Great Books II   Spring 2020

  Reading Questions  
 

February 24

 
 

 

 

Dante - Purgatorio

Focus on Cantos VI-IX

 

Boethius

Book III

  1. Be attentive to leitmotifs: love, conversion, justice, vision, desire, consciousness, time, reason, Israel came out of Egypt, faith, identity, light, water, music/rhythm/sound, time, ...
  2. What is the purpose of the inferno? The purpose of purgatory? 
  3. Why is there hymn-singing?
  4. Explicate IX.

 

 

 

  1. Explicate Boethian happiness.
  2. How does it differ from Aristotle? from Plato? Augustine?