Instructor: Rasoul Rahbari-Ghazani

Course type: Live Video Meeting (Google Meet)

Language: English
Duration: 8 weeks

Start: First week of November 2025

Economy scholarship: 50% OFF for registrations (included)

Course Description. This 8-week course is titled “Philosophy and Literature” to emphasize both dimensions of inquiry: the “philosophy of literature,” where philosophy examines literature’s nature, truth, and value; and the dialogue between philosophy and literature, where literary works themselves generate philosophical insight. By combining these approaches, the course investigates how philosophers have theorized about literature and how literature—whether in the form of narrative, allegory, or poetry—functions as a medium of philosophical exploration.

The course engages materials from Islamic and Western traditions. From Plato, Aristotle, and Nietzsche to Rūmī, ʿAṭṭār, Suhrawardī, and Mullā Ṣadrā, students will encounter texts that show literature’s dual role: as an object of philosophical reflection and as a vehicle for philosophical thought. Special attention is given to Persian mystical and poetic traditions, where philosophy and literature intertwine most intimately, articulating experiences and truths often inaccessible to purely discursive reasoning. Students should therefore expect to:

• Analyze key philosophical questions about literature, including its aesthetic value, its relation to truth and knowledge, and the role of language, metaphor, and narrative.
• Explore how literary texts—from epics and allegories to philosophical poetry—convey moral, existential, and mystical insights.
• Compare Western and Islamic perspectives, gaining a cross-cultural understanding of how philosophy and literature enrich one another.
• Develop critical and interpretive skills by engaging directly with both philosophical treatises and literary works.

Ultimately, this course equips students to view literature not merely as art but as a mode of philosophizing—a medium that challenges reason, deepens ethical imagination, and discloses aspects of the human condition and the ineffable.

Course material will be provided before the course begins.