THEO1701 · Complex Problems and Enduring Questions

Spiritual Exercises: Engagement, Empathy, Ethics

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

This is an Enduring Question course and is open to FRESHMEN only. You must take both MUSA1701 and THEO1701. How might we train for encounters with beauty and the sacred? One objective of these linked courses is to help students realize that their own personal experiences can be the departing point for -- and even the subject of -- scholarly inquiry, that theology, the arts, and philosophy are not mere disciplines to be learned but practices that are indispensable to being alive and serving the common good. Another aim is for students to realize that deeply meaningful experiences -- whether of the true, the beautiful, and the good, or the divine in the world and in one's self -- often don't just happen. Instead, such experiences are usually the result of being situated in the right place and time with the right preparation and mindset; in other words, they are usually the result of a certain type of exercise.