Humanomics serves as an interdisciplinary program to teach and research a humanistic science of economics. Economics and the humanities are often perceived as fundamentally disconnected. Economics asks why Homo sapiens is the most prosperous species in the history of the planet, but the tools of the discipline are inadequate to account for the wide range of human motives. In economics the human predicates of feeling, wanting, thinking, and knowing have been boiled down to the single motivation of naked “self-interest.” What does prosperity have to do with justice, courage, faith, hope, and love? The answer in economics is, “That’s for the humanities to ponder.”
The humanities do ponder such virtues, and prudence, too. The humanities give voice to feeling and artistic shape to experience. Exploring human stories and ideas helps us make meaning of our lives. Meaning is as much a part of the scientific evidence in economics as is behavior, and, of course, meaning influences behavior itself. Through the Humanities, through literature and film, philosophy and history, we can come to better understand ourselves as human beings, broadening our perspectives of the world as we move beyond the boundaries of our own lives and culture, asking “What does it mean to be human?” And quite fundamentally “being human” includes Homo sapiens’ unique propensity to specialize, to exchange, to create markets, the latter of which is often viewed skeptically from the humanities. Humanomics grew out of a desire to explore economics through the lens of the humanities and humanity through the lens of economics.
Minor in Humanomics
The minor is listed in the catalog under both the Argyros College of Business and Economics and in the interdisciplinary minors in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Requirements: The minor requires a total of 21 credits, 12 of which must be upper division
Catalog Description:
The Humanomics minor is broadly organized by three questions: What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? The Socratic dialogue in the required core courses provides students with an opportunity to personalize their inquiry of these three questions by analyzing and synthesizing texts from the concurrent reading of three disciplines and by producing original interdisciplinary texts. Electives enable students to study a variety of supporting topics to gain expertise in the synthesis of economics and the humanities. Students pursuing majors in Economics, English, or Philosophy and minoring in Humanomics must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses which are outside of their major or major’s primary discipline, including Individual Studies (299/499) and Research/Creative Activity courses (291/491). Students pursuing majors in Business Administration must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses excluding Econ 200, Econ 201, and Econ 374. Students pursuing majors in Accounting must complete 12 credits from the list of elective courses excluding Econ 200 and Econ 201.
Core Courses Three offerings of ECON/ENG/PHIL 357 Topics in Humanomics (9 credits)
Elective Courses (12 credits from the list below. 3 credits must be upper division.)
ECON 200 Principles of Microeconomics
ECON 201 Principles of Macroeconomics
ECON 374 European Economic History
ENG 270 Foundations of Rhetorical Studies
ENG 372 Language and Ideology
ENG 446 Topics in Rhetoric
PHIL 104 Introduction to Ethics
PHIL 318 Political and Legal Philosophy
PHIL 327 Global Justice
Up to six units total of approved Individual Study or Student‐Faculty Research/Creative
Activity; ECON/ENG/PHIL 299/499 and ECON/ENG/PHIL 291/491.
For questions, students should contact the Associate Dean, Academic Programs, Argyros
School of Business and Economics.
Total Credits: 21
Topics in Humanomics
Topics in Humanomics:
Using Socratic dialogue this course engages students in dialogically exploring economics, philosophy, and literature texts to examine two questions at the core of Humanomics: What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? This course encourages in-depth study of the co-constitutive social texts regarding the exponential economic growth of the last two-hundred years, asking students to consider how knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics shape and reshape the basic principles of exchange and the human condition. Examples of possible texts include but are not limited to: Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, Great Expectations, Frankenstein, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Polanyi's Personal Knowledge, The Fatal Conceit, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World.
Current, Upcoming, and Past Courses:
Spring 2026
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Into the Unknown: Self-Formation and Entrepreneurship"
Katharine Gillespie & Dillon Tauzin
Success in commerce is about taking risks, cooperating with others, and pivoting when necessary. Entrepreneurs are adventurers who require the same skills found in artists and philosophers. They must be willing to think outside the box. Both art and commerce require imagination, courage, and adaptation. They both reward comfort with the unknown––not only a willingness to negotiate it when it presents itself, but a willingness to seek it out, and even to create it. What can we do to even more consciously nurture the traits in ourselves that make us into successful members of our dynamic, social and commercial world?
Interterm 2026
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Social (In)Justice"
Bart Wilson & Andrew Stewart
This course attempts to clarify our understanding of the pervasive concept of social justice in the modern world. F.A. Hayek contends that the concept, despite well-meaning intentions, is meaningless, incoherent, and harmful to the prosperity of a free society. David Miller argues that when considered contextually the principles of desert, need, and equality can be used to delineate a theory of social justice as a viable political ideal. How do the dystopian aesthetics of the “Good E” and “Bad E” in L.P. Hartley’s novel shape and reshape Hayek’s and Miller’s ideas on economics and the human condition?
ECON/ENG/HON/PHIL 357: "What is Competition?"
Erik Kimbrough & Brennan McDavid
Course Syllabus
It would not be an exaggeration to say that human life and history has been shaped principally by the forces of competition. In natural and sexual selection, in the military clashes between great nations, in our favorite pastimes of sport and entertainment, and in the marketplaces of commodities and ideas, the drive to outperform others is the root cause of all momentum. What is competition? If it is possible to set out a single definition that unifies all instances, then we must be able to identify something that naval battles and film festivals and the market for smartphones all have in common. What is that common thread? In this course, we will explore the motivations, mechanisms, and outcomes of competition through the examples of widely different competitive activities. And we will do so both with historical distance, by taking the competitive environment of Ancient Greece as a case study, and by examining competition among our contemporaries. The Greeks of the fifth century B.C. competed in everything imaginable: in the battles between city-states, in traveling dramatic competitions, in specialized production of consumer goods, in giving speeches, in looks (literally, their beauty), and certainly in Olympic sport. In the midst of all this agon (that’s Greek for “contest”), they managed to achieve what is widely regarded as a cultural Golden Age. Did they achieve this flourishing because of or despite their embrace of competition? Likewise, what are the sites of competition in our age? Are these contests productive in the way they were for the Greeks? Is cooperation preferable to competition? How do we harness the power of competition to gear it always to the good?
Fall 2025
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Justice-fying Property"
Bas van der Vossen & Alessandro del Ponte
Course Syllabus
This course explores a question central to modern commercial society: what is the
nature and significance of ownership and debt? Our questions include: What is property,
and why do we have it? What does it mean to owe a debt? Can we owe without being
owned ourselves? Under what circumstances, if any, are relations of ownership and
debt compatible with justice? This course dialogically explores Bart Wilson’s The Property Species, David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5,000 Years, and John Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath to shape how we understand these relationships.
Spring 2025
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "The Rules of the Game"
Erik Kimbrough & John Thrasher IV
The social sciences demand an explanation of how and why humans are social in the first place. In this class, we will explore the hypothesis that our ability to work together for good and ill – to build bridges and to burn them – is ultimately derived from our capacity to learn and follow social norms. We will examine theories that ground this capacity in evolution, history, convention, and contract and explore the consequences of our normfollowing proclivities for social life across a wide variety of contexts. Norms are the visible and invisible rules of the game that structure not only how we cooperate, trade, politics, fight, and coordinate with one another but also how we perceive, understand, and talk about the world within which all these interactions take place.
Interterm 2025
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Equality"
Marcus Shera & Bas van der Vossen
This course will explore an essential question for humanity: What does it take to live together as equals? Drawing upon texts from across time and place, combining readings from philosophy, literature, and economics, and working with professors from English and Philosophy, students will have an opportunity to explore ideas of equality from multiple perspectives.
Humanomics classes (like this one) adopt a distinctively interdisciplinary approach. Throughout the term, we will examine equality through the lenses of economics, philosophy, and literature. We will not just ask what these disciplines have to say about our topic independently of one another; we will also ask how these disciplines interact, enrich each other, and have unique ways of addressing topics vital to our humanity. The overarching idea is that there are many ways of expressing important ideas and that focusing on any one form of expression (social scientific, philosophical, artistic) in isolation is bound to leave important aspects of those ideas unstated, or incompletely expressed. Moreover, by working with media situated in a variety of historical contexts, we will necessarily ask why a set of ideas have been expressed in different ways in different times and places, and how this form of expression affects what’s being said.
Fall 2024
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Beauty Matters - Sex, Evolution, Romance, and the Marriage Market"
Sean Crockett & Michael Valdez Moses
What is beauty? Do we define beauty according to relativistic and arbitrary cultural norms or are human conceptions of beauty universal and naturally determined? Is there such a thing as non-human beauty, an embodiment of a spiritual value that transcends ordinary notions of human physical attractiveness? When we say that a person, or a natural landscape, or a work of art is beautiful, are we talking about different things or the same thing? Do standards of beauty have an appropriate role in a fair and just society? In a liberal and democratic one? In 19th-century Victorian England, Charles Darwin proposed that an appreciation of beauty arose deep in our evolutionary past. In The Descent of Man Darwin argued that species across the animal kingdom appear to choose mates by virtue of aesthetic adornments. Extending this insight, the eminent Yale ornithologist Richard Prum suggests that the shape of the human body itself has evolved to conform to idiosyncratic developments of taste. In this course, we consider the impact of human beauty on the selection of romantic partners, but also the wider influence of beauty on our culture and on our individual economic opportunities and social prospects. We will investigate how scientists, economists, philosophers, novelists, and filmmakers have represented the complex interrelationships among beauty, the sublime, aesthetics, sex, romance, the evolution of the human species, and social order. In addition to selections from Darwin and Prum, we’ll read Edmund Burke’s influential A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, brief selections from Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, two novels — Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World, a selection of writings by economists, including Daniel Hamermesh, who consider how our definitions of beauty affect the work-place and our social and financial prospects, and watch several films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Ron Fricke, and Paulo Sorrentino, who are fascinated by how the pursuit of beauty can become at once a transcendental experience and a dangerous and even self-destructive obsession.
Spring 2024
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Ethics and Economics of Wealth Creation"
Katharine Gillespie & Bart Wilson
Course Syllabus
To be human is not to be an angel, but to know good and evil. To be human is to have
the liberty to decide. To be human is to be limited, to face trade-offs. This course
dialogically explores John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, and Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions to shape one of the most fundamental questions of economics outside the Garden of
Eden—not what must be decided but who shall decide. How do we apply the knowledge
of good and evil in a society of strangers? What does the human constitution—“sufficient
to [stand], though to free to fall”—mean for responsibility and liberty in the creation
of wealth? “The world [is] all before [us], where to choose.”
Interterm 2024
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "What is Progress?"
Brennan McDavid & Dillon Tauzin
A popular view today is that progress is inexorable: having set the machine of technological society in motion, we should expect it to continue forever. But is that a reasonable assumption? Looking to history it seems that long periods of progress have often eventually ended in gradual, or even catastrophic, decline. Is this time different? Why or why not? And what is progress, anyway? Perhaps we think we know it when we see it. Economists typically emphasize a material notion progress. When populations grow, wealth accumulates, productivity increases, and health improves, this is taken to be evidence of progress. But we can also speak of moral progress, scientific progress, social progress, political progress, artistic progress, and so on. Do these notions of progress necessarily go hand in hand? What kinds of value judgments are lurking beneath the surface of empirical claims about progress? If progress means advancing towards some goal, what is that goal? Who gets to define it?
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: " Spontaneous Order and the Myths of the American West"
Erik Kimbrough & Michael Valdez Moses
The (re)settling of the American West during the 19th century has long been romanticized as“manifest destiny” carried out by “rugged individualists” who “pulled civilization up by its bootstraps” on the frontier. Embracing this narrative, some economists have looked to the American West as a paradigmatic case of spontaneous order, in which, despite the absence of centralized legal authority, a striking degree of economic and political order was quickly and enduringly established based on voluntary agreements. Revisionist accounts have questioned just how well that narrative fits the historical realities and just how spontaneous the emerging order actually was. Embracing the revisionists, other scholars have adopted an alternative economic account in which the settling of the west was rapacious and exploitative. This course will examine these economic accounts of the West, explore how they are related to the approach one takes to the West as a humanist, and attempt to resolve the seeming contradictions. We will watch, discuss and write about a wide variety of texts, including three seasons of the series Deadwood, Anderson and Hill’s classic The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (2004), Patty Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (1987), and a series of academic papers on the notion of spontaneous order and on debates about the nature of social order as it emerged in the context of the 19th-century American Gold Rush.
Fall 2023
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Diversity: What is it and why does it matter?"
Kyle Hampton and Keith Hankins
This course explores economic, epistemic, and ethical issues related to diversity with an emphasis on the role that diversity plays in business, science, and politics. Drawing on texts and media from a range of sources including economics, law, philosophy, psychology, film, television, and literature, we will ask questions like: (1) What is diversity? (2) How do we measure it? (3) What kinds of diversity matter? (4) What distinguishes the kinds of diversity that matter from the kinds that don’t? (5) What are some of the challenges associated with diversity? (6) What are some of the benefits? (7) How can we capture the benefits while mitigating the associated costs/challenges?Having asked these questions we will also reflect on how these issues are represented in popular culture, and how artistic engagement with the issues deepens our understanding of them.
This course addresses issues arising from intolerance and/or exclusion due to one or more of the following: race, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, and/or disability and aligns with Chapman University’s mission: helping students to lead inquiring, ethical and productive lives as global citizens.
Spring 2023
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Toleration and its Discontents"
Michael Valdez Moses and John Thrasher
Modern liberal, open societies are characterized by substantial diversity and pluralism. We take it as a given that our neighbors, our co-workers, and fellow citizens may not share our religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or political views, but that was not always the case. Even today there are some ways of life, religions, or beliefs that many still find deeply troubling. What makes the tremendous diversity that we see in free and open societies possible is the practice of toleration, institutionalized in the basic law of our society as well as in many of our social norms. But tolerance remains, as the philosopher T.M. Scanlon put it, “difficult.” It means permitting and even defending lifestyles, beliefs, and practices that one might not only find offensive or misguided, but fundamentally wrong. Furthermore, in open, liberal societies like ours, tolerance is not only considered a good thing, but also often required by law—a basic right at the core of our system. How can there be a basic right to do wrong? This is one of the core puzzles at the heart of a liberal society, one that leads us directly to the question of tolerance.
In this class, we will explore toleration, both in theory and practice, and how it developed over time. The modern, liberal idea of toleration is the product of long and bloody struggles over religion, ethnicity, race, political and scientific beliefs, manners, and ways of living. We investigate this struggle by looking at important pieces of literature, drama, and film that document the struggle for toleration, as well as by delving into the economic history of how toleration developed as a political program in Europe during the last several hundred years. We will also engage closely with the rich theory behind toleration. Our goal is to present a three-dimensional idea of toleration, how it has developed, and what it is for, that will help us not only understand what toleration is and why it is valuable, but how to address the challenges that face us today.
Interterm 2023
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Inventing the Individual"
Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bart J. Wilson
The modern world tends to think that commerce requires us to be ruthlessly self-interested. Where did the idea of the individual self, distinct from family or clan, come from? And must the self pursue their own interest in commerce ruthlessly? This course dialogically explores the political philosopher Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual, the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, the anonymous medieval epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, John Milton’s Comus, and Andrej Sapkowski’s modern fantasy The Last Wish to shape one of the most fundamental concepts of modern human sociality—the Individual. How did the idea of the Individual emerge in the Middle Ages? When the Age of Commerce supplanted the ancient Age of the Aristocracy, how did the bourgeois ethic of the Individual differ from the aristocratic class of virtues? How does art situated at the crux of the old aristocratic order and the new bourgeois age invite us to witness the emergence of the bourgeois Individual? And finally, how does the form of a modern fantasy story embody a bourgeois interpretation of that same chivalric art?
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "What Is Progress?"
Erik Kimbrough and Brennan McDavid
A popular view today is that progress is inexorable: having set the machine of technological society in motion, we should expect it to continue forever. But is that a reasonable assumption? Looking to history it seems that long periods of progress have often eventually ended in gradual, or even catastrophic, decline. Is this time different? Why or why not? And what is progress, anyway? Perhaps we think we know it when we see it. Economists typically emphasize a material notion progress. When populations grow, wealth accumulates, productivity increases, and health improves, this is taken to be evidence of progress. But we can also speak of moral progress, scientific progress, social progress, political progress, artistic progress, and so on. Do these notions of progress necessarily go hand in hand? What kinds of value judgments are lurking beneath the surface of empirical claims about progress? If progress means advancing towards some goal, what is that goal? Who gets to define it?
Fall 2022
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "(Im)morality of Market Exchange"
David Rojo Arjona and Bas Van der Vossen
Co-taught by professors from Philosophy and Economics, this course combines philosophical,
literary, and economic texts and tools to explore the moral and ethical aspects behind
the
decisions to cooperate, being an entrepreneur, create value for others, protect others
from being
abuse, and which institutions and environments promote such decisions even in adverse
conditions. Students in this course will question if it is possible that liberal democracies
and
exchange economies can offer to us a virtuous path to satisfy our own interests while
cultivating
fair relationships with others.
Spring 2022
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Life Through the Eyes of the Nobel Laureates"
Keith Hankins and Katharine Gillespie Moses
Awarded on an annual basis the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel recognizes a living economist(s) whose work has made a significant impact on our understanding of economics. First awarded in 1969, this prize was meant to supplement the prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace that were endowed by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and which have been awarded awarded annually since 1901 to recognize outstanding contributions to humanity in those fields. This course explores life through the eyes of the Nobel Laureates, with an emphasis on the groundbreaking work of the economics laureates, and how the ideas that comprise this work have been reflected upon in different ways by some of the literature laureates.
Interterm 2022
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Consumerism and Its Discontents"
Erik Kimbrough and Virginia Postrel
The consumer society that has blossomed since the Industrial Revolution is the wealthiest, healthiest and freest society ever known. Yet with this wealth and the freedom to choose, we see people opting to expend incredible resources on “conspicuous consumption,” as they attempt to keep up with the Joneses (and Kardashians). This course will explore the logic of consumption and ask whether it is possible to mount an ethical defense of consumption and the life of the “leisure class.” What do people want? What do they need? Where do those wants and needs come from? And what should they want? Who gets to decide?
Interterm 2022
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "(Im)morality of Market Exchange"
David Rojo Arjona and Bas Van der Vossen
Co-taught by professors from Philosophy and Economics, this course combines philosophical,
literary, and economic texts and tools to explore the moral and ethical aspects behind
the
decisions to cooperate, being an entrepreneur, create value for others, protect others
from being
abuse, and which institutions and environments promote such decisions even in adverse
conditions. Students in this course will question if it is possible that liberal democracies
and
exchange economies can offer to us a virtuous path to satisfy our own interests while
cultivating
fair relationships with others.
Fall 2021
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Shame: The Civilizing Emotion"
Erin Crockett and Brennan McDavid
Eyes cast down. Flushed cheeks. The face of shame is universal and familiar. We know it when we see it, and—what’s more—we know shame when we feel it. What is shame, though, and why do we find it in every culture? What, if any, advantage does it serve for the individual, for the society, for the species?
Fall 2021
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Justice-fying Property"
Bart Wilson
What is property, and why do we have it? Do we possess objects, or do objects possess us? Under what circumstances, if any, is property compatible with justice? What trade-offs does the law face when choosing the rules that govern people and their things? This course dialogically explores Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World, Lionel Shriver’s Property: Stories Between Two Novellas, and Bart Wilson’s The Property Species to shape how we understand relationships between people regarding things when we consider the possibility that conflict begets property and, simultaneously, property begets conflict.
Spring 2021
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Becoming Human"
Erik Kimbrough and Michael Moses
What separates humans from the rest of the animals? Language, artistic or symbolic expression, creativity, abstract reasoning, self-consciousness, and any number of other characteristics have been suggested, but arguably the most distinctive human capacity is our morality. Trade, peaceful cooperation with strangers, trust, and reciprocity, to name only a few basic patterns of interaction that permeate our lives, are supported by morality, and disruptions of these patterns are met with moral condemnation and punishment. By carefully comparing influential works in classical moral philosophy and economics (Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments), in contemporary experimental social science (Michael Tomasello’s Becoming Human), as well major works of literature (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Franz Kafka’s “Report to an Academy”) and contemporary global cinema (Emma, JoJo Rabbit, The Spirit of the Beehive), we shall raise fundamental questions about how we become moral beings: How does this process work? How does our moral sense develop? How do we become moral? Why do some individuals fail to develop a moral consciousness? Is there such a thing as human moral progress over time? What happens to the moral development of individuals if an entire society deviates from widely accepted moral norms (e.g. Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain)? Is it possible for someone to develop morally even in an immoral society? And ultimately, how, by becoming moral beings, do we become human?
Interterm 2021
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Justice-fying Property"
Robert Gasaway, Jan Osborn and Bart Wilson
What is property, and why do we have it? Do we possess objects, or do objects possess us? Under what circumstances, if any, is property compatible with justice? What trade-offs does the law face when choosing the rules that govern people and their things? This course dialogically explores Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World, Lionel Shriver’s Property: Stories Between Two Novellas, and Bart Wilson’s The Property Species to shape how we understand relationships between people regarding things when we consider the possibility that conflict begets property and, simultaneously, property begets conflict.
Fall 2020
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Hannah Arendt: Philosopher of Freedom"
Katharine Gillespie Moses and Kyle Hampton
This course will introduce students to the life and thought of philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). Born in the then-German Empire to a Jewish family, Arendt lived through–and reflected upon–World Wars I and II, the rise of totalitarianism in Western and Eastern Europe, the discovery of the final solution, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb. She was nearly imprisoned by the Gestapo and was interred in a refugee camp in Vichy France before fleeing to America. After holding academic positions at Berkeley and the University of Chicago, she joined the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. In a number of influential books and essays, Arendt explores the role that power, violence, and evil play in both our everyday lives and the very structures of our inner thoughts.
Spring 2020
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Trust in Troubling Times"
Brennan McDavid and Jan Osborn
Arguably, trust may be the beating heart not only of healthy relationships but of
flourishing
societies and even thriving economies. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s “You must
trust
and believe in people, or life becomes impossible,” and Nobel-laureate economist Ken
Arrow’s
“virtually every commercial transaction has within it an element of trust” capture
the
importance of trust in human lives. But what is trust? This class will explore the
notion of trust
through philosophical, economic, and literary lenses. Through careful conceptual analysis,
students in this course will develop a sense of the complexity of trust together with
an ability to
engage critically with depictions of trust in literature and film and uses of the
concept in social
science.
Interterm 2020
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "The Ethics and Economics of Women's Freedom"
Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bas van der Vossen
Is liberty universal? Are women less able to be and feel free than men? Are they subject to physical, social, philosophical, religious, political and/or economic constraints that disable them from achieving the same sorts of liberty as men do? Or are they able to exercise freedom in the same way as men do or even in ways that men cannot? And what are the consequences of women enjoying equal rights and freedom? In this course, we will explore these fundamental and still highly important questions about gender equality by reading political theory by John Locke and work on the economics of the family by Gary Becker’s alongside important feminist texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf and other Englishwomen who wrote in earlier centuries.
Fall 2019
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Cause, Effect, and Freedom"
Erik Kimbrough and John Thrasher IV
Why are some people rich and others poor? Why are some tall and some short? Why do
some companies succeed and others fail? Why are some societies growing while others
are shrinking? Answers to these questions all involve claims about causation. We assume
the world around us is largely governed by regular relations between cause and effect.
Science is the attempt to tease out these relationships and to make valid inferences
from cause to effect and vice versa.
This course will explore various visions of determinism and our reactions to those
visions. Do we live in a deterministic world? What does determinism mean for our values
and a notion of the good life? How do we know what causes what? We will explore these
questions by looking at recent scientific arguments in favor of determinism, while
at the same time reading classics of literature and philosophy that wrestle with the
ethical and practical implications of understanding our world as a world of causes
and effects
Spring 2019
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Noble Savages and Free Citizens: The Promise and Peril of Civil
Society"
Michael Valdez Moses and Keith Hankins
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. He who believes himself the master of others does not escape being more of a slave than they.” The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the 18th century’s fiercest critics of civil society. He explored in great depth the ways in which living in community with others makes us less free, while romanticizing an (imaginary) past in which we lived lives of solitude. At the same time, he was one of history’s greatest champions of democracy. This course uses Rousseau’s work as a lens through which to assess our lives. Has living in community with others really made us less free as Rousseau contends? Has the rise of democracy made things better? How can economics help us answer these questions? Along the way we’ll look at how these themes have been explored in two classic novels. The first, Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, documents the fortunes of an aristocratic family from Sicily during Italy’s fitful transition to democracy. The second, Mario Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller, probes the place of nomadic native cultures in the modern world by exploring how the same stories and myths get retold across time and space.
Interterm 2019
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Ethics and
Economics of Wealth Creation"
Katharine Gillespie Moses and Bart Wilson
To be human is not to be an angel, but to know good and evil. To be human is to have the liberty to decide. To be human is to be limited, to face trade-offs. This course dialogically explores John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, and Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions to shape one of the most fundamental questions of economics outside the Garden of Eden—not what must be decided but who shall decide. How do we apply the knowledge of good and evil in a society of strangers? What does the human constitution—"sufficient to [stand], though to free fall"—mean for responsibility and liberty in the creation of wealth? "The world [is] all before [us], where to choose."
Fall 2018
ECON/ENG/PHIL 357: "Working with Marx"
Erik Kimbrough and Bas van der Vossen
Karl Marx’s theories have been a source of intellectual and political motivation, spawning revolutions both figuratively (in academic thought) and literally (in Russia, China, and elsewhere). In this course we will dive deep into Marx’s thoughts on the nature of work, capitalist society, and the social and ethical problems that surround it. The goal of this course is to assess how these ideas have resonated since his time and whether they remain relevant today. We will use a variety of sources and media that illustrate the continued appeal of these ideas, including Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Central questions for the course include: What is exploitation? And is it possible in a free market? Is exploitation avoidable? What is alienation? Do we experience alienation today? What is the value of work? And what should a worker expect to get out of a job? Will we ever live in a world without work? Would we want to?
Spring 2018
ECON/ENG 357: "Consumerism and its Discontents"
Erik Kimbrough and Jan Osborn
The consumer society that has blossomed since the Industrial Revolution is the wealthiest, healthiest and freest society ever known. Yet with this wealth and the freedom to choose we see people opting to expend incredible resources on "conspicuous consumption", as they attempt to keep up with the Joneses (and Kardashians). This course will explore the logic of consumption and ask whether it is possible to mount an ethical defense of consumption and the life of the "leisure class". What do people want? What do they need? Where do those wants and needs come from? And what should they want? Who gets to decide?
Interterm 2018
ECON/PHIL 357: "Social (In)Justice"
Bas van der Vossen and Bart Wilson
This course attempts to clarify our understanding of the pervasive concept of social justice in the modern world. F.A. Hayek contends that the concept, despite well‐meaning intentions, is meaningless, incoherent, and harmful to the prosperity of a free society. David Miller argues that when considered contextually the principles of desert, need, and equality can be used to delineate a theory of social justice as a viable political ideal. How do the dystopian aesthetics of the “Good E” and “Bad E” in L.P. Hartley’s novel shape and reshape Hayek’s and Miller’s ideas on economics and the human condition?
Humanomics FFC Courses
Fall 2025 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Dangerous Ideas"
Erik Kimbrough & Brennan McDavid
In 399 BC, Socrates was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock because he dared to challenge the traditional beliefs of Athens. In 1859, John Stuart Mill summoned Socrates’ ghost by waging a vehement defense of free speech on the grounds that coercing silence “is robbing the human race.” Across history we see examples of dissenters, gadflies, heretics, and revolutionaries in figures as prominent and heralded as Martin Luther, Galileo, Karl Marx, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Salman Rushdie. Yet we so often reserve our approval of their dissidence only once the dust has cleared and we can see with distance and with clear eyes the moral superiority of victors. That is, we approve dissent only if we are already convinced that it is in the name of moral progress. In this course, we will force such patterns of thought to a halt. By engaging each week with a contentious and perhaps intractable—perhaps, in some cases, even unspeakable—issue that is salient and pressing in our society today, we will force ourselves to assess dissenting voices before the dust has settled. Our method of approach will be rigid and rigorous: we will reconstruct the arguments and assess the quality of evidence relied upon by parties wading into these debates with their dangerous ideas.
FFC 100: "The Righteous Mind"
Kyle Hampton
Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures and languages, of beliefs and points of view. This course explores moral commitments in a cosmopolitanism world, looking first at the evolutionary origins of morality and then to how this legacy informs current moral debates in society. The course then turns to the question of sacrifice and martyrdom and asks how our modern understanding of morality makes sense of people’s willingness to suffer terrible consequences to stand up for what they believe is right.
FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"
Michael Valdez Moses
Course Syllabus
The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed an era of bold utopian experimentation. During this period, extraordinary attempts were made to translate radical and often competing visions of freedom and equality, progress and order, individual autonomy and collective solidarity, social justice, and racial harmony into practice. While many of these utopias turned into nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists continued to grapple with the possibilities offered by new technologies, behavioral conditioning, and social engineering. These innovations were seen as tools to create allegedly superior ways of organizing communal life, transcending the perceived limitations of their time. This course examines some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia and dystopia in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries through major works of literature, film, and historical analysis. We will reflect on what these (mostly fictional, though sometimes historical) experiments in communal living reveal about the challenges and limits of political thinking in reshaping morality, human nature, and social life. Key themes include the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, economic prosperity and social equality, technological progress and human flourishing, natural limits and aspirations for an ideal social order, and cultural liberation and racial harmony. Through these explorations, students will critically engage with enduring questions about the possibilities and perils of striving for a better world.
Fall 2024 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Dangerous Ideas"
Erik Kimbrough & Brennan McDavid
In 399 BC, Socrates was sentenced to die by drinking hemlock because he dared to challenge the traditional beliefs of Athens. In 1859, John Stuart Mill summoned Socrates’ ghost by waging a vehement defense of free speech on the grounds that coercing silence “is robbing the human race.” Across history we see examples of dissenters, gadflies, heretics, and revolutionaries in figures as prominent and heralded as Martin Luther, Galileo, Karl Marx, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Salman Rushdie. Yet we so often reserve our approval of their dissidence only once the dust has cleared and we can see with distance and with clear eyes the moral superiority of victors. That is, we approve dissent only if we are already convinced that it is in the name of moral progress. In this course, we will force such patterns of thought to a halt. By engaging each week with a contentious and perhaps intractable—perhaps, in some cases, even unspeakable—issue that is salient and pressing in our society today, we will force ourselves to assess dissenting voices before the dust has settled. Our method of approach will be rigid and rigorous: we will reconstruct the arguments and assess the quality of evidence relied upon by parties wading into these debates with their dangerous ideas.
FFC 100: "The Righteous Mind"
Kyle Hampton
Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures and languages, of beliefs and points of view. This course explores moral commitments in a cosmopolitanism world, looking first at the evolutionary origins of morality and then to how this legacy informs current moral debates in society. The course then turns to the question of sacrifice and martyrdom and asks how our modern understanding of morality makes sense of people’s willingness to suffer terrible consequences to stand up for what they believe is right.
FFC 100: "Humanomics: Life Through the Eyes of the Nobel Laureates"
Keith Hankins & John Hoffmann
This course explores how the insights of the winners of the Nobel Prizes in economics and literature have shaped our understanding of the world around us. The work of the economics laureates (not all of whom have been economists, but one of whom is a Chapman professor!) has played an outsized role in laying the foundations for modern social science. This course will introduce students to some of the groundbreaking ideas for which the Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded. We will then explore how these ideas have been reflected upon in different ways by some of the literature laureates. Special attention will also be paid to philosophical questions raised by the various laureates, and to how the work of the literature laureates challenges the perspectives of the economics laureates.
FFC 100: "Utopia/Dystopia"
Michael Valdez Moses
The 19th and 20th centuries were an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, individual autonomy and human solidarity, spiritual community and religious toleration. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that new technologies, behavioral conditioning, and social engineering could play in making possible new and allegedly superiors ways of organizing communal life that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Our focus will be major works of literature including novels by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ursula K. Le Guin, and the Nobel-prize winner, Herta Müller, as well many of the most highly regarded films of the past several decades including Blade Runner, Stalker, Children of Men, Gattaca, The Lives of Others, Ex-Machina, Her, and Wall-E. Over the semester we will critically examine some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th, and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional (and sometimes historical) experiments in communal experimentation can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social order. This year’s iteration of the course will pay particular attention to how utopian and dystopian works have represented the relationship between the sexes and reimagined our notions of gender and sexuality. The aim of the class is to explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing, and between natural and socially constructed definitions of sex and gender.
FFC 100: "Choice in Economics and The Sandman"
Katharine Gillespie Moses & Bart Wilson
To be human is to choose. To be human is to face the consequences of our choices. To be human is to change as we choose and face the consequences of our choices. The course dialogically explores Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels, The Sandman, and the British economist Lionel Robbins’s An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science to ask what it means for economic science and the human condition that we are beings who choose and change.
In 1932, Lionel Robbins expressed a viewpoint that is now near universally accepted
by economists, claiming that the significance of economics “is fundamentally distinct
from ethics.” The Sandman says to Shakespeare that “I am not a man. And I do not change
… I am the Prince of stories, Will; but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever.”
What if both statements are simply untrue and related to each other. What if economics
and ethics are indeed two sides of the same coin? What if Morpheus does indeed choose
and change? In this course we read The Sandman to inform our understanding of what
economic science is, and we use our understanding of economic science to inform our
reading of The Sandman.
Fall 2023 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Fiction and Film"
Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing. In so doing, we will also examine utopian visions of racial harmony as well as dystopian visions of racial discord and eugenics.
Fall 2022 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Meet the Beats"
Katharine Gillespie Moses
By the end of WWII, Americans had experienced years of mass death and devastation, including modern warfare, the Holocaust, and the dropping of two atomic bombs. As soldiers returned home, many Americans tried to return to a “normal” life, even as the normalcy they craved was invented by them anew: the nuclear family with a stay-at-home mom, the baby boom, life in the suburbs, corporate careers, etc. But a small group of “hipsters” dissented. Dubbed the “beats,” this young generation sought to create alternative lifestyles revolving around the creation of avant garde art and literature, jazz, free love, travel, drugs, and Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism. These “beatniks” helped to dramatically transform an already-evolving American culture and paved the way for the radical upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. In this class, we will read and assess their works from the vantage point of the 21st century. What remains radical about the Beat Generation? What have we absorbed from them as the new normal? What have we rejected or tried to reject and why?
FFC 100: "Ambition and the Meanings of Success"
Sean Crockett & Virginia Postrel
Ambition is the drive to excel. For some individuals, the goal is to beat other people.
For
others, it’s to exceed a personal best. And for some, it’s to advance a great cause.
Through much of human history, ambition focused primarily on demonstrating physical
prowess and attaining power. It was a spur to conquest and court intrigues and
considered a sin by the Christian Church. Today, many more fields of endeavor offer
scope for ambitious people. Ambition inspires art and science, business ventures and
athletic achievements. Ambition also has a dark side. It can tempt the ambitious to
cheat, to abuse other people, to win at any cost, and to unfairly block the ambitions
of
others. And ambition can disappoint. To be ambitious is to constantly risk—and
experience—failure.
FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"
Michael Valdez Moses
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.
FFC 100: "Intersection of Human Identity"
David Rojo Arjona
This course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.
FFC 100: "Moonshops and Epic Falls"
Erik Kimbrough & Keith Hampton
For every successful moonshot there are many attempts that crash and burn (sometimes literally). Innovation is hard, and most would-be innovators fail. But when it occurs, innovation can yield massive benefits, enriching people, improving health, and reducing our dependence on scarce resources. At the same time, innovation can wreak havoc, destabilizing social structures, setting off arms races, and encouraging environmental degradation. What makes innovation possible? Who makes innovation possible? What makes innovators tick? How much innovation is the right amount? How do we create a world that can capture the benefits of innovation while controlling the costs? Who gets to decide on the proper balance?
Fall 2021 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "The Righteous Mind"
Kyle Hampton
Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures and languages, of beliefs and points of view. this course explores moral monism in a world of pluralities, questioning political, religious, and ideological polarization, asking "Why are good people divided by politics, by religion, by ideological extremism?"
FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"
Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.
FFC 100: "Family Matters"
Sean Crockett & Erik Kimbrough
Family matters. This is true in the basic and obvious sense that we all depend in some way or another on our kin; they bring us into the world, they may give us our names, feed us, raise us, teach us, instill values in us, support us, challenge us, punish us, and much more. However, this class will explore the possibility that family matters even more than you might think, because family structure matters. Who we are raised by, who we live with, and who we marry varies widely across (and within) cultures. Is it possible that this variation can help us understand other patterns we see in the world? Does the nature of the family unit shape our patterns of social interaction, our expectations about the behavior of kin and strangers, or maybe even our ideas of right and wrong? In this class we will explore the role that family structures and the expectations engendered by those structures play in our lives. Reading works that span the social sciences, anthropology, biology and literature, we will explore different viewpoints on how family and marriage shape - and are shaped by - the rest of our social world.
Fall 2020 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Utopia and Dystopia in Film and Fiction"
Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time.. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.
FFC 100: "Humanomics: Intersections of Human Identity"
David Rojo Arjona & Jan Osborn
Co-taught by professors from Economics and English, this course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.
Fall 2019 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Health, Wealth, and Inequality"
Andrea Matranga & Keith Hankins
What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? How can the story of progress in health and wealth be one of both growth and inequality? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perceived tensions between economics and the humanities. Co-taught by professors from the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, this course combines social scientific analysis of health, wealth, and inequality with philosophical inquiry into the problems associated with and justifications for inequality, and explores how these issues have been portrayed in novels and film.
FFC 100: "Humanomics: Radical Reformers"
Bas van der Vossen & Erik Kimbrough
Course Syllabus
Critics of contemporary (and historical) society often propose reforms intended to
make the world a better place. This course will explore radical reformers in fiction
and in reality, trying to understand the social problems reforms are intended to address,
the goals of the reformers, and the view of human motivation implied by the reformers’
proposals.
FFC 100: "Humanomics: Exchange and the Human Condition"
Katharine Gillespie Moses & Bart Wilson
What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perception of economics as distinct from the humanities. This course combines an economic inquiry into the human propensity to exchange with the cultural interpretation of the human condition in the HBO television show Deadwood. The instructional methods include Socratic roundtable discussions of the texts, laboratory experiments, journaling, focused free writes, creative writing, and expository papers.
FFC100: "Utopia/Dystopia"
Michael Valdez Moses & John Thrasher IV
The 20th century was an era of bold utopian experimentation. Numerous extraordinary attempts were made to realize in practice radical and competing conceptions of freedom and equality, progress and order, personal happiness and social harmony. Even as many of these utopias became nightmares for those who lived under them, thinkers and artists remained fascinated with the role that technology could play in making possible different ways of living and forms of social control that went beyond what was deemed possible at the time. Focusing on major works of literature, film, and philosophic prose, we will look at some of the most prominent and thought-provoking visions of utopia/dystopia in the 20th and 21st centuries and reflect on what these (mostly) fictional portrayals of society can teach us about the limits (if any) of political thinking in reshaping our conceptions of morality, human nature, and social life. In this course, we will explore the tensions between individual freedom and communal solidarity, between economic prosperity and social equality, between natural limits and human aspirations for an ideal social order, between technological progress and human flourishing.
FFC 100: "Intersections of Human Identity"
David Rojo Arjona & Jan Osborn
Co-taught by professors from Economics and English, this course combines philosophical, literary, and economic texts and tools to explore phenomena at the heart of today’s world, including immigration, segregation, identity politics, and conflict. Students in this course will question how identities and a mass culture intersect in the 21st century, will ask if liberal democracies and exchange economies can help humans achieve just, noble lives, respecting their identities.
Fall 2018 First-year Foundation Courses:
FFC 100: "Humanomics: Exchange and the Human Condition"
Michael Valdez Moses
What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do these questions have to do with one another? While exploring these and other questions about markets and ethics, students will challenge the perception of economics as distinct from the humanities. This course combines an economic inquiry into the human propensity to exchange with the cultural interpretation of the human condition in the HBO television show Deadwood. The instructional methods include Socratic roundtable discussions of the texts, laboratory experiments, journaling, focused free writes, and five expository papers.
FFC 100: "Humanomics: The Ism Schism"
Kyle Hampton and Jan Osborn
Course Syllabus
Human societies are complex, encompassing a plurality of ideas and ideals, of cultures
and languages, of beliefs and points of view. This course explores moral monism in
a world of pluralities, questioning political, religious, and ideological polarization,
asking "Why are good people divided by politics, by religion, by ideological extremism;
why is there an "ism schism"? this course asks students to think critically about
challenges facing the global community.
FFC 100: "Tyranny and Resistance from the Ancients to 1989"
Katharine Gillespie Moses
What is power; how is it gained; how is it exercised over others; how is it lost? Is it something that rulers possess and their subjects lack? Or is it something that is created and recreated within an “economy of power relations” comprised of both acts of dominance and strategic acts of opposition? Do we need structures of power to live peacefully? If so, when might those structures become problematically violent in and of themselves and hence subject to questioning? What comprises a legitimate versus an illegitimate form of resistance? While exploring these and other questions through a broad survey of works spanning from ancient Greece to the pivotal year of 1989, this course combines a social, cultural, economic, and political inquiry into tyranny and resistance with a consideration of how various “economies of power” give rise to various forms of both dominance and opposition.
FFC 100: "The Tragedy in Morality: Greek Drama and the Birth of Law and Ethics"
Brennan McDavid and John Thrasher IV
The Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as well as the comedies of Aristophanes explore the moral complexity of human life. The Orestes series of plays by Aeschylus (the Oresteia) shows how the search for justice, without the structure of law leads to violence and disorder. Oedipus Rex is the exemplar of how bad luck can make a moral mess—Oedipus (spoiler alert) unluckily and unwittingly ends up married to his own mother. Iphigenia at Aulis considers the conflicts that arise under the threat of war when moral emotions, superstitions, and old promises all clash in a perfect storm. And Antigone—perhaps the most famous of these plays in our contemporary times—examines the destruction that can result from a clash between human law and natural morality. In this class, we will explore several of the themes that the Greek tragedians wanted us to consider, and we will do so through engagement with the dramas themselves together with complementary philosophical writing on these same topics. The aim is to understand how the Greeks thought about complex moral issues and to reflect on what lessons we can take from their presentation of those problems in the tragedies.
Humanomics Alumni Newsletter
The newsletter is a space to provide information, inspiration, and continued conversation amongst a group of people who want to engage with the intersections of economics, literature, and philosophy. Humanomics alums who want to be in a space of inquiry, who not only tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty but sometimes revel in the often contradictory and paradoxical nature of human thought and enterprise.
We anticipate, too, that the newsletter will be by and for the Humanomics community, so we invite you to submit pieces on ideas and issues that we might think about together – thinkpieces, if you will. We also invite you to submit memes, to be in the Alumni Spotlight, to suggest books we might read together, and pretty much anything else that reflects Humanomics, helping us remember our shared past and create a community for the future.
Past Issues:
Issue III - November 2025Issue II - August 2025
Issue I - January 2025