This module has been added to the class because of the ongoing COVID-19 and the physical, economic, and emotional suffering and pain it has caused. In many ways, it seems that the pain and suffering caused by this crisis are not new– it is the same pain and suffering felt daily by millions of people around the world and which some of us have only been lucky enough to have been blind to for so long. Job insecurity, not having access to healthcare, daily lives being disrupted, being separated from our loved ones, being confined in small spaces– these are all problems that are so normal in our society that we don’t even see them as a problem until they affect us on such a scale that we can no longer justify them with reference to statistics or just deserts. This module is meant to look at this problem of suffering straight on and ask ourselves and our theories questions that we might not have thought of asking before.
Required Readings:
Dostoevsky:
The Grand Inquisitor, translated by H.P. Blavatsky
Book of Job:
Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz on The Book of Job
Supplementary Reading:
Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The Leaden Echo and The Golden Echo: Text
