FILO-1281A La Muerte en Occidente
Both secularization and pluralism in modern day society have led to death being an ever less discussed phenomenon. In past times, the discourse about death was an almost exclusive domain of religion, but with the loss of value in society of what was once traditionally religious, and the paramount status of other discourses (medical discourse, scientific approach, Esotericism, and the pseudo-scientific discourse of Self-improvement) death has come to be one of the great taboos of our time. This course pretends to retake the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective. Although the more prominent approaches will be those of philosophy and psychology (this course is offered by both departments), historical, anthropological and sociological approaches will also be discussed. Some of the general problems the course tries to address are: the historically recognized attitudes towards death in the West, the philosophical debate regarding the relationship between death, morality and happiness, actual individual attitudes, as well as beliefs and social prejudices towards death (subject of Social psychology), and the suffering which necessarily implies one’s own death or that of loved ones (Clinical psychology).
Catalog page for this course