Academic Program
Annapolis Preceptorial
FALL 2011 PRECEPTORIAL LIST (COMPLETED)
| Melville, Moby Dick | Mr. Andre Barbera | |
| Genesis | Mr. Michael Blaustein | |
| Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on the Divine Nature (S.T. I, 1-13) | Mr. Michael Brogan | |
| Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov ( Pevear and Volkhonsky translation recommended) | Ms. Nancy Buchenauer | |
| Plato, Republic |
Mr. Chester Burke | |
| Euripides, Alcestis A charming and mysterious tragicomedy. A considerable part will be read in Greek, with attention to detail. |
Mr. Michael Comenetz | |
| Thucydides The Peloponnesian War | Mr. Nathan Dugan | |
| Descartes’ Scientific Revolution We shall read part of Descartes’ unpublished draft of The World (the treatise on light which he says he had initially intended to be his first step in going public with a total transformation of science). We shall also read Descartes’ Discourse About the Method of Conducting One’s Reason Well and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences (his introduction to the three scientific tryouts which he published together as a more politic beginning for the enterprise of cultural revolution). |
Mr. Harvey Flaumenhaft | |
| Kierkegaard, Either/Or Kierkegaard – writing under a series of pseudonyms – weighs the pleasures and satisfactions of the aesthetic versus the ethical life. Hovering in the background, a third way of life, the religious, provides another measure of the best life. Kierkegaard crafts expressions and analyses of the demands and attractions of the poetic, musical, erotic, dutiful, and moral worlds. He himself never settles the question; his writing exposes conflictsand confronts the reader with choice. |
Ms. Marilyn Higuera | |
| Spinoza, Ethics Ethics, along with some attention to his earlier book, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy. We will use the following editions: (1) Ethics, Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters tr. S. Shirley (Hackett) and (2) Principles of Cartesian Philosophy tr. S. Shirley (Hackett). |
Mr. Jon Lenkowski | |
| Lucretius, De rerum natura | Mr. Paul Ludwig | |
| Medieval Political Philosophy, Islamic and Christian We will likely read works by Alfarabi, Ibn Tufayl, Averroes, Boethius of Dacia, and Dante Alighieri (prose, political writings). |
Mr. Joseph Macfarland | |
| Rousseau, Emile | Mr. Nick Maistrellis | |
| American Historical Documents We will read Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, selections from the Federalist Papers together with corresponding selections from the Anti-Federalist writings, several bills of rights antedating our own, the U. S. Constitution, a number of writings regarding religion from the late 1700s including Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Marbury v. Madison, Lincoln’s “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. |
Mr. William Pastille | |
| Dante, Divine Comedy |
Mr. Gabe Pihas | |
| Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty's 1945 masterwork uses the methods of Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenology and the findings of clinical psychology as bases for a unique and vital articulation of the role of the body in constituting our experience of the world and ourselves. |
Mr. Greg Recco | |
| Peirce, C.S, Selected Papers | Mr. Mark Sinnett | |
| Montaigne, Selected essays We will read a large section of essays in English translation and a few in the original French. Selection of essays will depend in large part on the choice of participants, but will certainly include the famous essays "On Friendship" and "Apology for Raymond Sebond." |
Mr. David Stephenson | |
| Cervantes, Don Quixote | Ms. Fawn Trigg | |
| Joyce, Finnegans Wake We will attempt to confirm or disconfirm the often-made claim that this book is unreadable. We’ll do a lot of reading aloud. |
Mr. Jonathan Tuck | |
| Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche creates a being who embodies what he considers the major errors of man’s past, but who also has the strength to overcome these errors so as to become the most complete, healthy human being ever to have existed. In sum, Zarathustra contains Nietzsche’s account of the emergence and spread of nihilism alongside his account of how nihilism may be vanquished. This book is arguably the most complex, difficult, and brilliant of Nietzsche’s works. |
Ms. Lise van Boxel | |
| Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Solves all the problems of philosophy. A difficult book. |
Mr. John Verdi |