ABSTRACT
I have been teaching an introductory philosophy course, “Search for Meaning,” for several years now and have made some significant changes based on my experiences in the classroom, concern for meeting the particular needs of the students I teach, and an awareness of what has been happening in my discipline and in the contemporary world in general. One of the obvious shifts you can see is in the Introduction to the syllabus. I started out with a pretty general description of the issues and methods of the course, stressing the discussion of meaning in our lives. After I taught the course a couple of times, I decided that a central issue in many of our discussions was how to make commitments in a pluralistic and rapidly changing world. The revised Introduction reflects that emphasis and provides a much clearer and, I think, more meaningful framework for the students as they begin to consider what we will be about in the course. It takes them from the vague and abstract notion of “meaning” to the context in which they are trying to construct meaning in their own lives.
