The Essential Question: What does it mean to be wise and what does it mean to live heroically?
In this course we will pursue the essential question of how we define excellent character, focusing our inquiry on the historical development of character traits deemed most worthy in the Middle Ages: wisdom and heroism. What does it mean to be “heroic,” and “wise,” and is wisdom an aspect of heroism? How did these ideas develop in combination with one another in the medieval period? Many aspects of what we might now consider elements of the “examined life” originated with medieval thinkers, who were motivated by essential questions about the meaning of human existence and its persistence in an afterlife, offering us insights for how we should live now. The twin ideals of heroism and wisdom – whether through knighthood, crusades, courtship, monastic celibacy and poverty, religious martyrdom, or in the intellectual life itself – pervaded epic poetry, music, and philosophy during a time of unprecedented population growth and social development. This multidisciplinary course traverses both the glories and the foibles involved in the medieval ideals of heroism and wisdom, through a study spanning history, philosophy, literature, art, and architecture. Do we see elements from the age of heroic chivalry in our concept of heroism today? Is wisdom necessarily connected to intellectualism and the educated life? We will pursue these questions, measuring contemporary expressions of wisdom and heroism against those developed in Medieval Europe.
