PART 2 features a single reflection that builds upon your part 1 short responses, now with some emphasis shifting toward comparing, contrasting and (where applicable and relevant) reaching beyond to include consideration of other related course texts that potentially contribute to key points and issues that you’ve identified and discussed. Part 2 will also appropriately include some extension beyond our collection of course texts to explore implications or possible points of contact with familiar issues in public life and the world today.

While some interconnections between texts are likely already signaled in part 1 prompts and responses, part 2 should make somewhat more deliberate use of the opportunity to engage continuities and differences between and among texts. Certainly within our course themes, some continuities are planned (that’s almost the definition of a theme). A number of authors agree at least on what counts as a compelling question. How exactly they express it and how they go about pursuing an answer distinguishes their efforts. And even beyond the more obvious thematic links, I believe one can find interesting shared concerns broadly across many of our texts. While sometimes connections are fairly directly expressed by an author, the more operative question here is how your own interpretations of various texts may help raise questions for or shed light upon other texts and issues that cut across some portion of these works.

While part 2 invites an extension of your consideration of course texts (with attention to the text), I am hoping it will also include an occasion to think about implications for life today. What sort of promise or limitation might you find in questions framed, analysis presented and conclusions asserted or implied through the readings and philosophical conversations that we’ve been exploring? What challenges or opportunities might be found for possibly productive consideration of informed action moving forward?