| This course considers the role of ambition in a good life, how the best-laid plans of ambitious individuals sometimes go wrong, and how leaders in all fields of human endeavor can balance ambition and humility to set goals that are both lofty and achievable, while responding properly to setbacks and failure. Students engage these and related questions through close study of a single text in a small seminar setting. The text for each year's course will be selected by the professor offering the seminar; it will in each case be a fundamental text from the professor's field that has had a decisive impact on his or her development. In the culminating assignment, students write an essay describing how, in light of the lessons they have learned from the work they have studied, they intend to improve their own character and the world around them. |