Stanford University Explore Courses

RELIGST 136: Buddhist Yoga

Buddhist models of spiritual practice emphasizing issues in the interpretation of the contemplative path.

Last offered: Autumn 2013

RELIGST 140: RELIGION AND ETHICS: The Limits of Dialogue

How do religious traditions address ethical problems? Although ¿the good¿ seems like a universal goal, religious traditions force us to consider non-universal ways of defining it. From marriage to genetic engineering, from abortion to organ donation, issues of community, faith, and practice continue to complicate our ethical thinking. Exploration of case-studies and concepts, with readings from Kant, Foucault, Butler and others, as well as Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Bible.

Last offered: Spring 2013 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-EthicReas

RELIGST 143: Empathy

Empathy is fashionable these days - whether in Silicon Valley or the latest neuroscience. There is a deep sense that we need to learn how to walk in the shoes of another. This course will trace the meaning and practice of empathy through Buddhist compassion; Christianity's commandments to love our neighbor; Enlightenment moral philosophy; nineteenth-century aesthetics; and twenty-first century neuroscience. We will also explore how the arts - drama, novels, poetry, and the visual arts - especially enable us to understand and empathize with the other.

Last offered: Spring 2015

RELIGST 144: John Calvin and Christian Faith

Close reading and analysis of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as a classic expression of Christian belief.

Terms: Spr | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

Instructors: Pitkin, B. (PI)

RELIGST 146: Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection

Explores the boundaries of rational knowledge about Christian faith through a careful reading of the transcendental project of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner. Rahner¿s thought, informed by various sources (e.g., the mystics, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel and Ignatius Loyola), results in an interpretation of Christian faith that strives for intellectual honesty in the face of challenges from science, atheism and post-modern culture. Yet it leaves room for a fundamental human openness to the source and goal of self-transcendence, what Rahner calls Holy Mystery. Weekly short position papers will be required to stir both reflection and discussion.

Last offered: Spring 2011 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 148: From Jesus to Paul

Jesus considered himself God's definitive prophet, but he did not think he was God, and had no intention of founding a new religion. How did this Jewish prophet become the gentile God and the founder of Christianity? The role of Paul.

| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 148A: St. Paul and the Politics of Religion

The major letters written by Paul, the Apostle, and his biography, Acts of the Apostles. Historical context in first century Jewish cultural politics. Origins of Christianity, and the split into Judaism and Christianity. The relationship between Jews and non-Jews. The juxtaposition of law and faith. Origins of cultural universalism. Paul as Jewish radical versus Paul, the first Christian thinker and theologian. Recent philosophical readings of Paul (Taubes, Badiou, and Agamben).

Last offered: Winter 2010 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum

RELIGST 150: The Lotus Sutra: Story of a Buddhist Book

The Lotus school of Mahayana, and its Indian sources, Chinese formulation, and Japanese developments.

Last offered: Spring 2013 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom

RELIGST 160: Religion in Modern African Literature

Last offered: Winter 2015

RELIGST 161: Modern Religious Thought: From Galileo to Freud

The three centuries following the Protestant Reformation led to a gradual clarification of the notions of the religious and secular and gave rise to a new genre of religious thought, ideally freed from theology, church or synagogue-a secular philosophy of religion, or in some cases a religiously-imbued philosophy. We will examine some of the foundations of religious thought in modernity, including Galileo, Spinoza, Diderot, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.