Conscience

Dan and I took a course on conscience through the UC Extension. It was taught by Mike Lunine, who teaches full-time at San Francisco State University. I'd highly recommend taking any of his courses; he is an excellent teacher and a very interesting person. During the course, it was clear that he had already worked his ideas on this out, but he did not try to press them on us. Rather, he encouraged us to go in certain directions in the discussion. I got the feeling he was like a very good tour guide, who made us feel that we were wandering around on our own, but still somehow managed to get us to see all the sights he thought were worthwhile.

The course covered the evolution of ideas about conscience as they were passed from East to West and back again. We read the works of four philosophers:

Socrates

We read several of Plato's Socratic Dialogues. The class covered Crito, Euthyphro, Phaedo, and The Apology. Reading these, I decided that Socrates would be a very annoying person to talk to. His method of seeing out the root of a concept might be a good way to learn, at least until no one would speak to you anymore, but it would not be a good way to teach; it would upset most people too much to be subjected to that kind of semi-hostile and ridiculing questioning.

However, the idea that it is necessary to question concepts at great length, until you find the root of them, is a very good one. It's something that I try to do with all my ideas. When trying to do this, though, I have seen how upsetting it can be to find that your ideas come from beliefs, and don't have a grounding in reason.

Thoreau

We read parts of Walden and the Essay on Civil Disobedience. I was particularly impressed with the Essay on Civil Disobedience, as I had always felt that it was important to stand up for what I thought was right. I hadn't reasoned it out as far as Thoreau, though, and realized that going along with, or not objecting to, something you consider wrong is encouraging and supporting that wrong. Although I do not think I have the courage to always refuse to cooperate with injustice, I am quite firm in my resolve to do so as much as I can.

Gandhi

We read Hind Swaraj. Learning more about Gandhi caused me to come to believe that the only way a person can hold true to a principle is by determining that they will sacrifice everything else to that principle, if necessary. Although I cannot prove it, I don't think it's generally possible to hold to more than one basic principle at a time.

King

We read Martin Luther King Jr.'s Why We Can't Wait, which particularly impressed me because he talked about solving problems, rather than continuing to enforce a division where all members of a particular group, regardless of their individual status, were assumed to be either oppressed or oppressor.