Watching Well: Developing the Intellectual Virtue of Curiosity

Watching Well: Developing the Intellectual Virtue of Curiosity October 23, 2014

I’m writing a series of articles for the “Reel Spirituality” project at Fuller Seminary’s Brehm Center, and the first one was published last week. In it, I explored how and why we might develop the intellectual virtue of curiosity through watching TV and movies:

That is, I believe that being good watchers— that developing good habits in watching movies and TV shows—can form us into more virtuous people in general. In particular, I’m starting to understand how we can develop some of the character strengths that philosophers and theologians have thought of for millennia as “intellectual”: habits of the mind that make us better thinkers and learners, both during our engagement with the screen and after we turn it off.

And given that part of our task here on earth is to love God with our minds, this seems like something we ought to do.

There are plenty of taxonomies for the intellectual virtues, and in the coming months I’ll be exploring a few of them. But the first (and potentially most important) one I always think of is curiosity: the desire to wonder, explore, question, and ask why.

Read the rest here.


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