First-Year Seminar
Quaestio mihi
factus sum: Self and Society in the Liberal Arts
One
of the few common denominators in the history of the arts, humanities, and
sciences has been the quest—through creative, rational, scientific, and
spiritual approaches—for understanding the relationship between the individual
and the larger world. Fittingly, the very root of the word used to describe
both the private and public self, identity, has always entailed a tension
between “sameness” (in Latin, idem) and “difference” (if I am x, then I am not
y). Whether through philosophical inquiry into what constitutes the person,
scientific debates about when life begins, theological disquisitions on the
nature of the soul, or the literary construction of the autobiographical
persona, thinkers and artists throughout history have explored the moral and
ethical dimensions of self-representation while gesturing toward its unsolvable
mysteries and productive tensions. In the words of the theologian Saint
Augustine, “mihi quaestio factus sum” (“I have become a question for myself”;
Confessions 10.33.50). The search for the role and purpose of the human being
can serve a powerful epistemological function. In “becoming a question for
ourselves,” we establish a position of wonder and critical inquiry vis-à-vis
the world.
Texts:
·
Genesis
(Norton; trans. Alter);
·
Plato,
Symposium (Oxford; trans. Waterfield);
·
Virgil,
The Aeneid (Penguin; trans. Fagles);
·
St.
Augustine, Confessions (Penguin; trans. Pine-Coffin);
·
Dante,
Inferno (Penguin; trans. R. and J. Hollander);
·
William
Shakespeare, King Lear (Norton);
·
Galileo
Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions (Anchor; trans. Drake)