Splash Biography

The way we prepare, enjoy, and understand food has changed more in the last 20 years than in the last 200. In this class, we will look at how our understanding of food science and best practices in the kitchen have enabled home cooks to produce meals that have never been possible or easy before. We will leverage insights from the world of restaurant cooking, advances in food science, and techniques from current cooking literature to rediscover something we thought we always understood: food. Note: This is NOT a cooking class, and we will not be preparing food in class. This class is about how to use science and modern cooking practices to increase your repertoire in the kitchen and really understand what goes on in a pan, oven, or plate.

This class explores how a select group of philosophers and writers throughout the history of Western civilization have answered the question "What is the good life for a human being?". The class is structured in five parts, chronologically ordered: Socrates and Plato on the Examined Life and the Nature of the Soul, Aristotle, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius on Virtue, Duty, and Eudaemonia , St. Francis and Thomas Aquinas on Christian Piety and the Beatific Vision, JS Mill and Kant on Rationalism, Scientism, and the Enlightenment Project, Nietzsche, Sartre, and MacIntyre on Proposed Roads to Freedom. No prior exposure to any of these thinkers is required, and the readings will be light to moderate in difficulty. This class hopes to present a robust and well-reasoned case both for the historically and socially conditioned nature of many ideas (and the concept of happiness in particular), as well as for the possibility of using independent reasoning as well as readings within the humanities to shape and inspire a better life for human beings.

This course will serve as a brief introduction to a few of the ways in which great thinkers in the Western academic tradition have answered the question "What is the good life for a human being?". This class will address the question in six historical and philosophical chapters: THOUGHT: Plato and Socratic Influences VIRTUE: Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius REVERENCE: Saint Francis of Assisi ENLIGHTENMENT: Immanuel Kant POWER: Friedrich Nietzsche and Lord Byron FREEDOM: Jean-Paul Sartre -Recommended Texts- Plato - The Symposium Aristotle - The Nichomachean Ethics M. Aurelius - Meditations S. Francis - Admonitions I. Kant - What Is Enlightenment? F. Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil G. Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage JP. Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism NOTE: I don't expect you to read these before you come! I list them here in order to indicate what material we will be discussing, as well as provide support for whatever research you wish to do after the course is over.