Inklings of Things Deeper: Exploring Life’s Perennial Questions with C. S. Lewis*
Course Description:
Is there a God? Is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder? What is truth? What is love? These are some of the questions that have intrigued humans for millennia. C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christian authors in the 20th century, was well versed in the literature of our Western intellectual tradition, and devoted much time and ink to these questions. He had an exceptional ability to weave together his own insights with those of the great thinkers of the past, and to impart those insights with clarity, simplicity, and wit. This course is a tour through the writings of C. S. Lewis, organized around these questions which seem to persist through the centuries.
We shall begin with a biographical overview of Lewis’s life, learning details about his life and times that help bring him to life in the 21st century. We shall then proceed thematically, studying Lewis’s views on: the nature of God; truth, goodness, and beauty—what they are and how they relate to each other; the power and function of myth, and more.
Though this course stands on its own as a study of Lewisian thought, it is also designed to complement the course offered last spring, The Life and Literature of C. S. Lewis. In that course we introduced several of Lewis’s books organized by genre. In this course, Inklings of Things Deeper, we shall cast our investigative net much wider, drawing from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to advance our understanding of this great English thinker.
*The phrase “Inklings of Things Deeper” was the name of a small conference I gave in Lawrence Kansas in May 2009.
If you are registered in this course with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute you can access the course materials by clicking on the link below. Please note: the following page is password protected. You will need the password provided on the syllabus you received on the first day of class.
