COURSE: FOUR ESSENTIAL THINKERS

What is it to think seriously about things? Do we have to be a philosopher or academic? Or is thinking accurately, cohesively, part of what it is to be human? Awaken the ability to think by studying the work of four important thinkers, essential to how we conceive of the world today, to our place in it, and to where we move from here. Why is it man as a species thinks about things? Is this the most obvious question or the most difficult? So we will learn to question with Heidegger why there is being rather than emptiness; with the Bronte sisters we will learn to understand the process of literary creation; Jared Diamond will help us probe why it is societies bring collapse upon themselves; Lewis Carroll will reawaken the child's perception of the world and raise the question of what is education. With Susan Sontag we will question contemporary media and how we understand the pain of others. Join us then on a journey that will change the very way we think!

Since 1984, Dr Chris Neilson has lectured and written widely on mythology and the fairy-tale, on mysticism, oriental thought, and dream interpretation, on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, on Jungian analytical psychology, and on children's literature and the canon of literature and philosophy in Toronto, Cape Town, Auckland and Perth. He has lectured with Professors Northrop Frye in Toronto and J.M. Coetzee in Cape Town; and has regularly taught fairy tales and children's literature to at schools in Toronto.

Thu 7.30-9pm Jul 14 21 28 Aug 4 11 18 $ 124 Booking Essential 6488 2433 or online http://www.extension.uwa.edu.au Click on Extension Courses and go to Intellectual Adventures