LS 733 - Philosophy of Culture and the American Dream

(3.00 cr.)

The philosophy of culture examines the following questions: what defines culture? Where do we start in thinking about cultural difference? What is the role of the symbolic world-mythic, artistic, religious, linguistic, scientific-in determining a community of humans? How can culture be seen as liberating or as imprisoning? This course examines the difference between human beings and other animals in an attempt to define human being as a cultural or cultured being. It focuses on the notion that human culture is centered on the human capacity for symbolic action, and that human cultures are formed around a common grounding in a set of myths.