Topics in East Asian Religions (318-0-20)
Topic
Fate, Fortune, & Karma in East Asia
Instructors
Kevin Delaney Buckelew
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-331: Mon, Wed 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
Are our actions free or fated? What larger forces shape the choices we make? To what do we owe our successes, and what is to blame for our mistakes? In East Asian religions, such questions have been answered with reference to a variety of different concepts of fate, fortune, and karma. These concepts shape not only how people have viewed the world, but also how they have made their way through life. This class focuses on religious approaches to questions of destiny in premodern East Asia. We begin by studying Indian Buddhist ideas of karma and early Chinese notions of fate and fortune preceding Buddhism's arrival in China, then turn to the ways people in China and Japan negotiated these various concepts over the many centuries following the arrival of Buddhism. In the end, we discover important throughlines amid the diversity of religious responses to the problem of destiny in East Asian history.
Learning Objectives
1. Learn about the history of religion in East Asia by studying concepts of fate, fortune, and karma.
2. Engage with key themes in the academic study of religion, including diverse and contested ideas about freedom and predestination, justice and punishment, and the shaping of individual choices by larger forces.
3. Develop methods for working with primary sources, as well as engaging with secondary scholarship.
4. Build skill in critically and constructively analyzing complex subjects through reading, writing, discussing, undertaking research, and formulating original arguments.
Teaching Method
Class Materials (Required)
Class materials will be uploaded to Canvas.
Class Attributes
Ethical and Evaluative Thinking Foundational Disci
Ethics & Values Distro Area