Let’s Read a Book
>>Warning<< This post has no photos. But, it’s about books, so just take a look at your bookshelf… or imagine a book and then read the post. I’ll be back with photos later.
One of my many attempts of a major in college was politics. On the first day of my modern presidents class, my professor handed out our book list… you know, like they do. There were maybe 5-7 books on the list that we had to read over the course of the semester and the class groaned. My teacher’s response, people at Harvard taking this class are reading 20+ books.
I knew right then that this politics major, at this college, just wasn’t for me. I just didn’t feel that I could be competitive if I was in a system that seemed to take an easier way out, and everyone was ok with that.
St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD (and Sante Fe, NM) is the college I wish I would’ve gone to had I known it existed when I was in high school. It’s best for me to let St. John’s describe itself:
St. John’s College is a co-educational, four year liberal arts college known for its distinctive “great books” curriculum…
… The all-required course of study is based on the reading, study, and discussion of the most important books of the Western tradition. There are no majors and no departments; all students follow the same program.
Students study from the classics of literature, philosophy, theology, psychology, political science, economics, history, mathematics, laboratory sciences, and music. No textbooks are used. The books are read in roughly chronological order, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing to modern times.
All classes are discussion-based. There are no class lectures; instead, the students meet together with faculty members (called tutors) to explore the books being read.
Their reading list is… awesome. Here’s the books they read their junior year:
- CERVANTES: Don Quixote
- GALILEO: Two New Sciences
- HOBBES: Leviathan
- DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
- MILTON: Paradise Lost
- LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
- LA FONTAINE: Fables
- PASCAL: Pensees
- HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
- ELIOT: Middlemarch
- SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
- LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
- RACINE: Phaedre
- NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
- KEPLER: Epitome IV
- LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
- SWIFT: Gulliver’s Travels
- HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
- ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
- MOLIERE: Le Misanthrope
- ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
- KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
- MOZART: Don Giovanni
- JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
- DEDEKIND: “Essay on the Theory of Numbers”
- “Articles of Confederation,” “Declaration of Independence,” “Constitution of the United States of America”
- HAMILTON, JAY AND MADISON: The Federalist
- TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- WORDSWORTH: The Two Part Prelude of 1799
- Essays by: Young, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli, Orsted, Ampere, Faraday, Maxwell
To see the full list CLICK ON THIS LINK!
I haven’t read all the books on the list. I’ve probably barely put a dent in the list, actually. I want to sit in a classroom and be part of the discussion with other people who’ve read the book and I don’t know that something like that exists outside of St. John’s. Do you know of an online community where this type of community exists?