This course aims to introduce to students to the rich 
conversation between literature and philosophy through study of 
common themes and preoccupations such as ethics, aesthetics, and 
epistemology. Instructors will build courses around their 
interests and strengths, and content will therefore vary. All 
versions of the class, however, will bring into conversation 
philosophical and literary texts in pursuit of the following 
objectives:

-- Students will be able to identify the way literature 
addresses philosophical issues such as the nature of the mind, 
the art of living, the ethics of behavior.

-- Students will be able to analyze works of literature from 
the standpoint of philosophical concerns.

-- Students will be able to articulate in analysis the literary 
value of philosophical texts.

-- Students will be able to identify both the shared concerns 
of the disciplines of literature and philosophy as well as the 
distinctions between them.

-- Students will understand the long and deep involvement of 
literature and philosophy -- either in a course that surveys the 
history of the conversation between the disciplines or in one 
that focuses on a specific philosophical approach as it provides 
an analytical frame for literary analysis.

-- Students will produce a significant body of written work in 
which they bring together literature and philosophy.

As stated previously, the course is open to many specific 
approaches. The following is an outline of one such approach:

Literature and Philosophy: Ethics 

Texts:  

Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being
The Turn to Ethics, eds. Garber, Hanssen, and Walkowitz
Mapping the Ethical Turn, eds. Davis and Womack
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey  
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas  
J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals
Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers 
Stephen Spielberg, Schindler's List
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing

Course Outline

1. Ethics v. Morality; Responsibility; "Here I am"; Face-to-Face 
encounter

Readings: Genesis 22; Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”; 
Cohen, “Story of Isaac”; Kierkegaard “Fear and Trembling” 

2. Otherness, Subjectivity, Being, Intention, Ambivalence

Readings: Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey  Levinas, 
Otherwise than Being, pp. 1-20, Booth, “Why Ethical Criticism 
Can Never Be Simple” (Davis and Womack, 16-29); Buell “What We 
Talk About When We Talk About Ethics; Butler “Ethical 
Ambivalence” (Garber, Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp.1-28)

3. Topics: Reading and Resistance

Readings: Levinas, Otherwise than Being, pp. 21-45; Schwarz, “A 
Humanistic Ethics of Reading”; Altieri, ”Lyrical Ethics and 
Literary Experience” (Davis and Womack, 3-15; 30-58; Kraft 
“Laurence Sterne and the Ethics of Sexual Difference;” Sedgwick 
“Sexualism and the Citizen of the World: Wycherley, Sterne, 
and Male Homosocial Desire” (handout or reserve)
	
4. Happiness, Morality, Democracy      	

Readings: Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Nussbaum, “Exactly and 
Responsibility” (Davis and Womack, 59-79); Johnson “Using 
People” (Garber, Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp. 47-63); Levinas, 
Otherwise Than Being, pp. 45-59; Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 
pp. 61-97; Mouffe, “Which Ethics for Democracy” (Garber, 
Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp. 85-94); Diamond “Henry James, Moral 
Philosophers, Moralism,” Davis and Womack, pp. 252-70); 
Hilton, “Restless Wrestling: Johnson’s Rasselas” (online)
	

5.  Substitution; Bioethics

Readings: J.M. Coetzee’s Lives of Animals; Levinas, Otherwise 
than Being, pp. 99-127; Klass, “The Best Intentions” (Garber, 
Hanssen, Walkowtiz, pp. 65-83)


6. Biocentrism, Suffering, Analogy/Equivalence

Readings: Gubar, “Poets of Testimony”; Marshall, “Forget the 
Phallic Symbolism, Consider the Snake” (Davis and Womack, pp. 
165-208); Margaret Atwood’s Snake Poems (handout)

7. Witness, Didacticism, Prophecy
			
Readungs/Viewings: Spielberg’s Schindler’s List; Levinas, 
Otherwise Than Being, 131-52; Davis and Womack, “The List is 
Life” (Davis and Womack, pp. 151-64)

8. Feeling, Alienation, Desire, Alterity, Narcissism

Readings: Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers, Lundeen, “Who Has 
the Right to Feel?” (Davis and Womack, pp. 83-92); Sommer, 
“Attitude, Its Rhetoric” (Garber, Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp. 201-
220); Levinas, Otherwise than Being, pp. 153-71, from Michael 
Ondaatje, Leonard Cohen, and Winfried Siemerling, Discoveries of 
the Other: Alterity in the Work of Leonard Cohen, Hubert Aquin, 
Michael Ondaatje, and Nicole Brossard (on reserve)
	

9. Race and Power, Violence, Cosmopolitan vs. National Ethics
 
Readings/Viewings: Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing, Hanssen 
“Ethics of the Other”; Bhabha “On Cultural Choice” (Garber, 
Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp. 127-200); Walker, “Moral Repair and Its 
Limits” (Davis and Womack, pp. 110-27),Walkowitz, “Cosmopolitan 
Ethics” (Garber, Hanssen, Walkowitz, pp. 221-30); Levinas, 
Otherwise than Being, pp. 175-85; Mitchell, “The Violence of 
Public Art: Do the Right Thing” (available online through jstor)
	
10. Sexual Difference, Women and Power

Readings: Aphra Behn’s “History of the Nun”; Irigaray, from 
The Ethics of Sexual Difference, Judges 4 and 5; Joshua 2 
(handouts and bible, any English translation)