An interdisciplinary seminar focusing on various attempts to articulate the human aspiration toward transcendence. Through selected readings, reflection and discussion, this course will consider the personal and psychological odyssey towards relation, wholeness and health; the aesthetic quest for beauty and richness of meaning; the philosopher's search for clarity, understanding and ultimacy; and the historical and political struggle for purpose and direction—in terms of an underlying thematic unity which all of these expressions of the human spirit share: the human desire to transcend.