East Asian Studies 142. Wisdom
Modern universities offer instruction in a dazzling variety of fields, but it is rare to find courses focused explicitly on wisdom. How should we understand this? After all, for much of history, wisdom was prized as the supreme and most essential form of knowledge; and the abundant follies of our own world make plain that it is still urgently needed. And yet somehow, the quest for wisdom seems to have faded from our consciousness today, lingering only as a faint and occasional memory, a barely remembered dream. Why? What is wisdom, and why does its earnest cultivation now seem like an effort to return to a lost age, to a home that is no longer ours? Our study of these questions will center on the fate of those vehicles that were long thought vital to communicating wisdom—proverbs and aphorisms, parables and fables, dialogues, riddles, and emblems. By probing the modern waning of these expressive forms, we will discover how the vagaries of wisdom are profoundly entwined with the histories of memory, experience, storytelling, and the relationship between human beings and their environment. Because the class will emphasize seminar-type breakout discussions and active learning experiments, enrollment will be capped at 45. | ||
