CLAR 101 THE INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY

Course Description:  An introduction to the life of intellectual inquiry based on themes from Bonaventure’s The Mind’s Journey into God.  By means of a seminar format, Clare College faculty and students engage in reflective discussion, informed by the Bonaventurian spiritual vision, of substantive issues posed by the human community.  In this manner writing and thinking skills are developed, verbal expression is encouraged, and foundational questions are explored with a view toward integrating the core area courses.

(Common Syllabus)

Revised 4/25/00

*Note:  From the following list, those readings marked "R" are required of all sections.  In addition, at least one additional reading from the list for each step for a total of 40 readings.

PROLOGUE: THE LIFE OF LEARNING

In the opening paragraphs of the Itinerarium, St. Bonaventure presents a vision of peace and contemplation that is the goal of the fully integrated life, a life ordered by both coherent educational goals and authentic personal integrity. The university life of learning and theoretical speculation, of scientific research and reflection on human experience, of contemplation and illumination, constitutes the intellectual journey, a path that leads to both enlightenment and personal development. At the very heart of Bonaventure’s vision is his conviction that the life of the mind must be fully integrated with the nature of the person; students must be reminded that "the mirror of the external world put before them is of little or no avail unless the mirror of our soul has been cleansed and polished." The intellectual life refreshes the spirit and ennobles all of our activities, both professional and personal, but we must begin the journey with a joyous, positive spirit, "anointed with the oil of gladness."

A. Contemplation

R  Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey Into God. (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), Prologue 1-4.

B. Liberal Education

R  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro archia poeta (In Defense of Archias).

R  J. H Newman, "Discourse VII: Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Professional Skill" from The Idea of a University.

C. The Personal Quest

Annie Dillard, "Library Card Incident" from An American Childhood.

Thomas Wolfe, "Young Faustus" from Of Time and the River: A Legend of a Man’s Hunger in his Youth.

Richard Wright, "The Library Card" from Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth

R  Richard. Rodriguez, The Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, An Autobiography

STEP 1. INQUIRY AND THE UNIVERSE.

This step deals explicitly with the search for truth in nature and implicitly with reverence for the environment. Our journey through the natural world is initiated through our bodily senses, which, in communion with the intellect, reveal the innate quality and excellence of all creation: "For the bodily senses serve the intellect when it investigates rationally, or believes faithfully, or contemplates intellectually. He who contemplates considers the actual existence of things; he who believes, the habitual course of things; he who investigates with his reason, the potential excellence of things."

A. Observation

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium I, 9, 14; 

R  Bonaventure, Life of Francis IX, 1.

R  Aldo Leopold, "On Reading the Forest Landscape" from Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There.

R  Paul Colinvaux, "The Succession Affair" from Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist’s Perspective.

B. Experimentation

June Goodfield, "A Diversion and a Failure" from An Imagined World: A Story of Scientific Discovery.

C. Speculation

Paul Davies, "Did God Create the Universe?" from God and the New Physics.

R  Genesis, The Story of Creation

STEP 2. IMAGINATIVE PERSPECTIVES IN THE NATURAL WORLD

This step deals with our imaginative or aesthetic response to the natural world, a focused, positive evaluation of our environment. As St. Bonaventure observes, "this whole external world must enter the human soul through the doors of the senses, "which apprehend, enjoy, and ultimately assess the quality of that world.

A. Revelation

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium, II, 3-6, 11-13

B. Interrelatedness

R  Hopkins, "God’s Grandeur."

William Wordsworth. "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."

R  Henry David Thoureau, "The Maine Woods."

St. Francis, Canticle of the Sun.

C. Hostility

R  Matthew Arnold, "In Harmony With Nature.

D. Responsibility

R  Barbara Novak, "The Nationalist Garden and the Holy Book" from Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting.  Click here for the images discussed by Novak.

STEP 3. THE NATURE OF THE PERSON

This step deals with an attempt to understand the unique reality of the human person within its historical, cultural, and political context, as well as the person’s search for "unity, truth, and goodness" in being.

A. Theocentric

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium, III.1,4, 6

St. Francis, "The Fifth Admonition."

R  Augustine, Confessions. I,1,9; VII,7-13; VIII,6-12.

B. Cosmocentric

R  Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

C. Anthropocentric

Michel de Montaigne, The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of his Times.

R  Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism as a Humanism."

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

STEP 4. THE PERSON IN SOCIEY: RECONCILIATION AND TRANSFORMATION

This step deals critically with the broad category of obstacles to the fulfillment of human personal and communal life. Such obstacles necessitate both critique (personal, social, cultural) and "reparation," as we are guided to things divine through the rational soul itself and its naturally implanted faculties, considered in their activities, their relationships, and their possession of sciences."

A. Social Suffering

R  Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex.

R  Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

B. Explanation

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto.

C. Resolutions

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium IV, 1-2, 5

Vatican Council II, "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"

STEP 5. IMAGES OF ULTIMATE REALITY

This step constitutes an effort to understand the ultimate nature of reality from a variety of perspectives. This step is driven by the insight that a contemporary Bonaventurean university would, at the very least, be committed to the search for a true and intuitive representation of reality. Ultimate reality is the fullness of being, which will "lift you up in admiration. For being itself is both the first and last; it is eternal and yet most present; it is most simple and the greatest; it is most actual and most changeless; it is most perfect and immense."

A. As Personal

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium V, 7-8

John Donne, Sermon 23 Holy Sonnets 4 & 10.

R  John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III

Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse.

B. As Impersonal

R  Plato, "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic.

Ursula K. Le Guin, "Schrodinger’s Cat."

R  Huston Smith, "The Beyond Within" from The World’s Religions

R  Hinduism Selections, Selections from the Chandogya Upanishad

STEP 6. THE SEARCH FOR VALUE AND MEANING

This step deals with the nature of value and accounts of the highest good in human life. As with any truly Franciscan account of value, the true must always be grounded in the good—all learning must be directed toward virtuous behavior and especially love of "eternal goodness" ("which forcibly strike[s] the eyes of our mind with awesome admiration") and our fellow human beings.

A. Eternity

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium VI, 2 [extract], 4-5, 7.

R  New Testament, Matthew, 5, 6, 7.

R  St. Clare, Testament

B. Life

Homer, Iliad, XXIV

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. I

R  DeLillo, Don. White Noise. NY: Viking, 1985, chapters 1-6, 10.

C. Death

R  T.S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi."

R  Emily Dickinson, "Apparently With No Surprise." "A Fly Buzzed By," and "Because I Could Not Stop For Death."

THE JOY OF DISCOVERY:  ‘LET US BEGIN AGAIN’

In the last chapter of the Itinerarium, Bonaventure speaks of the need to reach a "transport of contemplation on the mountain height," and of the necessity of rooting the intellectual quest in desire and in "the fire that wholly inflames" the heart. This step embraces those instances in intellectual, religious, and cultural history that best epitomize the passion and joy of learning and discovery.

A. Terror

R  Euripides, The Bacchae.

B. Joy

R  Bonaventure, Itinerarium VII, 1-3.

R  Dante, Inferno, canto 1; Paradiso, canto 33.

John, Keats, "On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer."

R  Thomas. Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.