Professor Keith Egan
Saint Mary's
College
Religious Studies 247
"Exploring Beauty"
This course explores beauty as a religious manifestation and as a
theological opportunity. It seeks to sharpen one's contemplative
disposition for beauty while it promotes theological reflection on the
experience of beauty. The course explores what philosphers, poets,
artists, and theologians have said about beauty. It invites students to
attend to beauty wherever it is found and to develop skills in asking
questions about beauty. Some of these questions are: do beauty, truth,
and goodness converge? How can one avoid sentimentality, shallow
romanticism, and the trivialization of beauty so common in modern
culture? Does the experience of beauty raise the human spirit to new
heights? What is the connection between love and beauty? Does beauty
have the potential for eliciting a greater sensitivity to ethical issues
and for fostering a "kinder and gentler" society? This class challenges
its members to look and to to look until they can see and to listen and
listen until they can hear the beautiful, and to ask questions till they
have a deeper understanding of the place of the beautiful in human life
and the relationship of the beautiful to the divine.