How do we make sense of who and what we are? Descartes relied on the principle 'I think, therefore I am' and on the idea of a non-deceiving God. Sartre claims we need God because we fear freedom when in reality we 'are condemned to be free'. If we maintain that death is the end (rather than a transition to an after-life), does death deprive our lives of meaning, or imbue them with meaning? For Freud freedom and self-knowledge are illusions since our lives our governed by the unconscious. Should we agree with Marx or MacIntyre who claim respectively that we are communal 'species beings' and 'story-telling animals'? Or is Hobbes right in claiming that human existence is fundamentally a 'war of all against all'?. Through analysis of such ideas you will develop your own approach to thinking independently and responsibly about what it means to be human.

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Readings