Dialogue – 4/12/21

Having already taken a Religions course, I was excited to dive deeper into the philosophical and literature aspects of it. Our class focused on theistic existentialism, reading from the most influential existentialists as well as two novels that included or was influenced by existentialist thought. Towards the end of the semester, we were assigned a group dialogue where we had to connect the ideas of one or more existentialists we had studied and a world issue. My group decided to talk about the ethics of the death penalty in the United States through characters that represented Nietzsche, Mauriac, and Kierkegaard. This assignment was unique and challenging, so my group had to dedicate lots of time to planning and then writing the 10 page dialogue. We were instructed to have fun with it, so my partners and I ended up having a good time when working on this due to the many jokes we would suggest inputing. It made the amount of work worth it. Additionally, this assignment showed us how existentialist thought could be applied even in modern times to modern issues. A majority of the readings we had in class were from the Late 1800s to Mid 1900s, so it was eye opening to see how easy it was to apply what we had learned to our topic.

Unfortunately, we struggled with everyone contributing an equal amount of time and work. As with all group projects, sharing the work equally is imperative. It was even more important for this project specifically, because each person was in charge of their own character. We all represented differing perspectives, so it was difficult to make up for another persons lack of contribution. It was a point of frustration, but we were able to put together a great dialogue. In the future, I hope to be more assertive in group projects and make sure everyone contributes equally.