Course info

(Updated 04.09.18)

Exemplary figures (such as saints, gurus, bodhisattva, daoshi, etc) are crucial in several religious traditions. The concept of exemplarity is typically invoked to stress how religious ways of life cannot be codified in explicit precepts: understanding the content of that way of life involves following people who have illustrated it in exemplary ways. The idea of exemplarity is also increasingly becoming central in moral philosophy: virtue theorists, in particular, have argued that the ethically good life cannot be codified in principles, but must be internalized through the cultivation of exemplary character traits. But is there anything specific about religious exemplarity, as opposed to ethical exemplarity? Is exemplifying a life of faith essentially different from exemplifying a morally good life? And if this is so, can the requirements of ethics clash with the requirements of faith? In this course, we will tackle these questions starting from a classic discussion: Kierkegaard’s (or Johannes de Silentio’s) Fear and Trembling. In the module, we will read and analyze Fear and Trembling in its entirety, and we will conjoin a close reading of the text with a workshop on the main contemporary theories of exemplarity. The primary aim is to gain a conceptual map of the different ways of accounting for exemplarity, and to test which conception (if any) is at work in Kierkegaard’s text

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the module, students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:

* define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant;
* seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information;
* process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments;
* compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure;
* write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications;
* be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them;
* think 'laterally' and creatively - see interesting connections and possibilities and present these clearly rather than as vague hunches;
* maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position if shown wrong;
* think critically and constructively