CLASS 0700 - ENVIRONMENTAL CLASSICS

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
The ongoing degradation and destruction of our natural environment, driven to a large extent by human factors, is often defined in terms of the loss of biodiversity, the collapse of ecosystems, and climate change. This course will focus on the attitudes and views espoused by human agents that led to these phenomena. We will study the history of human relationships with the natural environment in antiquity (ca. 2800 BCE- 400CE) to ask how we may usefully approach ancient thinkers and ideas in a way that allows us to gain a thorough understanding of our present situation, and to evaluate contemporary perspectives and strategies. Ancient readers of King Gilgamesh's conquest of nature, of the Old and New Testament, and of the various treatises, poems, and stories by Greek and Roman writers like Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, and Virgil, could not have envisaged the scale of human impact on the earth in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, they were acutely aware that they existed as a part of an ecological system. Trying to make sense of the environment in which they found themselves led to broader questions about our human identity and its role in the natural world. We find in the writings of ancient thinkers many questions that are resurfacing in the current debate on environmental ethics: To what extend does true human flourishing require the consumption of material resources? Should a sense of community extend to the land in which we live? What happens if we envisage our natural environment as an independent moral agent? Are we justified in controlling and dominating parts of our environment, or specific types of living creatures? What are the connections between the well-being of the land and social justice? We will examine these questions against their historical background and explore strategies to negotiate current perspectives in a meaningful way.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Literature General Ed. Requirement, DSAS Phil. Think or Ethics General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Ethical/Policy GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

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