Paradise Lost is one of the most important literary works in the English language. Based on the account in Genesis, it tells a complex story of God, Satan, angels, man and woman. Its purpose, Milton...
…is not what you think it is. Nor, for that matter, is anything else. For two thousand years, the Buddhist “Perfection of Wisdom” scriptures have both inspired and confused their readers—reveling in...
We'll spend alternating weeks discussing philosophical texts and films that interact with them in some manner. We'll consider questions about each text and film in its own right, and we'll use each...
We will discuss classic texts that address the fundamental questions of aesthetics: What is art? What makes art good? What are artists doing when they make art? What is art for? What is beauty? What...
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the most authoritative Hindu text on yoga, explains the meditative discipline required to attain absolute freedom from suffering. This text’s mental rather than physical...
The Laws is Plato's other great work of utopian political philosophy, far less famous than the Republic but a classic in its own right. Scholars generally consider it to be the last dialogue that...
In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates combines philosophical analysis of the basic moral problem (telling right from wrong) with a portrait of the sophist, Protagoras, and his famous dictum of relativism...
Plato’s Symposium has an intricate internal structure, but some of its crucial facets reflect its historical context. In this course, we couple close reading of the internal structure and...
We'll read and discuss six of Plato’s early dialogues, at a pace of about 15-20 Stephanus pages per meeting. These texts portray conversations about fundamental topics in ethics – courage, temperance...
Join us in a summer reading course in the poetry of the Bible. The Poetry of the Bible offers ample literature for analysis, reflection and even meditation.