Below you’ll find a detailed list of the readings for each week. This list will include links to PDF documents that supplement the textbooks for this course. You can read these PDFs online, or print them to bring to class. The list of textbooks, both required and recommended, can be found here.
Week 1
Augustine - Confessions (selections) (PDF)
Week 2
Montaigne, Essays ("Note to the Reader", I.8, "On Idleness", II.1, "Of the inconstancy of our actions", II.37, "On the resemblance of children to their fathers", III.2, "On repenting")
Also read this essay, not in your book: II.18, "Of giving the lie" [PDF]
Can’t Get Enough?
Read (in this order): III.13, "On experience", I.20, "To philosophize is to learn to die", III.5, "On some lines of Virgil"
Week 3
Shakespeare, Hamlet; "Sonnet 35" (PDF)
Can’t Get Enough?
Read some more sonnets.... start with Sonnet 23 and go forward.
Week 4
Descartes, Meditations, Meditations 1-3
Descartes, Discourse on Method, Books 1-2 (PDF)
Can’t Get Enough?
Read the rest of the Meditations! Then read the rest of the Discourse!
Week 5
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 1.1-3; Book 2.1, 2.27 (PDF selections)
Can’t Get Enough?
You might read Hume’s reflections on personal
identity, which we can see as a response to Locke: Treatise on Human Understanding (PDF selections)
Week 6
Rousseau, Confessions (Books 1-2; then pp. 86-88; 269-271; 344-349)
Can’t Get Enough?
Read as much of the Confessions as you can!
Week 7
Reading: Nietzsche, The Gay Science (’Preface to the Second Edition’; sections 1, 54, 76, 78, 91, 107-11, 113, 121, 125, 179, 255, 270, 276-77, 284, 285, 289, 290, 295, 299, 301, 307, 317, 335, 340, 341, 343, 344, 346, 347, 354, 371, 373, 381, 383
Can’t Get Enough?
In addition to the above fragments, read all of Books 3 and 4.
Week 8
Freud, The Ego and the Id (Freud Reader pp. 629-658); Civilization and its Discontents (Chs. 2-3, 5-6; Freud Reader pp. 722-742; 747-756)
Can’t Get Enough?
Week 9
Woolf, To The Lighthouse
Week 10
Proust, In Search of Lost Time (selections)
List of Proust passages to read (PDF)
very cursory summary of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
selections from Vol. 1, Swann’s Way (PDF)
selections from Vol. 5, The Captive and The Fugitive (PDF)
selections from Vol. 6, Time Regained (PDF)
If you'd like to purchase any of the Proust volumes on Amazon, here are the links to the correct editions:
Vol. 1: Swann’s Way
Vol. 5: The Captive and The Fugitive
Vol. 6: Time Regained