Academic Program
Annapolis Preceptorial
PRECEPTORIAL LIST 2009-2010
Augustine, Confessions
Mr. André Barbera
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Mr. William Braithwaite
Spinoza, Ethics
Mr. Matthew Caswell
Mach, The Science of Mechanics
Mr. Radoslav Datchev
Mach’s book should be a good addition to the work of the Junior Lab and Junior Math, as it examines in some detail the discoveries of Galileo, Huygens, Newton, among others. It should also be a good introduction to the work of the Senior Math, given that Einstein wrote in his Autobiography: ‘this book influenced me profoundly in my student years’. At the same time the book is concerned explicitly with the general questions raised by knowledge and its acquisition.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Mr. Daniel Harrell
Sophocles, Trachinian Women and Philoctetes
Ms. Katherine Heines
Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche
Mr. Peter Kalkavage
The topic is the metaphysics of music. The texts are Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and Case of Wagner. Our discussion will involve some analysis of Wagner’s Tristan. Some music analysis will be involved.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Ms. Pamela Kraus
Plato, Republic
Mr. William Pastille
Plato, Theaetetus
Mr. Alan Pichanick
The Dialogues of George Berkeley
Ms. Amanda Printz
We will be exploring the fundamental tenets of George Berkeley’s philosophical system via a close reading of his primary and most influential works, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained, and A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. The questions and concerns with which Berkeley was engaged are familiar to us. His philosophical works could generally be viewed as a theologically motivated reaction to what he calls the ‘mechanistic philosophy’ of seventeenth century thinkers like Descartes and Locke. His response to this ‘new philosophy’ includes his examination of subjects such as the nature of matter and substance, perception and the epistemological access we have to the world in which we live, spiritual vs. material causality, the existence of God, the meaning of abstract terms, the role of mathematics in scientific investigation, and the objects and aims of all scientific inquiry.
Aristotle, Rhetoric
Mr. Greg Recco
The nature and situation of humans living in common makes persuasion a necessity. In order to understand how to persuade, then, one must know something of human nature in respect of our common opinions and susceptibility to be moved. Accordingly, Aristotle’s treatise on rhetoric contains some of his most acute observations on the powers of passions and of human situations (e.g., age, wealth, power) to incline us to be persuaded in one way or another. We will consult the Greek, but will not make translation our primary activity.
Cicero
Mr. Erik Sageng
We will read from the treatises in which Cicero has representatives of the various Hellenistic schools debate Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic principles of Ethics, Theology, and Epistemology. We will probably start with On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum), On Academic Skepticism (Academica), and On Ends (De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum).
Proust, Swann’s Way
Mr. Eric Salem
And perhaps some of the second and some of the last volume.
Readings in Social Thought
Ms. Judy Seeger
Many of the authors we read in the Program touch upon the relationship between human beings and the societies in which we live. In this preceptorial we will explore this relationship further than we are able to do in our regular seminar sequence, by reading selected works of the following 19th and 20th century authors: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (The Communist Manifesto and The German Ideology, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (selections from The Ancient City), Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), Emile Durkheim (selections from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life), Marcel Mauss (The Gift), Clifford Geertz (selections from The Interpretation of Cultures), and Victor Turner (selections from The Forest of Symbols). We will also watch an ethnographic film.
Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
(Ms. Joan Silver)
Readings in J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
(Mr. Mark Sinnett)
The Institutes was the first summa of Reformed dogmatics, taking as its subject matter nothing less than the whole of the Church’s proclamation. It exercised enormous influence on virtually every aspect of Western culture, especially on modern natural science and constitutional law. The influence of Calvin’s thought in the history of American society, in particular, can hardly be overstated; the “federal” structure of both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of 1787, for example, reflect central principles of the Federal (i.e., Reformed) Theology formulated in the course of the Swiss Reformation.
Stendhal, The Red and The Black, Essay on Love
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
Mr. David Townsend
Su Dongpo, poems and writing
Mr. Cordell Yee
Su Dongo (aka Su Shi, 1037-1101) was one of China’s great polymaths, accomplished in politics, engineering, pharmacology, literature, and the visual arts. We will undertake close reading of some of his literary and calligraphic works. No knowledge of Chinese is needed.