The syllabus ran from Ancient Greece to depictions of Nazis and terrorists in modern film, and considers philosophical assessments of sympathy (positive and negative) alongside examples of its aesthetic manufacture. Half of our readings were in moral philosophy, and in each case we used the literary text or film as a kind of experimental field to test the concepts laid out by the philosophical texts, and to evaluate the philosophers’ claims about the moral efficacy of compassion. Students also worked creatively to engender sympathy in four genres (rhetoric, drama, narrative, film). Hence there were three related skills we developed in the course: critical thinking; literary analysis; creative practice.

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We looked into the ethical implications of using dramatic compassion to further laudable social agendas of tolerance. This line of questioning reveals the discomforting unity of pity as a device in portrayals, for instance, of both Nazis and their victims: Is it possible for art works to persuade bigots to accept minorities and outcasts? Is it right for a film to invite sympathy for a monster like Hitler or a public menace like suicide bombers? It is vital to understand the action of sympathy before we assign it such momentous tasks as guiding our moral vision and encouraging a more tolerant society.

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The course worked through four units that concentrate on sympathy in a particular time period and a particular genre. After a first unit on pity in the ancient world through the practice of rhetoric, the next three units examined the production of sympathy especially in relation to European Jews. As perennial outsiders on the margins of society, often the victims of violent hate, Jews were both the objects and subjects of pity in artistic representations. This focus on sympathetic portrayals of one group of people allowed us to examine the claims of moral philosophers with clear, concrete, and consistent examples. We examined the ways that casting minorities as objects of pity can strategically forward—but structurally undermine—the project of creating a more open and just society.

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Unit 1: Rhetoric (Ancient Greece and Rome)

Readings: Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Gorgias, Aristotle, Cicero 

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Unit 2: Drama (Early Modern through Enlightenment)

Readings: Bible, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn

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Unit 3: Narrative (19th Century)

Readings: Kant, Schopenhauer, Chamisso, George Eliot, Nietzsche

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Unit 4: Film (20th – 21st Centuries)

Readings: Brecht, Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum, Kathleen Woodward

Films: "I, Borg," Star Trek the Next Generation (USA, 1992); Downfall (Germany, 2004); 

The Lives of Others (Germany, 2006); The Bubble (Israel, 2006)

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We engaged in team-based learning in this course. For each of the four units, teams worked on projects that included both creative and analytical elements, corresponding to the artistic works and the philosophers we examine during that unit. After each unit, students were be expected to articulate the positions of the philosophers on individual and team assessment tests.