Course Description

“But if [concerning the idea], as we were doing just now, we examine the question based on things we agree with each other about, we ourselves will be jurors and advocates at the same time” (Republic, I.348B). 

In her book Paradoxes of Education in a Republic, Eva Braun argues that an enlightened Republic is best sustained and preserved by citizens properly educated in what she calls “inquiry.”  David Hicks, Mortimer J. Adler, Benjamin Franklin, and Plato’s Socrates–to name of few–all promote this claim.  A lively engagement with the great norming ideas found in classic texts is the substance of what it means to be liberally educated and civilized.  The love of learning is not cultivated by becoming informed with what is traditionally known about books, authors, ideas, or historical periods; nor in becoming proficient in analytical or abstract modes of thinking; nor is it in being trained in skills that makes one useful. Rather, it is the very human co-creative act of reading the great works that have come into the present to join The Great Conversation that gives to each and all the joy and riches that Wisdom offers.  This Atrium embodies and models some of how this tradition can be extended to permeate our homes, schools, and communities.

Course Procedure

CiRCE Master Teacher Jonathan Councell will model, guide, and facilitate a seminar that, through agreement and disagreement between these great works, will enable each participant to contribute to the discussion from voluntarily chosen readings.   Participants will read two books for each idea from a list of great books selected for that great idea.  By giving three sessions to each idea this Atrium demonstrates a way of creating and forming a community that has advanced its understanding of that idea as it exists between free minds and between great books.

We will spend three sessions with each idea and the works associated with them.  The first session introduces the idea and establishes the limits of our existing knowledge and understanding surrounding it.  The next two sessions observe the great conversation between the selected works about this idea. We do this in a normative and syntopical mode of educational inquiry into the great ideas of human civilization. The goals of this Atrium are to: increase understanding of the great ideas and their norming influence upon our actions and lives, grow in knowledge about deliberative education and its pedagogical practices, and participate in syntopical reading and dialectical discussion.

Who should take this course

• Adults who want a liberal education.
• Educators that want practical experience in dialectical discussion.
• Individuals that are hungry for intellectual community and conversation.
  Readers that want to try their hand at syntopical reading.
• Those who wish for an educational experience more in line with the following educational programs:
  • The CiRCE Institutes Master Teacher Apprenticeship Program
  • The Aspen Conferences as Mortimer J. Adler described them in How to Speak and How to Listen
  • St. John’s College tutorial structure
  • University of Chicago’s Great Books Seminar and Program
  • The Humane Letters Tradition
  • Plato’s Academy
  • Jesus and his disciples
  • “The Teachers Seminar” as envisioned by David Hicks in Norms and Nobility

 What is required

For this course you will select and read two works for each idea.  The works recommended for each idea are listed below.  After selecting these works you will submit your reading list to the Atrium leader and will then ensure that you have these works.  As you will be reading on your own, any translation, edition, or format will be acceptable.   Please note that some works are listed for more than one idea and some works are too long to be read in their entirety.  Please contact the Atrium leader with any questions or suggestions.

The Idea of Nature:

Lucretius’ The Nature of Things
Aristotle’s Categories or Prior Analytics
Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum
Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine
Newton’s Principles
Dante’s The Divine Comedy (choose one)
Melville’s Moby Dick
Darwin’s The Descent of Man
Hobbes’ Leviathan
Hegel’s Philosophy of History
Boswell’s Johnson
Genesis

The Idea of Truth:

Aristotle’s Categories
Plotinus’ The Enneads
Hippocrates’ Ancient Medicine
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Plato’s Phaedrus
The Psalms or The Gospel According to St. John
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (selections)
Spinoza’s Ethics
Hume’s Human Understanding
Kant’s Pure Reason
Chaucer’s Troilius and Cresida
Epictetus’ Discourses

The Idea of Man:

Aristotle’s History of Animals
Augustine’s Confessions
Dante’s The Divine Comedy (choose one)
Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning
Chaucer’s The Canturbury Tales
Roussau’s Social Contract
Darwin’s Descent of Man
Genesis
Virgil’s The Aeneid 
Homer’s The Odyssey
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

The Idea of Good and Evil:

Augustine’s Confessions or City of God
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (Selections)
Dante’s Divine Comedy 
Lock’s Human Understanding
Plato’s Euthydemus
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
Montinesque’s Spirit of Laws
Wisdom of Solomon (Apocrypha)
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Aurelius’ Meditations

The Idea of Prudence:

The Proverbs 
Ecclesiasticus (Apocrypha)
Sophocles’ Antigone
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
Virgil’s The Aeneid
Homer’s The Odyssey
Machiavelli’s The Prince
Plato’s Charmides, Protagoras, or Statesmen
Aristotle’s Ethics
Aquinas Summa Theologica

The Idea of Temperance:

Aurelius’ Meditations
Mill’s Liberty
Marx Capital
Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
Job and Ecclesiastes
Euripedes’ Medea or Iphigena at Aulis
Herodetus’ History
Geothe Faust
Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Plato’s Republic
Chaucer’s Canturbury Tales
Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Join us in the 2024-2025 Atrium year. Instead of bemoaning the decline of liberal education, we must all admit that what a culture promotes, provides, and transmits through its education is what is most in honor.  We cannot honor what we do not have.  This Atrium honors The Great Conversation by reading to dialogue about the Great Ideas that serve as the basis of human community.  In an age of barbarians, these are the seeds of future civilization. They take a long time to grow and we must plant today.

Dates and Times

1st and 3rd Thursdays

3:00 – 4:30pm EST

Launch Date: September 5, 2024

Cost

$477