Questions Addressed By the Central Texts
This course is a text-based discussion of the ideas each text raises. Students are expected to have read the assigned texts before class, and to participate in each class in discussion of them, orally and in writing. The course is meant to introduce students to the habits of critical thinking and writing, and to reflection on the profound issues of human life as an integral part of their university education. The texts are selected to further this reflection.
Nostra Aetate addresses the relation of Christian to non-Christian believers. It stresses a positive view of Judaism, the Jewish roots of Christianity, and positive aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam and "whatever is true and holy" in other traditions. It asks us to reflect on our own tradition of belief in relation to other traditions that provide different answers to the great human questions we share. "Nostra Aetate" provides a good opening text for this course in that it raises fundamental questions that the remainder of the course will continue to explore:
"People expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir human hearts: What is humanity? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?"(Nostra Aetate, 1)
Plato stands at the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition as it distinguishes itself critically from the world of myth (though this is a distinction and not a full severing). Plato asks us to think about the difference between what is real and what only apparent, what true and truly known, and what false or merely opinion. He also puts us to the question: for what are we willing to die? How important is truth to us?
The Gospels are central to Western Civilization. They proclaim that the ultimate mystery is transcendent, personal love. This Love seeks converse with those who might least be expected to be welcome at God's table and are often not welcome at ours: the poor and the outcast of society. The gospel asks us what we mean by "justice" and whether justice is possible apart from Love. The gospel asks not only "what is truth," but "am I truthful?"
The Bhagavad Gita comes from the traditions of Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita is the story of Arjuna as he decides whether to make war against his relatives and takes counsel from his God, Krishna. Krishna soon reveals to Arjuna different aspects of Hindu beliefs and paths of practice that move toward personal liberation. The Gita raises profound questions about the relation of duty to morality, the culturally inculcated desire for rewards through action, and what devotion to God might look like. The Gita also raises questions regarding the meaning of the body and soul, the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of liberation and the path to it, and even the nature of time and the world itself.
Saint Augustine's Confessions asks what it means to rightly praise and thank God, what it means to be a rightly ordered human being, how this might be achieved, and what obstacles stand in our way. Augustine draws themes and questions from Plato and from the gospels into a concrete personal journey that asks after the nature and purpose of being human, the source and nature of evil, and the role of divine love in our lives.
Dante's Divine Comedy incarnates a Christian journey of self-discovery that asks its readers to experience the iniquity of the world, the tragedies of human selfishness, the progress of conversion, and the extraodinary love of God for all creation. Dante raises issues of the nature of human iniquity, of justice both human and divine, of the relation between sensible and spiritual beauty, of the destiny of the human person, and the nature of God.
Pope Benedict's Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) begins from the Christian doctrine that God is Love and proceeds to reflect on different forms of human love in their relation. He especially raises questions regarding the nature of erotic love and divine or agapeic love and their relation. Benedict then goes further and discusses the relation between Christian charity and political justice, the relation between Church and state.
Other modern texts will also be chosen by the individual instructor to further discussion of these issues from other perspectives.
Course Objectives
At the completion of the course, the student will be able to:
1. Identify and engage the issues and questions central to the Catholic intellectual tradition.
2. Discuss core texts of the Catholic intellectual tradition, broadly understood, and how they inform the journey of transformation.
3. Integrate new information from multiple perspectives.
4. Demonstrate Freshman level proficiency in Reading & Writing, and in Critical Thinking.
Questions Considered Through Reading and Discussion
What is real?
What is truth? How does one differentiate the real and the true from apparent and false?
What do we know about the beautiful?
What do we know of the divine or transcendent?
Is there a meaning to suffering?
How does one endure suffering?
What is Love?
What is the meaning of freedom?
How does the human person attain transcendence?
How do we understand the just, the right, the call to do good?
How do we decide what to do?
What kind of community do we desire?
How can we improvise within social, political, and economic constraints?
What roles do family, friends, race/ethnicity/national origin, socio-economic background, and national crisis play in one's journey through life?
How do we come to appreciate the human in others in the face of our differences involving gender, sexual orientation, religion, linguistics, ethnic, social, political, and economic status?
Course Requirements and Evaluation
The primary focus of this class is reading and discussion. Students are expected to demonstrate that they have read and prepared to discuss the material prior to class.
In addition, the following class activities are being planned for Fall 2007.
Film Series runs concurrently with the course, on Fridays 1-3 and Thursdays 7-9 in Nursing Amphitheater. Students are required to prepare a written critique for 4 of the 11 films in the series.
Service Learning option links the community service requirement in Freshman Studies to the academic goals of the Journey of Transformation course.
Spiritual Retreat option is a time to practice spiritual exercises of reflection and prayer.
Group Project option challenges students to work together and draw upon core texts, the film series, and their own experience, to create a fully collaborative mixed-media project that expresses their responses to some of the perennial questions central to the Catholic intellectual tradition. Students are assigned to a group at the beginning of the semester, and work on a team project that is presented during finals week. The project is a creative synthesis of the entire semester, focused on a question that the students choose in consultation with the instructor.
Course Schedule
Week 1 Introduction
Two or three poems or excerpts that indicate very different views of human existence introduce students to the idea that they are entering into a conflict of interpretations.
Nietzsche's "Parable of the Madman"(The Gay Science, #125)
Saint Francis, "Canticle of Brother Sun"
Rumi, Prayer of the Chalice
Visuals: Journeys
Weeks 2-4 Being Called
Nostra Aetate
Plato, Allegory of the Cave, The Apology
The Gospel of Luke or The Gospel of John
Supplementary Materials: Plato's Phaedrus
Acts of the Apostles
Film Series: Passion of Joan of Arc, Jesus of Montreal
Visuals: What do you see powerpoint, Reality, Suffering
Weeks 5-8 Seeking a Path
Bhagavad Gita
Saint Augustine, Confessions, Bks. 1-3, 7-10
Dante, The Divine Comedy
Inferno: Cantos I, II, III, V, XXXIV
Purgatory: Cantos II, VIII, XIX, XXVII, XXX, XXXI
Paradiso: Cantos III, VII, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII
Supplementary Materials: Augustine Sermon 27a
Sermons of the Buddha
Film Series: The Mission, Motorcycle Diaries, Water, Mahabharata
Visuals: Beauty, Representation, Love
Weeks 9-13 Contemporary Journeys, Perennial Questions
Pope Benedict XVI: God is Love
Choose two from the list:
Voltaire, Candide
Tolstoy, Death of Ivan Illych
Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes or The Long Loneliness
Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Supplementary materials:
Film Series: O Brother Where Art Thou?
Entertaining Angels, Stand and Deliver, Hidden, Life is Beautiful, American History X, Freedom Writers
Visuals: Community, To Have/To Be, Freedom
Required Texts
The Bible, New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, 3rd Edition or any modern translation
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
ISBN: 019528478X
Format: Hardcover, 2180pp
Pub. Date: January 2001
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Augustine, The Confessions
Format: Paperback, 358pp
Bhagavad Gita