Love, Friendship and Beauty

The course explores history’s philosophical and literary traditions of love, friendship and beauty. The course focuses on key figures from Ancient Greece to the Kyoto School of Japan spanning over two thousand years. The course aims to broaden the student’s understanding of well-known philosophical and literary works.

Every tradition will be studied in its historical context, for example, the Abbasid Caliphate’s Graeco-Arabic translation movement and how it influenced the philosophical and literary production of the Islamic thinkers studied in the course. The literature on love, friendship and beauty is vast and has shaped cultures to a great extent, be it through architecture, societal norms, or politics. As such, many of the figures to be studied in the course will be taught to be representatives of their traditions, not individual poets or philosophers.

In other words, the course proceeds with the understanding that no literature can be separated from its context; as Gadamer explained, there is no pure text. By studying various traditions over two thousand years, students will gain a deeper appreciation for some of the greatest literary traditions of the past.

The course is taught in a linear fashion, so that students can assess the impacts of the previous historical traditions on later traditions, i.e., how certain themes are adopted, refined, etc. This strategy aims to give the students the knowledge and background to understand the primary texts when undergoing assessments.