First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Happiness, Tranquility, and Mysticism

Semester and Year	FA 2012
Course Number	FIRST-UG80
Section	001
Instructor	Bradley Lewis
Days	Tue,Thu
Time	11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Notes/Restrictions

Open to Gallatin first-year students only.

Description

After a century studying mental disease and pathology, contemporary psychologists have recently charted a “new” research agenda devoted to human happiness, flourishing, and positive emotions. This new science of happiness deploys modern quantitative and neuroimaging methods towards the goal of discovering the secrets of human well being. Already, this new science has many critics and adherents. In important ways, the emerging research harkens back to seminal work of William James on the Varieties of Religious Experience . At the same time it is rediscovering and reinvigorating ancient philosophical and religious traditions that go back for millennia. This seminar takes advantage of the renewed interest in the good life to compare and contrast modern “positive psychology” with its critics and with other wisdom traditions. Authors we read include Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, Lyubomirsky, Freud, Maslow, Ehrenreich, James, Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus, Aurelius, Seneca, Montaigne, Origen, Saint Teresa of Avila, Merton, Buddha, Dogen, and Nhat Hanh.

Syllabus

FIRST-UG80

Course Type

First-Year Program: Interdisciplinary Seminars (FIRST-UG)