Seminar Materials
Philosophy 381—Happiness &
Meaning
Michael
Taber
St. Mary’s College of Maryland, USA
Fall 2026
These are the books you will need for the semester, in the order in which
we will use them. They will be available in the Campus Store for purchase or
rent, or you can get them on your own.
1.
The first book we’ll use is Lorraine Besser’s The Philosophy of Happiness: An Interdisciplinary
Introduction,
2.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, translated by Constance Garnett (2009,
Hackett Publishing), ISBN: 978-0872209053
3.
E. D. Klemke and Steven Cahn’s The Meaning of Life: A Reader, 4th
ed. (2017, Oxford University Press), ISBN: 978-0190674199
4.
Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus and Other
Essays (1991, Vintage Books), ISBN:
978-0679733737
5.
Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1989, Vintage Books), ISBN: 978-0679720201
6.
Mariana Alessandri’s Night Vision: Seeing
Ourselves Through Dark Moods (2023, Princeton University Press), ISBN: 978-0691242699
Second, some materials (mostly short readings) are
linked to the
Google folder for this seminar, or to external sites.
Third, some of the readings in the semester schedule (as well as some that I’ll send you throughout the semester) are links to articles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, or The Economist. Believe it or not, each of you already has a subscription to all three, thanks to our library having a site license for all SMCM students, faculty, and staff. (Your tuition $$ at work!)
You just need to activate your subscription (free!),
using your smcm.edu account. Here are our library’s
instructions for each of the three:
the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and The Economist.
(Don’t try to do it from within any other account than
your SMCM.edu account. And be sure that when you go to activate, you don't have
an already existing tab open to any of these three websites, as you might if
you tried to open a link without first having gone through your activation.)
Send me mail: mstaber at smcm dot edu
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Go to Michael Taber's home page.
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