Varieties of Wisdom | Dominican University College

"Wisdom is more mobile than any motion," says the author of the The Wisdom of Solomon (7:24), for she shapes and inhabits all sorts of minds (23). We will look at the form in which wisdom expresses herself in a dozen wise minds: in the fragments of Heraclitus, the allegories of Plato, in the reasoning of Cicero, in the dialogical treatment of freedom in Boethius and the answering dialogues he inspired in Lorenzo Valla, and Leibniz, in a magisterial account of perception by St. Thomas, in an essay of Montaigne's concerning inconstancy, in a masterful analysis of the word "the" by Bertrand Russell, in the common sense of G.K. Chesterton, and in a study of ordinary language by Gilbert Ryle. We will close our examination of wisdom with a poem of W.H. Auden's concerning law and love.

Credits: 
3
Language: 
English
Faculty: 
Philosophy
Professor: 
Semester: 
Fall
Time: 
Wednesday, 1:30p.m.-4:20p.m.
Room Number: 
202
Academic Year: 
2019-20
Level: 
Graduate
Course Code: 
DPHY 5442
Program: 
Master of Arts in Philosophy