The overall aim of the course is to introduce the student to the intellectual dimension of each of the five formations. Through personal assessment, reading, discussion, and writing we try to get the students to reflect on what it means to have a spiritual life, to serve other people, to be both physically and mentally healthy, etc. A portion of the course is directly devoted to the topic of character, but issues of this sort arise throughout the semester. This is a three semester hour course taken in the second semester of the sophomore year. In the version being piloted this semester, the course has a three part structure.
Students begin by studying the basic developmental problems of late adolescence.
Finally, they look ahead to the issues raised by choice of a career, marriage, and parenting. This is a series of three philosophy courses appearing in the first semesters of the sophomore, junior, and senior years respectively. The aim of each of these courses is to familiarize the student with the key ethical texts, problems and positions of a particular period in the history of philosophy. Instead of focusing on a set of crucial texts, it will focus on a crucial problem in contemporary ethics. The version to be offered for the first time in 1997 will focus on the problem of justice with readings being drawn from the work of Rawls, Nozick, Sandel, Walzer, etc.