We will study the life and work of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). His mission as an author begins with a journal entry he wrote while overlooking the sea north of Copenhagen: "What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose." We will follow in Kierkegaard's footsteps, both literally and figuratively.

This course focuses on a range of meta-normative issues including, but not restricted to, objectivity of normative claims, nature of normative knowledge, & relationship between normative reasoning & normative facts. The focus is the manuscript of Conor McHugh & Jonathan Way's Getting Things Right: Reasons, Value, and Fittingness, to be published by Oxford University Press. We work through the manuscript of McHugh & Way's book; McHugh & Way visit some sessions to answer questions; there is a series of informal discussions between participants; we have 4 outside speakers give talks on related topics (speakers tba).