THEO-078: The Human Place in the Cosmos
Professor: Diane Yeager
In both its physical and metaphysical dimensions, the question of our “place” in relation to the “world” or “nature” becomes urgent as we argue about anthropocentrism, weigh our individual and social interests against the planetary whole in which we participate, and recalibrate (even reinvent) the values and value hierarchies that ground our decisions. This module will look at Lynn White’s famous attack on (alleged) Christian anthropocentrism, Max Scheler’s The Human Place in the Cosmos, Erazin Kohák’s “A Human’s Place in Nature.” the film The Journey of the Universeproduced by the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, James Cameron’s film Avatar, and Heidegger’s “The Question concerning Technology.” Students will write three brief critical studies (choosing three of five options) and a final analysis relating this module to their work in other modules of this multi-disciplinary study of climate change.
