RE200-Topics in Religion: Religious Responses to the Challenge of Suffering, Part I/Part II
Block I: David Gardiner, RE200, Topics in Religion: Religious
Responses to the Challenge of Suffering, Part I
Fulfils one unit of Critical Perspectives:Diverse Cultures and Critiques
Meets one unit of Humanities divisional credit.
Block II: Dan Shaw, RE200, Topics in Religion: Religious Responses
to the Challenge of Suffering, Part II
Fulfils one unit of Critical Perspectives:Diverse Cultures and Critiques
Meets one unit of Humanities divisional credit.
This course will examine ways in which various religions provide a context for understanding and transcending suffering. While not a comprehensive survey of world religions, we will explore how Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Daoist and other traditions identify fundamental forms of sufferingin life and the methods they present for healing suffering. The course will emphasize the role of stories in these traditions, both specific tales and legends that convey significant historic and symbolic meaning, and broadermeta-narratives that provide a general ethos and worldview. Key questions we will address include:
How does the understanding of suffering vary from tradition
to tradition?
What sorts of language (images, metaphors) are used to express insights into
suffering?
What similarities and differences can one detect among the methods proposed
in various religious traditions for addressing the challenges of suffering?
How do communal stories about suffering help make sense of an individual's
suffering?
How might communal stories of suffering be used in the practice of healing?
Why is there so much emphasis on suffering in our religious traditions?
Course materials will include readings from the scriptures of various traditions and secondary writings by contemporary scholars that examine these questions from various perspectives.
The first block will introduce some theories about how stories (in both the specific and general senses noted) function to provide humans meaning, and will investigate stories about suffering mostly from Eastern traditions. The second block will focus primarily on stories about suffering from within Western traditions.
A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together,
with one instructor in each block; separate grades will be given for each
block.