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The Value of Knowledge

Week-by-week

1. Knowledge - the source of all evil

Prompt: The Source of all Evil

Reading: The Christian Bible Genesis 3

2. Knowing how to live well: Plato and enlightenment

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Plato's Republic, extract. The story of the Cave.

3. Self-knowledge A

"I just think that it's very helpful to have a map of your psyche, because when you have a map you know where to go"
Shakira, Guardian Films and Music, 16:10:09, p.3.

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Nietszche, Beyond Good and Evil. Begin by focussing on Sections 16 and 17, but read on as long as you have strength. It's an important wonderfully iconoclastic rodomontade.

4. Self-knowledge B

Presentation (as for 4A)

Notesheet (as for 4A)

Reading as for 4A

5 Knowledge makes life better

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Feyerabend: "How to defend Society Against Science"

6. Does it?

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Persist with Feyerabend: "How to defend Society Against Science"

7. Romantic evaluation of science

Presentation (as for 6)

Notesheet (as for 6)

Reading: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

8. Knowledge and its alternativies

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Ch 8.

and/or

Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Ch 8 ,Ch 9

9. Knowledge and control

Presentation A

Presentation B

Notesheet

Reading: Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume One, Part Three anyway.

10 Knowledge and growing up

Presentation

Notesheet

Reading: Rousseau, Emile, Ch 1.

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