Academic Program

Santa Fe Preceptorials
Fall 2009

Plato, Republic
Adam, Judith
This is a book that needs no introduction at St. John’s.  We will undertake as leisurely and full a reading of the text as the eight weeks will allow, following the broad questions of justice, politics and philosophy that it seeks to address.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo

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Joyce, Ulysses
Ames, Keri
4:30 p.m. precept
A close and careful reading of the entire novel without any annotations or critical sources. What happens on Bloomsday and what should it mean to us as readers? In the final week, we will discuss seminar questions about the entire novel after we examine the Linati schema (in which Joyce gives a chart of the novel’s structure and provides the Homeric chapter headings not published in the final 1922 edition).

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Rousseau’s Second Discourse, and Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments 
Brubaker, Lauren
In his Second Discourse Rousseau diagnoses the ills of commercial modernity: civilized man is alienated man for whom vanity and subservience to the opinion of others have replaced virtue and independence. Adam Smith wrote a review Rousseau’s work a few years before he published his own book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) (and 17 years before he published Wealth of Nations (WN). In TMS Smith offers a nuanced account linking our “natural sympathy” to conventional morality, and beyond convention to nobility and virtue. We will primarily try to understand each book, but their juxtaposition I find thought provoking. Among the questions that we may investigate: To what extent do Rousseau and Smith see the same problems? To what extent might Smith’s book be considered a response to Rousseau’s critique? Does Smith have Rousseau in mind when he criticizes “splenetic philosophy”? How does the sympathy of TMS fit with the “desire to better our condition” of WN?
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Chaucer, Canterbury Tales 
Bybee, Michael
To what extent is Canterbury Tales an unfinished work of art?  Suppose we read Canterbury Tales as a whole, integrated work, not simply as isolated stories mortared together with incidental and unimportant prologues.  Suppose we took Canterbury Tales as a novel designed to reveal to us not only the pilgrims’ characters but (through our various reactions to the pilgrims and their tales) our own?  How do Chaucer’s tales and prologues interact with one another over the course of this work, and what is the effect of those interactions? 
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Tolstoy, War and Peace
Chen, Christine
It may have the Oprah Book Club seal of approval, but Tolstoy's hefty tome resists easy labels like “best-seller” or “inspirational read.”  It is, in fact, a novel that defies any categorization—is it even a novel, or a serialized chronicle?  And to paraphrase Flaubert, why does Tolstoy philosophize so much??  We will muck about in the muddy waters of early 19th century Russia as we explore Tolstoy's interest in binary oppositions (as evidenced by the novel's title), the Iliad, and language and national identity, as well as Tolstoy's philosophy of history.  We will supplement these discussions with Rousseau's “Essay on the Origin of Languages” and Isaiah Berlin's essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox.”
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Plato, Phaedo
Cornell, John
Perhaps Plato was sick.  In any case he wasn’t there.
But through his absence the death of Socrates came into being. 
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo

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Plato: Meno, Ion, and Euthyphro
Davis, Matt
We will read these three shorter Platonic dialogues with care. Among other things, we will take up one of their unifying themes: the question of whether knowledge is possible and the relation of this question to political/religious matters. Along the way we will meet (or meet again) some of Plato’s most memorable characters: Meno, the shady soldier of fortune with whom Socrates discusses virtue; Anytus, the Athenian politician who is angered by Socrates’ inquiries and eventually becomes one of Socrates’ accusers; Ion, the scatterbrained, comical rhapsode with whom Socrates discusses the Bible of the Greeks, Homer’s Iliad, and, more generally, the question of divine inspiration; and Euthyphro, the zealot with whom Socrates, near the end of his life, discusses piety. Our procedure in class will be to read passages aloud and take up the questions that arise in them. If there is interest, we might also hold extra sessions devoted to translation of the Greek.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences
Dougherty, Janet
It is crucial to our own thought, not only at St. John’s College but in general in our time, to understand our relationship to the historical tradition.  This book directly addresses the historicity of thought and the possibility of grasping non-relative truth.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Heidegger, Off the Beaten Path (Holzwege) 
Ehrmantraut, Michael
With this book, Heidegger introduces a central topic of his thinking after his early work (Being and Time): is modernity or the modern world in which we live (with its science, technology, art, culture, politics) an epoch within a comprehensive “history of Being” – a history in which the character of “what is” manifests itself through the work of great thinkers and poets, beginning with the early Greeks and coming to completion in Nietzsche’s confrontation with the problem of nihilism? This book contains six essays that are among the most important and well-known of Heidegger’s works: “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “The Age of the World Picture,” “Hegel’s Concept of Experience,” “Nietzsche’s Word: ‘God is Dead’,” “Why Poets?” (on Rilke), and “Anaximander’s Saying.” The new translation of this book will allow us to read these essays as parts of one book (as the author presents them) and thus think about themes that they may have in common.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Montaigne -selected essays
Fasanaro, Charles
4:30 p.m. precept
We will read together several of Michel de Montaigne's essays. Montaigne presents a fascinating portrait of himself, and since "each man bears the entire form of man's estate," in speaking so honestly about himself, he speaks powerfully about the human condition across the centuries. We will read him to know ourselves better as well as for obtaining the sheer joy of his friendship.

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Sophocles: Ajax and Antigone
Golluber, Michael
The first word of Sophocles' Ajax (Aias) - "always" (aie) - is suggestive, although Ajax interprets his own name to mean something like "sorrow" (aiai).  Antigone means "anti-birth" or "against generation".  A careful study of these plays, with occasional reference to the Greek, may show us that the destiny of both characters is revealed in the meaning of their names.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo           

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Rousseau, Confessions
Hand, Jonathan
In the beginning of the Confessions, Rousseau makes the bold claim that “Here is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and that will probably ever exist.” More than just the original “tell all” [and occasionally shocking] autobiography, the Confessions is also, according to its author, “a book precious for philosophers…a model for the study of the human heart.” On his own account, Rousseau’s philosophy and his extraordinary life story are so intimately related, that one can’t be truly understood without the other.  How Rousseau became Rousseau—and, maybe, how the modern “self” became itself.

In addition to a substantial essay at the end, students will write an email paragraph once a week. If we have time, we will also look at Reveries of a Solitary Walker.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Marvell, and others
Hunt, Frank
4:30 p.m. precept
These seventeenth-century English poets came to be called “metaphysical” as much for their sometimes extravagant conceits as for their use of philosophical and theological imagery to explore themes ranging from the erotic to the devotional. We’ll try to figure out how these poems work.

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Selections from Karl Marx
Jerome, Jessica
Though perhaps best know for The Communist Manifesto, a slim pamphlet fomenting revolution, Karl Marx wrote broadly about human subjectivity, the philosophy of history, and political economy. This precept will provide an opportunity to consider some of his earlier philosophical works, including The German Ideology, The Grundrisse, and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, as well as a chance to undertake a more detailed investigation of Capital, Volume One.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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W.E.B. Dubois, Souls of Black Folk, and Albert Murray, Stompin' the Blues
Kingston, Andrew
W. E. B. Du Bois introduces each chapter of The Souls of Black Folk with two epigraphs: a few lines of lyric poetry and a few measures of an African-American spiritual. For Du Bois, the spirituals, which he calls sorrow songs, are more than the cry of human suffering; they are a lyric response to the human condition. “Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?” (274).

In Stomping the Blues, Albert Murray posits the blues as a secular manifestation of the sorrow song: “Also always absolutely inseparable from all such predicaments and requirements is the most fundamental of all existential imperatives: affirmation, which is to say, reaffirmation and continuity in the face of adversity. Indeed, what with the blues (whether known by that or any other name) always somewhere either in the foreground or the background, reaffirmation is precisely the contingency upon which the very survival of man as human being, however normally unsatisfied and abnormally wretched, is predicated” (6).

We will read The Souls of Black Folk and Stomping the Blues and listen to the music that informs these books.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Euripides plays, emphasis on Bacchae
LeCuyer, Phil
Euripides, like Sophocles, wrote over one hundred plays, most of them tragedies.  Nineteen of them are extant.  Of those, we will first read Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, Ion, and Helen.  Then, by way of preparation for reading Euripides’ Electra and his Orestes, we will study Aeschylus’ “Electra” play The Libation Bearers and Sophocles’ Electra.  Finally, we will read Euripides’ last two plays. * Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo

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Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Levine, David
A careful study of Hegel’s great work, Phenomenology of Spirit. Previous reading of Kant is recommended.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Selected short stories of Flannery O'Connor
Myers, Lynda
4:30 p.m. precept      

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"Oh Captain! My Captain!" -  The Poetic Thought of Abraham Lincoln
Nee, Laurence
 Inspired by poet Walt Whitman’s eulogy to America’s “Captain” and in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday, the preceptorial will read and discuss the speeches, debates, and letters of this program author.  Beginning with his Lyceum and Temperance Addresses, continuing through his debates with Douglas, and ending with his Second Inaugural Address, attention will be paid not only to Lincoln’s writings, but also to their relationship to other works on the program (e.g., The Bible, The United States Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and Dred Scott v. Sandford).  While an inquiry into Lincoln’s thought, this preceptorial will also examine the poetic character of Lincoln’s writings, particularly the ways in which he engages our imagination to shape our understanding of liberty, justice, and equality.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History

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Faulkner, "The Sound & the Fury"; "Absalom, Absalom"
Rawn, Michael
In his Nobel Prize address William Faulkner wrote:  “… the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.  He must learn them again.  He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed  - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice … Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man.  I decline to accept the end of man.  It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure:  that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice,  still talking.  I refuse to accept this.  I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.  He is immortal, not because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

The Sound And The Fury, and Absalom, Absalom  are twinned works considered to be among Faulkner’s greatest achievements.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo

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Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov
Schneider, Greg
Dostoyevsky’s master novel opens with the brutal murder of the patriarch: Fyodor Karamazov.  This murder shatters the lives of his sons and brings them into conflict in new and unsettling ways.  Mitya, the sensualist whose well-known enmity toward his father garners him immediate suspicion, stands in contrast with Ivan, the intellectual who eventually breaks down in anguish, and Alyosha, the spiritual wanderer who tries to make peace.  Meanwhile, the bastard half-brother Smerdyakov lurks in the background.  As the novel unfolds, the reader confronts questions of good and evil, innocence and guilt, and Dostoyevsky’s profound depiction of the problematic role of faith in a human life.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo

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Aristotle, Metaphysics
Stickney, Cary
Aristotle's Metaphysics gets a brief look in the Spring of Freshman year, but can probably stand some closer and more sustained attention.  We will read the whole book and try to work out for ourselves how it hangs together.  My working hypothesis is that it does.
* Phil/Theo

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Tocqueville: The Old Regime & the French Revolution; and selections from Democracy In America
Stickney, Susan
 In his attempt to trace the underlying causes of the French Revolution Tocqueville  looks all the way back to the Middle Ages and traces the development of France's  political and social systems up through the last King.  This volume, the only one that  he completed in the planned multi-volume examination of the Revolution, will be the  center of our study.  We will also read from Tocqueville's Democracy in America and from a few other texts.  The Stuart Gilbert translation seems to be the most readily available, but any translation will be fine.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation
 Thompson, Caleb
Schopenhauer’s principal work, The World as Will and Representation, was an appropriation of Kantian metaphysics, a reaction against Hegelian optimism, and, in time, an enormous influence on the works of Wagner, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Wittgenstein and others.  Schopenhauer published the first volume in 1819 and twenty-five years later a lengthy supplement to it.  In the preceptorial, we will focus our attention on the first volume, drawing on the second as our interests dictate and as time allows.
* Phil/Theo, History

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Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
van Boxel, Lise
In the title to his book, Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche urges us to transcend the idea that the world can be divided morally into the polar opposites "good" and "evil". In addition to articulating the pervasive effects of this bifurcated world-view in philosophy, religion, love and politics, he ultimately raises the question of whether there a meaningful and intelligible alternative to this bifurcated world-view. If there is such an alternative, what is it, and what would a life according to this alternative look like? These are the main questions raised by Nietzsche in this book, and they are central to his teaching as a whole. We will explore these themes in particular, along with other, more particular questions raised by the text.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Goethe: Theory of Color 
Wiener, Linda
Goethe's Theory of Colors is a masterful examination of color phenomena from observational, aesthetic, and philosophical points of view.  It teaches us to see and think broadly and deeply about the nature of colors.  We will also read excerpts from Gerald Thayer's Concealing Coloration, a brilliant and far reaching analysis of animal colors.  The class will include observation, experimentation, and field trips as well as discussion of the texts. 
*Phil/Theo  

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The Psychology of Religion:  James, Freud, Jung
Wolfe, Kenneth
In this preceptorial we shall consider the views of three eminent psychologists on the nature of religion.  We shall begin with William James' work The Varieties of Religious Experience.  Then we shall turn to Freud's Totem and Taboo.  Afterwards we shall study Jung's Psychology and Religion and then return to Freud with his work Moses and Monotheism.
* Pol/Soc, Phil/Theo, History  

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Cervantes, Don Quixote
Wolfe, Michael
4:30 p.m. precept
Are you plagued by nagging, unresolved questions about the Cave of Montesinos, Dulcinea del Taboso, and Cide Hamete Benengeli?  Are you still wondering how Don Quixote recovered his sanity or how Sancho Panza lost his ass?  Would you like to give this great book the time it deserves?  If so, this preceptorial is for you.              

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*For Graduate Institute students in Philosophy and Theology or Politics and Society or History segments as indicated.

Please note:  4:30 p.m. precepts are not open to Graduate Institute students who have 5:00 p.m. tutorials.