Prescribed Text
For the HL version of the course, we are expected to conduct an in-depth study of a specific philosophical text. This should take about 40 of the 240 hours. Students will write about this text in Paper 2 of the exam.
Though I have chosen to study Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching, these other titles are well worth consideration, and we will likely read excerpts from several of them.
- Simone de Beauvoir--The Second Sex (selections)
- David Hume--Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
- Friedrich Nietzsche--The Genealogy of Morals
- Ortega y Gasset--The Origin of Philosophy
- Peter Singer---The Life You Can Save
- Lao Tzu---Tao Te Ching*
- René Descartes--Meditations
- John Stuart Mill--On Liberty
- Martha Nussbaum--Creating Capabilities…
- Plato--The Republic (Books IV–IX)
- Charles Taylor---The Ethics of Authenticity
- Zhuangzi---Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters