This year's Philosophy Honors Seminar will be focused on Philosophy that impacts our lives.  The lectures will be (broadly) related to the topic of beliefless spirituality, which is practice of some form of spirituality that is not grounded in belief in the relevant spiritual content connected to that practice.  This will lead us to an exploration of the nature of a collection of other states, such as trust, hope, curiosity, wonder, and imagination.  These can ground spiritual practice, but we'll also explore their intrinsic nature and how they impact our lives more generally.  Finally, we'll look at the different forms beliefless spirituality can take:  with engagement in prayer, listening, rituals, etc.  This course will be interdisciplinary in that we will also study sources from psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science.

 

For your 20-page senior theses, you can write on any Philosophical topic focused on Philosophy that impacts your life.  This is broad, and of course it could be construed to include all of Ethics, all of Social Philosophy, all of Aesthetics, etc.  But what I'm hoping is that, in your last semester at USC, you'll think, "what is some way that Philosophy has impacted (or could impact) my life, or the lives of those I care about?  What's some topic that's important to me, and how can Philosophy's take on it make a real difference for me?"  Work on these theses will happen collaboratively throughout the semester in the workshop component of our course.