COURSE DESCRIPTION

Drawing on the disciplines that make up the Humanities and the considerable resources at UF in support of the Humanities, this course investigates the very nature and experience of being human. Applying multi-disciplinary approaches, students consider the cost of the good life, examine how people have chosen to live as members of local and global communities, and analyze conceptions and expressions of beauty, power, love, and health.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Students are provided instruction in multi-disciplinary approaches used in the humanities to study the good life through an analysis of juxtaposed works of art, architecture, history, literature, music, religion, and philosophy.

  • Content Objectives: Students will identify how different people from different societies across time conceptualize the good life, what meaning and value individuals ascribe to the lives that they live or want to live, and what are the choices, costs, and benefits of the good life.
  • Communication Objectives: Students will communicate concepts, expressions, and representations of the good life clearly and effectively in written and oral form as stated in the rubrics of the course.
  • Critical Thinking Objectives: Students will analyze the conflicts and tensions that arise between the individual and the community, the normative and the exceptional, culture and nature, needs and wants, pleasure and happiness, short-term benefits and long-term consequences of the pursuit of the good life. They will critically evaluate the costs and benefits of the good life in order to make sound decisions