FAITH, DOUBT AND REASON II:

The Quest for Community

FYS 102-28/29
Spring 2020

Instructor: Dr. Brent Hege

Office: Jordan 202G
Email: bhege@butler.edu
Office Phone: x8274

Office Hours:
MW 12:00-1:00
and by appointment
(Please let me know by email if you will be attending my office hours)

We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success,” defined
monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget
that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not
grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management
techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its
compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.

- Chris Hedges

Introduction to the Course

In this course we will build on last semester’s work of thinking critically about faith, doubt, reason, and
the meaning of life, to consider the issues of communities and their foundations, social justice and ethics,
how communities can go wrong, and what it means to pursue meaningful lives together in a just,
flourishing community. We will explore these issues with the help of biblical, philosophical,
psychological, theological, political, and literary texts to guide our conversations and deliberations on the
importance of community in contemporary society.

The Liberal Arts

The liberal arts are a noble and venerable approach to education that privilege curiosity, passion, wisdom,
and learning for its own sake. The liberal arts invite students to embark on a life-long journey of
discovery and growth and train them to think critically and creatively and to live and act deliberately and
responsibly in the world. In this course we will ponder some of the essential questions posed by human
existence: What does it mean to be human? What are some central features of human nature? What sense
can we make of the world and our place in it? What is justice? What is freedom? How are we to act in the
world? What are the possibilities for authentic community? What is the deeper meaning of our common
life together?

Based on our definition of the liberal arts and the course’s situation within that tradition, we can identify
five hallmarks of a liberal arts education that will be cultivated in this course:

 The opportunity to immerse oneself in the study of the great figures, movements and ideas of the
past and present
 The challenge to expand one’s horizons and experiences beyond the familiar
 The demand for clear and effective communication of ideas
 2

 The responsibility to enrich and enhance the lives of individuals and communities and to work for
a better world
 The invitation to find joy and inspiration in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding

Course Objectives

In this course, students will continue their journey toward becoming liberally educated persons. To that
end, the following crafts will be practiced and honed in this seminar:

 Thinking: In his famous essay, “What Is Enlightenment?” the German philosopher, Immanuel
Kant, issued a radical call to modern persons: Sapere aude! [Roughly translated, “Dare to
think!”]. The liberal arts train and encourage persons to think, to reason, to ask insightful
questions, to weigh evidence, to construct arguments, and to take personal responsibility for
informed leadership in the global community. In this course, students will continue to develop
skills in thinking more creatively and critically, weighing and presenting evidence more carefully,
and constructing and making arguments more effectively.

 Reading: The written word is the foundation of Western intellectual life. This course is designed
around several classic texts in the Western intellectual tradition, and a large portion of the course
will involve reading and understanding texts from a variety of perspectives in a wide range of
genres, including biblical texts, fiction, speeches, political treatises, and philosophy. The liberal
arts train and encourage persons to read texts critically and creatively and to engage texts on a
variety of levels, including emotionally, cognitively, and existentially. In this course, students
will continue to develop skills in reading texts more critically and creatively and in understanding
more fully the texts and their authors, contexts, and influences on the past and the present.

 Writing: Developing skills in effective communication is an essential component of a liberal arts

education. One primary means of communication is writing, which can take several different
stylistic forms. In this course, students will continue to develop skills in writing more clearly,
concisely, and appropriately in an academic style.

 Speaking: Speaking is another primary means of communication, and in this course students will
continue to develop skills in presenting ideas more clearly, concisely, and appropriately and in
engaging one another in thoughtful, respectful, and fruitful conversation on a number of
important and challenging topics in the context of seminar discussions. Students will also take
more responsibility for engaging one another in dialogue through small groups, leadership of
class discussions, and a final group presentation.

 Faith, Doubt, and Reason in Community: Finally, in this course students will be asked to think
deeply about some of the most basic and enduring questions in the Western intellectual tradition:
What is community? How are communities formed and how do they progress? What is the ideal
community? How can communities degenerate and fail? How do faith, doubt, and reason
contribute to the formation and preservation of community? What role do we have as liberally
educated women and men to contribute to our communities, to critique them, to shape them, and
to lead them?

Required Texts

Available for purchase in the Butler Bookstore:

 3

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale: A Novel. New York: Anchor, 1998. ISBN 9780385490818

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated and edited by James Strachey, with an
introduction by Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 1989. ISBN 9780393301588

The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. New Revised Standard Version. Augmented 3rd ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 97801952888031

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Centennial ed. New York: Plume, 2003. ISBN 9780452284234

Plato, Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube and revised by C. D. C. Reeve. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1992. ISBN 9780872201361

Additional Readings

The following required texts are available in the Course Documents section of Canvas or are listed in the
schedule of class meetings with a hyperlink:

 Martin Luther King, Jr., “I See the Promised Land”

 Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
 John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice,” in Frederik Kaufman, Life’s Hardest Questions: An
Introduction to Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010, 43-49.
 The U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights
 Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron,” in Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House. New York:
Dell, 1973, 7-13.
 Kurt Vonnegut, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” in Vonnegut, Welcome to the
Monkey House. New York: Dell, 1973, 284-298.
 Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” in Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House.
New York: Dell, 1973, 27-45.

Course Requirements

 Reflections (10% of course grade). Each student will write a brief reflection of at least 100 words
on each day’s reading and class discussion. Reflections will be submitted to Canvas by the end of
the day for which they are due. Reflections are not assigned a letter grade; they are simply
marked complete or incomplete. More information about the reflections is available on Canvas.

 Short Writing Assignments (20% of course grade). There will be two short writing assignments,
each at least 4 full double-spaced pages long (not including Works Cited section, if applicable).
The “Mechanics” grade on the first draft of the formal paper is also figured into the short write
grade. Short writing assignments are posted in the “Paper Assignments” section of Canvas.

 Formal Paper (10% of course grade). One formal paper of at least 6 full double-spaced pages
(not including Works Cited section, if applicable) is required. There are two options for the
formal paper, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end of the semester. Students
will pick which formal paper they will write and will submit the first draft and final draft by the
dates listed below. Students will only complete one of the formal paper assignments, not both. A

1
You should have your Bible from last semester.
 4

first draft is to be submitted to the instructor for comment before the final draft is due. Formal
paper assignments are posted in the “Paper Assignments” section of Canvas.

 Group Leadership of Discussion (5% of course grade). Each group will sign up to lead one
class discussion of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Groups will be responsible for the entire
class meeting and may choose to engage in small group work, writing prompts, debates, games,
role playing, or whatever task will successfully encourage a dynamic discussion of the text and its
main themes.

 Group Presentation (20% of course grade). More information below.

 Final Paper (15% of course grade). The final paper will be a longer synthesis of the topics and
themes of the semester’s work and must be at least 10 full double-spaced pages long (not
including Works Cited section). The assignment is posted in the “Paper Assignments” section of
Canvas. The final paper will be due by midnight on Wednesday, April 29th.

 Participation (20% of course grade). Developing oral communication skills is an important

objective of the course. Students will be graded on the quality of participation in regular class
meetings. Quality participation means contributing to the discussion in a meaningful, insightful,
and informed way on a consistent basis. Rubrics for determining the participation grade are listed
below.

 Extra Credit. There will be one opportunity for extra credit this semester. Students submitting
the extra credit assignment will have their lowest short write grade dropped, except in cases of a
failing grade due to plagiarism or failure to complete an assignment. The assignment is posted in
the “Paper Assignments” section of Canvas. The extra credit assignment will be due by the end of
the day on the last day of class, Friday, April 24th.

Group Presentation

At the beginning of the semester, students will be assigned to groups that will meet periodically
throughout the semester both in class and outside of class. The purpose of these groups is to work
together on the final presentation.

At the periodic meetings throughout the semester (to be scheduled by the members of the group), the
groups will discuss the course texts and will work on creating an ideal community. They will pay
particular attention to such matters as government, education, economics, religion, peace, and human
flourishing. They will also pay attention to how faith, doubt and reason will contribute to the foundation,
preservation, and progress of their community. At the end of the semester each group will present their
community to the class.

The final presentation may take any form the group decides is appropriate. It may include features such as
PowerPoint, videos, short films, handouts, skits, group participation, etc. (N.B. More creative and
comprehensive presentations will very likely earn higher grades.) The only requirements are as follows:

 The community must be comprised of human beings

 Presentations must be at least 30 minutes long and no more than 40 minutes long, to allow time
for discussion (failure to meet the minimum length will result in a lower grade for each member
of the group)
 Presentations must be divided equally among the members of the group
 5

For the group presentation, students will be graded individually on creativity, engagement, insight,
incorporation of the course themes, and responses to questions. Students will only be graded on the actual
presentation; efforts in organizing meetings, leadership of those meetings, or work on the project outside
of class cannot be taken into account in the grading.

In addition to the regular meetings of the group, each group will meet with the instructor after Spring
Break to give a report of their progress and to discuss the final presentation. It will be a good idea to have
a general sense of the community to be created and a skeletal outline of the presentation to bring to this
meeting. A sign-up sheet will be circulated in class for each group to sign up for a meeting.

More about Papers

In order to practice good environmental stewardship, all written work will be submitted via Canvas and
returned via email. All papers must be double spaced in 12-pt Times New Roman with 1” margins.
Grammar and mechanics are taken into account when grading all papers.

Penalties for Lateness

Students are expected to submit their assignments on time. This means that assignments will be submitted
to the instructor before the class meeting on the due date. Assignments submitted late without prior
permission of the instructor will be penalized 1/3 of a letter grade for every 24 hours they are late. For
example, an assignment that would have earned a B will earn a B- if submitted one day late, a C+ if
submitted two days late, a C if submitted three days late, etc. Assignments submitted more than 7 days
late will receive a failing grade. The 24-hour period begins at the beginning of the class meeting on the
due date for the assignment.

Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Plagiarism is the use of another person’s words or ideas without proper acknowledgment. It is a very
serious ethical matter and will be handled accordingly. In this course the minimum penalty for plagiarism
is failure of the assignment while egregious plagiarism can result in failure of the course or worse, so it is
important to understand what counts as plagiarism and to avoid it at all costs. All written work must be
the student’s own work; this means that no one else has edited or rewritten any portion of a paper. For
further information on plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty, please see the Student
Handbook section on Academic Integrity: https://www.butler.edu/student-handbook/academic-integrity.
Students are strongly encouraged to watch the tutorial and take the quiz available on the Library’s
website: http://libguides.butler.edu/plagiarism

Inclusive Language

Language shapes perception, as we assign properties and qualities to things based on the language we use.
Because the human race is a diverse family, language that favors one sex, gender, race, class, sexual
orientation, or national status, or suggests that one sex, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, or national
status represents all of humanity will not be accepted in this course. Also, as we will see in the course of
our work this semester, it is equally inappropriate to use sex-specific language for God. For that reason,
students are expected to use inclusive language in all work for this course. Unless directly quoting an
original text, please refrain from using sex-specific pronouns to refer to God or to human beings. The
following is a partial list of exclusive language and suggested inclusive alternatives:
 6

Human Beings: God:

Man – human being(s), people, persons, men and women He - God

Mankind – humanity, humankind Him - God
He – they, one His – God’s
Him – them, one Himself - Godself
His – their/theirs, one/one’s Himself – themselves, oneself

To enforce this practice of using inclusive language, writing assignments containing excessive exclusive
language will be penalized one-third of a letter grade. Please proofread your papers to ensure that no
exclusive language remains. If a student consistently fails to use inclusive language, the instructor will
send a reminder to that student, including a reference to this portion of the syllabus.

If a student has a valid argument for not following these academic conventions and continuing to use
exclusive language, that student may make their case to the instructor.

More about Participation

Seminars are dependent on active participation from all students for their success. To that end, students
will have read all of the assigned texts before each class and will come to class prepared to discuss and
process the material. Active participation is an integral part of students’ learning experience and is
reflected in the participation portion of the final grade. The rubrics for the participation grade are as
follows:

 Rarely participating in class discussions will earn a participation grade of D.

 Occasionally participating in class discussions will earn a participation grade of C.
 Participation in most class discussions will earn a participation grade of B.
 Regular participation in each class discussion will earn a participation grade of A.

Missing classes will result in a lower participation grade, regardless of the quality of participation in class
discussions.

Student Disability Services

It is the policy and practice of Butler University to make reasonable accommodations for students with
properly documented disabilities. Written notification from Student Disability Services is required. If you
are eligible to receive an accommodation and would like to request it for this course, please discuss it
with me and allow one week advance notice. Otherwise, it is not guaranteed that the accommodation can
be received on a timely basis. Students who have questions about Student Disability Services or who
have, or think they may have, a disability (psychiatric, attentional, learning, vision, hearing, physical,
medical, etc.) are invited to contact Student Disability Services for a confidential discussion in Jordan
Hall 136 or by phone at extension 9308.

Tips for Success

 Although attendance will not be taken, regular class attendance is strongly encouraged. Regular
attendance generally translates into better performance in the course. If you must miss class for
any reason, please let me know by email before class.

 This course is a seminar, which means that discussion forms the basis of the class meetings.
Quality participation in class discussions requires coming to class prepared to discuss the
assigned material. Remember: class participation counts for 20% of the final grade.
 7

 Learning requires the proper environment. Please be respectful of your classmates, your
instructor, the material, and yourself by giving your full attention to the discussion. The use of
cell phones in this course is strictly prohibited. Please silence or turn off your cell phone before
class and do not turn it on again until after class has been dismissed. Also, please refrain from
using your laptop or tablet for anything unrelated to the class discussion. It is disrespectful to
your classmates, your instructor, and the learning process. If laptop use becomes a distraction, the
offending student will be asked not to bring their laptop to class.

 Practice good study habits. Take notes on your reading, supplement them during class
discussions, and review them regularly. Cramming for papers and exams is a very inefficient and
ineffective way to succeed in your coursework. The most effective way to learn material is to
review and consolidate it regularly. The Learning Resource Center is a wonderful resource for
assistance in developing good study habits.

 Ask questions! The old cliché is true: the only stupid question is the unasked question. There is a
good chance that others have the same question that you do, so don’t be afraid to ask. Also,
please take advantage of my office hours – I am here to help you succeed and I love meeting with
students!

Schedule of Class Meetings and Assignments

M 1/13 Introduction to the Course and Discussion of the Syllabus

W 1/15 The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:1-33)

F 1/17 The Book of Amos or the Book of Micah (assigned in class)

M 1/20 Martin Luther King Day – No Class

W 1/22 The Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6)

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)

F 1/24 King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (Canvas)

King, “I See the Promised Land” Speech (Canvas)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixfwGLxRJU8

M 1/27 Plato, Republic, Books II-III (pp. 32-93)

Formal Paper Option #1 First Draft Due

W 1/29 Plato, Republic, Books IV-V (pp. 94-156)

F 1/31 Plato, Republic, Book VI-VII (pp. 157-212)

M 2/3 Plato, Republic, Book VIII-IX (pp. 213-263)

Formal Paper Option #1 Final Draft Due

W 2/5 In-Class Group Work: Government and Education

Short Write #1 Due

F 2/7 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Chapters 1-2 (pp. 10-36)
 8

M 2/10 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Chapters 3-5 (pp. 37-74)

W 2/12 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, Chapters 6-8 (pp. 75-112)

F 2/14 In-Class Group Work: Technology, Culture, and Pressure Valves

Short Write #2 Due

M 2/17 Rawls, “A Theory of Justice” (Canvas)

The U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights (Canvas)

W 2/19 In-Class Group Work: Economics and Human Rights

F 2/21 Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron” (Canvas)

Vonnegut, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” (Canvas)
Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House” (Canvas)

M 2/24 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, foreword (pp. vii-xxvi), Book 1, Chapters 1-4 (pp.
1-49)

W 2/26 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Book 1, Chapters 5-8 (pp. 49-106)

F 2/28 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Book 2, Chapters 1-6 (pp. 107-160)

M 3/2 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Book 2, Chapters 7-10 (pp. 160-230)

W 3/4 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Book 3, Chapters 1-3 (pp. 231-284)

F 3/6 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Book 3, Chapters 4-6 (pp. 284-308), Appendix:
“The Principles of Newspeak” (pp. 309-323), and Afterword (pp. 324-337)

3/8-3/15 Spring Break

M 3/16 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 1-12 (pp. 3-66)

W 3/18 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 13-23 (pp. 69-140)

F 3/20 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 24-30 (pp. 143-195)

M 3/23 Instructor Conference – No Class

W 3/25 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 31-39 (pp.199-255)

F 3/27 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 40-46 (pp. 259-295) and Historical
Notes (pp. 299-311)

M 3/30 In-Class Group Work: Avoiding a Dystopia

Formal Paper Option #2 First Draft Due

W 4/1 In-Class Film, Pleasantville

F 4/3 In-Class Film, Pleasantville

 9

M 4/6 In-Class Film, Pleasantville

W 4/8 Review: Group Presentations and Final Paper

Formal Paper Option #2 Final Draft Due

F 4/10 In-Class Group Work: Final Presentations

M 4/13 Group 1 Presentation

W 4/15 Group 2 Presentation

F 4/17 Undergraduate Research Conference – No Class

M 4/20 Group 3 Presentation

W 4/22 Group 4 Presentation

F 4/24 Wrap-Up, Pictures, Evaluations

Extra Credit Assignment Due by the End of the Day

W 4/29 Final Paper Due by the End of the Day