College Professor Uses Harry Potter To Teach Aristotle

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Similar to farts (sorry, chicks), Harry Potter is just something I’ll never outgrow.

No matter how old I get or how world-weary I become, I will always giggle at the sound of a fart, and I will always turn on a Harry Potter movie when its airing on ABC Family (unless a Batman movie is on somewhere).

Now, while I was far from a perfect college student (actually, far from a good one), I think that has less to do with my work ethic and more to do with my lack of Harry Potter-related classes. If I had more teachers like this one, who fuses Harry Potter lore with Aristotle, I would have probably had a 4.0 (doubtful).

via NBC:

St. Cloud State University professor Carolyn Hartz is applying Aristotle’s work on friendship to character relationships in J.K. Rowling’s books about the boy wizard, the St. Cloud Times reported. The class discusses ethics, logic, love, the human soul and nature while examining the stories.

“These are fundamental human concerns,” Hartz said. “Philosophy is, in my view, critical thinking about fundamental areas of human concern.”

Rowling’s stories provide understandable examples of philosophical concepts that can be difficult to comprehend, said Miles Nelson, a second-year university student who took the course last spring. He said the class also shows the depth in Rowling’s work that many people may not have realized if they read the Harry Potter books when they were children.

Nelson said he was inspired to minor in philosophy after taking the course.

“This class really solidified how much I love thinking about hard problems and questions with hard answers,” Nelson said.

Even cooler yet, Hartz has considered teaching philosophy through other pieces of pop culture, such as video games or the HBO series Game Of Thrones.