2010 Fall – The Possibility of Meaning in a Culture of Possibilities
We live in a culture of endless possibilities.
Course Description (See below for audio of past classes)
The University of Florida offers several hundred majors, Burger King continues to let you have it your way, and if your local shopping mall can’t satisfy your shopping addiction, the internet will. “Twenty-four/seven” the web invites you to browse, shop, find a date, have a cheap laugh, plan your future, or wallow in an endless glut of information till your brain goes numb. There are now endless possibilities for fashion, for body modification, for spending money, for cable television channels, for gaming, for YouTube videos, for media devices, for sex, for spiritual exploration, for distraction, and for everything else.
How shall we understand this culture of “incessant choosing,” and how shall we live in it?
By bringing intellectual history, literature, and social science together with Christian reflection, this class will offer a sympathetic attempt to understand our current cultural setting and to explore the possibility of finding meaning in a culture of possibilities.
Offered weekly on Wednesdays, period five (11:45 – 12:35) beginning
September 1st in the classroom at the Christian Study Center.
Taught by Dr. Richard V. Horner, Executive Director
Audio from Previous Sessions
- Session 1, September 1, 2010: Introduction – What Frames What?
- Session 2, September 8, 2010: A Culture of Possibilities Frames Our Lives
- Session 3, September 15, 2010: The Story of the Modern Mind Over the Past Four Centuries
- Session 4, September 22, 2010: From Nietzsche to Foucault: The Space for Possibilities
- Session 5, September 29, 2010: The Place of Contradiction Between the Absence of Meaning and Life as Lived
- Session 6, October 6, 2010: Finding the Absence of Meaning in the University
- Session 7, October 13, 2010: The Body as a Site for Exploring the Possible
- Session 8, October 20, 2010: Body Modification and Possibilities
- Session 9, October 27, 2010: Body Modification and Redemption
- Session 10, November 3, 2010: Michel Foucault and C. S. Lewis on the Possibility of Natural Sex