Sessions will be facilitated by Clare McGrath-Merkle

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Despair is an oft-recurring theme in the Great Books, with such suffering characters as Homer’s Odysseus  and Hector, Sophocles’ Oedipus, Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, and George Orwell’s Winston Smith.  

Written under a nom de plume, The Sickness unto Death (1849) was one of Kierkegaard’s greatest works and his attempt to explore the depths of the nature of despair, something he saw as common to every human being.

Called the “father of Christian existentialism,” Kierkegaard viewed despair as both a spiritual illness and a crisis of the Self, stemming from a lack of faith and resulting in unrealized potential. He sought answers in the subjective experience of the individual believer rather than organized religion or dogma. A strong critic of both the state church and the mass media of his day, his ideas remain important today.

Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees will be sent the book. Sessions will be facilitated by Clare McGrath-Merkle. Groups will be limited to 16 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This eight-week series is $500. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available. 

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​Dr. Clare McGrath-Merkle earned a BA in modern foreign languages at the Notre Dame of MD University. She has an MTS from the Washington Theological Union with a graduate certificate in Carmelite Studies, an MA in liberal education from St. John’s College, Annapolis, PhD ABD status in spirituality studies from The Catholic University of America, and a DPhil from the University of Augsburg, Germany. She has taught as an adjunct instructor at Benedictine College since 2022, as moderator with the Great Books Academy since 2019, and as seminar leader with the Symposium Great Books Institute from 2023-2025. She has taught classes in spiritual theology, Carmelite spirituality, diaconal spirituality, and the Great Books. She has written a book, Berulle’s Spiritual Theology of Priesthood: A Study in Speculative Mysticism and Applied Metaphysics. Her article entitled, Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis: Revising a Berullian Theology of Priesthood, is forthcoming in the Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift. 

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