The Curriculum
The College's curriculum is an integrated liberal arts program
based primarily on a study of the Great Books. Guided by College
faculty, students analyze and discuss in tutorials, seminars,
and laboratories these works of the greatest minds of our
tradition. By daily practice in reading, translation, demonstration,
and argument, students form habits of thought and discourse
which will stay with them throughout their lives. And by means
of these habits, they can better lay hold of the knowledge
and wisdom recorded in the Great Books.
Syllabus
The textbooks that most colleges and universities use are
soon outdated; they quickly go out of fashion and are discarded.
New ways to think about things unceasingly replace the old.
Yet a consensus exists among generations of thinkers and writers
that certain works have enduring relevance. They never go
out of style. Why is this?
Lucretius was a Roman poet and philosopher who 2,000 years
ago wrote a treatise called "On the Nature of Things." This
title could well describe any of the Great Books. These works
- whether philosophy or science, history or drama - describe
things as they really are. They reveal the reality at the
core of human experience, a reality that - regardless of time
or place - does not change. A person hungry for wisdom can
return to these books over and over again without exhausting
their meaning. These are the books that have the power to
shape human events and to change lives.
The following is a list of works read in whole or in part
in the College's curriculum. They are not all of equal weight.
Some are regarded as masterworks, while others serve as sources
of opinions that either lead students to the truth, or make
the truth more evident by opposition to it.
Freshman Year
Seminar
| Homer |
Iliad, Odyssey |
| Plato |
Ion, Republic, Symposium |
| Aeschylus |
Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides |
| Sophocles |
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone |
| Herodotus |
Histories |
| Aristotle |
Poetics, Rhetoric |
| Plutarch Lives |
(Lycurgus, Pericles, Alcibiades, Aristides,
Alexander) |
| Euripides |
Hippolytus |
| Thucydides |
History of the Peloponnesian War |
| Aristophanes |
The Birds, The Clouds |
Language
| Wheelock |
Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors |
| Nesfield |
Aids to the Study and Composition of English |
Mathematics
Laboratory
| Aristotle |
Parts of Animals |
| DeKoninck |
The Lifeless World of Biology |
| Fabre |
Souvenirs Entomologiques |
| Galen |
On the Natural Faculties |
| Harvey |
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood, On Animal Generation |
| Linnaeus |
Systema Naturae |
| Pascal |
On the Equilibrium of Liquids |
| Archimedes |
On Floating Bodies |
| Mendel |
Plant Hybridization |
| various authors |
Scientific papers of Driesch, Gould, Marler, Tinbergen,
Goethe, Virchow, von Frisch, et alia |
| |
Measurements Manual |
Philosophy
| Plato |
Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias, Apology, Crito,
Phaedo |
| Porphyry |
On the Predicaments (Isagoge) |
| Aristotle |
Categories, On Interpretation, Prior
Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
Proem to the Posterior Analytics |
Theology
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Sophomore Year
Seminar
| Vergil |
Aeneid |
| Lucretius |
On the Nature of Things |
| Cicero |
Offices |
| Livy |
Ab Urbe Conditia |
| Plutarch |
Lives(Marcellus, Tiberius & Caius Gracchus,
Marius, Sylla, Caesar, Cato the Younger, Brutus) |
| Tacitus |
Annals |
| Epictetus |
Manual |
| St. Augustine |
Confessions, On the Teacher |
| Boethius |
Consolation of Philosophy |
| Dante |
Divine Comedy |
| Chaucer |
Canterbury Tales |
| Spenser |
Faerie Queen |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
On the Teacher |
Language
| Wheelock |
Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors |
| Martin of Denmark |
Tractus De Modis Significandi |
| Horace, Cicero |
Selections |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
Selections
Canon of the Mass |
Mathematics
| Plato |
Timaeus |
| Ptolemy |
Almagest |
| Copernicus |
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres |
| Apollonius |
On Conic Sections |
| Kepler |
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Astronomia Nova |
| Archimedes |
On Conoids and Spheroids |
Laboratory
| Aristotle |
On Generation and Corruption |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
On the Principles of Nature,
On the Combination of the Elements |
| Lavoisier |
Elements of Chemistry |
| Avogadro |
Masses and Proportions of Elementary Molecules |
| Dalton |
Proportion of Gases in the Atmosphere |
| Gay-Lussac |
Combination of Gaseous Substances |
| Pascal |
Treatise on the Weight of the Mass of the Air |
| various authors |
Scientific papers of Berthollet, Couper,
Lavoisier, Mendeleev, Richter, Wollaston, Cannizzaro,
et alia |
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Atomic Theory Manual |
Philosophy
| Pre-Socratic Philosophers |
Fragments |
| Aristotle |
Physics
On the Soul |
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Theology
| St. Augustine |
On Christian Doctrine,On the Spirit and
the Letter, On Nature and Grace, On the Gift of Perseverance,
On the Predestination of the Saints, City of God |
| St. Athanasius |
On the Incarnation |
| Gaunilo |
On Behalf of the Fool |
| St. Anselm |
Proslogion, Reply to Gaunilo |
| St. John Damascene |
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith |
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Junior Year
Seminar
| Cervantes |
Don Quixote |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
On Kingship, Summa Theologiae |
| Machiavelli |
The Prince, Discourses |
| Bacon |
The Great Instauration, Novum Organum |
| Shakespeare |
Julius Caesar, King Richard the Second, King Henry
the Fourth: Part One, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth,
Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Sonnets |
| Montaigne |
Essays |
| Descartes |
Discourse on Method, Meditations, Rules for the Direction
of the Mind |
| Pascal |
Pensées |
| Hobbes |
Leviathan |
| Locke |
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Second Essay
on Civil Government |
| Berkeley |
Treatise Concerning Human Understanding |
| Hume |
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding |
| Swift |
Gulliver's Travels |
| Milton |
Paradise Lost |
| Gibbon |
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire |
| Corneille |
Le Cid |
| Racine |
Phaedre |
| Rousseau |
Social Contract, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality |
| Spinoza |
Theologico-Political Treatise |
| various authors |
Articles of Confederation |
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Declaration of Independence |
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U.S. Constitution |
| Hamilton, Madison, Jay |
Federalist Papers |
| Smith |
Wealth of Nations |
| Kant |
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,
Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork for the Metaphysics
of Morals |
| Leibniz |
Discourse on Metaphysics |
Music
| Plato |
Timaeus |
| Boethius |
On Music |
| Mozart |
Sonatas |
| Gustin |
Tonality |
Mathematics
| Viete |
Standard Enumeration of Geometric Results, Introduction
to the Analytic Art |
| Descartes |
Geometry |
| Archimedes |
Quadrature of the Parabola |
| Griffin |
Mathematical Analysis |
| various authors |
Mathematical works of Hippocrates, Archimedes, Cavalieri,
Pascal, Leibniz, Bernoulli, Newton, Berkeley, Bolzano,
et alia |
Laboratory
| Descartes |
Principles of Philosophy |
| Galileo |
Two New Sciences |
| Newton |
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy |
Philosophy
| Aristotle |
Nicom. Ethics
Politics |
Theology
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
Summa Theologiae:
On Sacred Doctrine
On God
On Law
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Senior Year
Seminar
| Tolstoy |
War and Peace |
| Goethe |
Faust |
| Hegel |
Phenomenology of Mind, Philosophy of History |
| Flaubert |
Three Tales |
| Feuerbach |
Essence of Christianity |
| J. S. Mill |
Utilitarianism |
| Marx |
Capital, Communist Manifesto, Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, German Ideology |
| Melville |
Billy Budd |
| Willa Cather |
My Antonia |
| Engels |
Quantity and Quality, Negation of the Negation |
| Darwin |
Origin of Species |
| Nietzsche |
Beyond Good and Evil, Use and Abuse of History |
| Twain |
Huckleberry Finn |
| Austen |
Emma |
| Freud |
General Introduction to Psychoanalysis |
| Jung |
Analytical Psychology |
| Newman |
Development of Christian Doctrine |
| Kierkegaard |
Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments |
| Ibsen |
A Doll's House |
| Dostoyevski |
Brothers Karamazov |
| Eliot |
Ash Wednesday, Journey of the Magi, The Waste Land |
| St. Pius X |
Pascendi Dominici Gregis |
| Leo XIII |
Aeterni Patris, Rerum Novarum |
| Pius XI |
Quadragesimo Anno |
| Pius XII |
Humani Generis |
| Vatican II |
Lumen Gentium |
| Plato |
Phaedrus |
| Vico |
The New Science |
| Tocqueville |
Democracy in America, The Old Regime and the French
Revolution |
| Husserl |
The Idea of Phenomenology |
| Lincoln and Douglas |
Debates |
| Flannery O'Connor |
A Good Man is Hard to Find, The Enduring Chill |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
The Division and Method of the Sciences |
Mathematics
| Pascal |
Generation of Conic Sections |
| Taylor |
Integral Calculus |
| Dedekind |
Essay on the Theory of Numbers |
| Lobachevski |
Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels |
Laboratory
| Einstein |
Relativity: The Special and General Theory |
| Huygens |
Treatise on Light |
| Newton |
Optiks |
| Maxwell |
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism |
| Gilbert |
De Magnete |
| Ampere |
Papers |
| various authors |
Mechanics, Waves, and Optics Manual
Electricity and Magnetism Manual |
Philosophy
| Aristotle |
Physics, Metaphysics |
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
On Being and Essence |
Theology
| St. Thomas Aquinas |
Summa Theologiae: On the Trinity, On the Sacraments,
On the Passion of Christ |
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