Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy

Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

The Holocaust
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

How did the Holocaust happen? How could some people commit such heinous crimes, while others remained bystanders, and still others risked their lives to save innocent people? We will attempt to answer these questions and many more as we examine the Holocaust...

East Asian Ways
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

Exactly what is Zen Buddhism? Through readings ancient and modern, videos, visits with a meditation instructor and independent projects, students will learn about the origins, philosophy and varied expressions of a movement that reaches back to the 5th...

Epistemology
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

Epistemology is a philosophical term meaning “the study of knowledge,” or the question of how we know what we know about the world around us and within us. Our readings include sources in the Western philosophical tradition of reason (Plato,...

Imagining Your Future
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

One of the most popular undergraduate courses at Stanford is entitled “Designing Your Life” – which implies that life, in fact, can be designed or planned out ahead of time. More often than not, however, life is not linear, but probably not...

Silicon Valley Ethics: Case Studies
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

(Students paired with Exeter alumni working in the technology field) In a world where the products of technology permeate almost every aspect of our lives – the internet, smart phones, thousands of apps, cloud-based voice systems, screens in our...

Spring Book Club
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

This course reads down selectively The New York Times hard- and paperback nonfiction bestseller list, searching for books which would make for lively Harkness conversations about meaning, purpose and value in one’s life. The primary focus of the class...

Introduction to Philosophy
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

What is really real? How do I know what I know? Do I have free will? What is the good? These and other speculative questions have troubled the Western mind for millennia. This course follows a topical approach to the history of Western philosophy and focuses...

Existentialism
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

What is the meaning of life? Does life have any meaning? Is traditional religion still relevant? Is God dead, or how do we live in a world where it appears God is absent? Focusing primarily on the 19th- and 20th-century literature of that group of writers...

Hebrew Bible / Old Testament
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . . .” So begins one of the most influential books in human history. From ancient times until the present, Jews, Christians and Muslims have grappled with the cosmic questions, universal...

The New Testament
Religion, Ethics & Philosophy

The New Testament, which has been called “the most widely read, quoted, debated, maligned, and believed book in Western civilization,” will be the focus of this course. We will read and explore the New Testament, study the life of Jesus, the...