POL 297 - Special Topics in Political Philosophy

FDR: SS2 (except for 297H)
Credits: 3 in fall and winter, 4 in spring
Prerequisites: First-year or sophomore standing or instructor consent. A seminar in political science for students at the introductory or intermediate level. Topic, hour, and instructor are announced prior to registration. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topic for Spring 2012:

POL 297H-01: A Course About Nothing (4). Prerequisite: One 200-level course in any discipline. Open to all students, all majors. A study and cultivation of various states of mind – critical thinking, reading, writing, reasoning, imagining, reflecting, wondering, contemplating, meditating, dreaming, ruminating, among them – through which we apprehend and comprehend why “critical thinking skills” is one of various modes of thought, perhaps dependent on other activities of mind for its own existence and direction.  An introduction to contemplative studies (an emerging academic discipline) that includes science, neuroscience, and a philosophical-political inquiry of nothing (of those “things” that supposedly aren’t: selflessness, emptiness, negation, and freedom).  We learn a consistent practice of meditation, yoga (Bikram and others, as well a variety of alternative mind-body athletics), stillness, mindfulness, breathing, and joy that guide our academic endeavors, careers, family, and solitude.  The principal book is Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with excerpts from Epstein’s Thoughts without a Thinker, Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis, Hanson and Mendius’ Buddha’s Brain, Pieper’s Happiness and Contemplation, and Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams. (HU) Velásquez. Spring 2012