# The Classics



## Harris (Jan 30, 2006)

Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, Epicurus, and so on. Of course we would want to include a bit of Shakespeare, Augustine, some British empiricism, and Medieval theology (Aquinas, Anselm, etc.).

The Western Canon.

Does anyone know of a college that still requires undergraduates to master the Canon before moving on to a "major"?

Curious.

Cheers,
Harris


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## tiger02 (Dec 12, 2004)

My alma mater considered the Canon a major unto itself, for good reason. For the rest of us, two required Literature classes sufficed:



> quote:General Education Requirements for A.B. Students
> 
> Writing Seminar -- one course
> 
> ...


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## romafan (Apr 29, 2005)

St. John's in Maryland/N.M.
The Reading List 
The reading list that serves as the core of the St. John's College curriculum had its beginnings at Columbia College, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Virginia. Since 1937, the list of books has been under continued review at St. John's College. The distribution of the books over the four years is significant. Something over 2,000 years of intellectual history form the background of the first two years; about 300 years of history form the background for almost twice as many authors in the last two years. 


The first year is devoted to Greek authors and their pioneering understanding of the liberal arts; the second year contains books from the Roman, medieval, and Renaissance periods; the third year has books of the 17th and 18th centuries, most of which were written in modern languages; the fourth year brings the reading into the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Freshman Year
Sophomore Year
Junior Year
Senior Year

(If you are looking for this year's current reading list, please click here.)



The chronological order in which the books are read is primarily a matter of convenience and intelligibility; it does not imply a historical approach to the subject matter. The St. John's curriculum seeks to convey to students an understanding of the fundamental problems that human beings have to face today and at all times. It invites them to reflect both on their continuities and their discontinuities.

FRESHMAN YEAR 

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound 
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War 
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae 
HERODOTUS: Histories 
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds 
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus 
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals 
EUCLID: Elements 
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things 
PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic 
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry 
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust
top

SOPHOMORE YEAR 

THE BIBLE
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
DES PREZ: Mass
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
SCHUBERT: Songs
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms
top 

JUNIOR YEAR 

CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers" 

top

SENIOR YEAR 

Declaration of Independence
The Constitution of the United States
Supreme Court opinions
HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
MILLIKAN: The Electron
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy
For seminar reading assignments, click here.


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## DukeGrad (Dec 28, 2003)

Romafan,

An excellent school.
I think far superior to Williams, Wesleyan or Middlebury.
They play Naval Academy each year, cricket.
Been doing that for many years.
It is a very beautiful school.
Very different from the masses.
That is for sure.

Nice day

Jimmy


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## Aus_MD (Nov 2, 2005)

At high school a teacher declared antipodeans to be educated barbarians. It is increasingly difficult to find high school curricula that include Latin, and Greek is virtually extinct. I would be hard pressed to name a single colleague in Australia who had read even a third of the canon. I find that true of the legal profession also. I certainly have not met any who has more than two years' high school Latin.

Aus_MD


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

No Nietzsche?

Joseph Conrad but no Thomas Mann? I think they should also include James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Leo Tolstoy, as well as some of the modern philosophers such as Sartre, Bertrand Russell, William James.

Perhaps expand it to the philosophy of Foucualt, Deleuze & Guttari, Baudrillard, Jacques Lacan, Saussure, Kristeva, et al.

Also Joseph Campbell, Baudelaire, Rimabud & Verlaine, Aby Warburg, Winkelmann, Alois Riegl.

Perhaps even Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology.

*'Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.'*

*Georges Bataille*


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## tiger02 (Dec 12, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by LabelKing_
> 
> No Nietzsche?
> 
> ...


As I mentioned, truly understanding all the classics, through Nabokov, Roth, and Pynchon as well, requires its own course of study. The slim _Death in Venice_ took a week of sporadic reading (last week, specifically) and I don't read slowly.


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

> quote:_Originally posted by tiger02_
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Death in Venice is magnificent. It is the slow ecstasy of a Winkelmann-like figure caught in the throes of masochistic passion.

There is a superb film, with some editing, by Luchino Visconti, starring Dirk Bogarde which is worh seeing.

The Magic Mountain is another beautiful text. Thomas Mann generally is very fine.

Then there is also Heinrich Mann, who should also be included.

*'Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.'*

*Georges Bataille*


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## tiger02 (Dec 12, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by LabelKing_
> It is the slow ecstasy of a Winkelmann-like figure caught in the throes of masochistic passion.


Exactly my thought, other than that I haven't the foggiest who Winkelmann is.


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

> quote:_Originally posted by tiger02_
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Johann Joachim Winkelmann was a Prussian archeologist and classical scholar. Winkelmann is considered one of the founders of art history as a codified sort of profession.

He saw the Classical Greek as the utmost ideal of beauty, which he stated was unattainable in the sense that there was no emotion in beauty thus beyond normal humans.

He was also homosexual so he had an exclusive inclination to the Greek nude male; however, his ideas of aesthetics proved quite influential especially in the Neoclassical age.

Kant takes some of these ideas into his Critique of Pure Judgement.

*'Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.'*

*Georges Bataille*


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

read budenbrooks, if you can. 

I have a great collection of mann's short stories that are fantastic. in some ways, he was american psyco, 90 years before american psyco (and, of course, better)

one thing that I am very sad about is never having a good literature class at university level.


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

globetrotter,

Have you read Paul Bowles?

His short stories are very fine, orchestral in composition and decidely disturbing with that vague sense of impending doom.

Norman Mailer said of him:

'Paul Bowles opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square... the call of the orgy, the end of civilization.'

*'Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.'*

*Georges Bataille*


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## tiger02 (Dec 12, 2004)

LK and Zach, thanks for the recommendations. Were Winkelmann and Mann contemporaries? The inspiration is clear and the timing seems right in that art history would have been a subset of antiquities in Mann's day.

After graduation I lived in a house for a few months where Mann had stayed three-quarters of a century earlier. Quite a library. It's now the home of the Catholic ministry for the University.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by LabelKing_
> 
> globetrotter,
> 
> ...


no, but thanks, LK, I will put him on my list of people to read in the coming months. I have real trouble discovering new fiction - non-fiction I find, but I hardly ever start reading a new fiction author that I dont know.

do you every read naipaul? totally different stuff, but the last new fictino author I picked up.


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by LabelKing_
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> globetrotter,
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Impending doom? PB was pretty good at realized doom, as well. His stories are among the best written. I shall never forget my first reading of "A Distant Episode" and "A Delicate Prey" in my stoned and impressionable youth. Here was a world decidedly out of joint; and nothing could ever put it right.

"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." Louis Armstrong.


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

I have read (or read excerpts) of about ~25 of those works. I would suspect most of my peers have read less than that.

I seriously considered going to St John's but wondered about employability of thier graduates among other things. 

However I would be very content to have a library with only two books, The Bible, and Locke's Second Treatise of Government. I'm glad both made the list.


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

One adores the Interchange. Thank-you, Andy.


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## JLibourel (Jun 13, 2004)

Regret to say I have read somewhat fewer than half the works in the St. John's list. In my defense, nearly all of the works in Greek and Latin on the list (and I certainly have read a majority of them), I read in the original. Read the entire Latin Vulgate Bible in the original and the New Testament in the original Greek. I never acquired more than a smattering of Hebrew. I wish I had learned enough to read to O.T.

Of languages I never learned but wish I had, Old Norse would be at the top of the list so that I could have read the Eddas and sagas in the original.

I must say that the St. John's list is charmingly retro and "Eurocentric," the only nod to fashionable "diversity" that I could find being the works of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. I am a little surprised the Song of Roland didn't make their second-year list.


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

It surprised me that The Life of Charlemagne by Einhard (a member of his court) and Beowulf were not on the list, yet Machiavelli gets The Discourses on.


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by JLibourel_
> 
> I must say that the St. John's list is charmingly retro and "Eurocentric," the only nod to fashionable "diversity" that I could find being the works of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.


Du Bois should be read by everyone. He is easily one of the finest public intellectuals the United States has produced. _The Souls of Black Folk_ is frequently prescribed for young, white students in the interest of "diversity." However, such young people would be better served by being required to read its companion piece, _The Souls of White Folk_, a selection from which follows:



> quote: In the awful cataclysm of World War, where from beating, slandering, and murdering us the white world turned temporarily aside to kill each other, we of the Darker Peoples looked on in mild amaze.
> 
> Among some of us, I doubt not, this sudden descent of Europe into hell brought unbounded surprise; to others, over wide area, it brought the schadenfreude of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, I judge, looked on silently and sorrowfully, in sober thought, seeing sadly the prophecy of our own souls.
> 
> ...


Du Bois has also been excellently served by his modern biographer, David Levering Lewis, whose two volume biography of the Great Man is splendid.

"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." Louis Armstrong.


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## Aus_MD (Nov 2, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by crazyquik_
> 
> It surprised me that The Life of Charlemagne by Einhard (a member of his court) and Beowulf were not on the list, yet Machiavelli gets The Discourses on.


The list is catholic, but has a strong thread tracing the history of ideas. Earnest (sic) Rutherford and Rudolf Virchow, with whose works I am very familiar, do not belong in the canon from a literary point of view, but their contributions affect us all profoundly. Machiavelli's two works, in my estimation, belong on the list.

Aus_MD


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

https://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_archives/articles/330-1.html


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## Yckmwia (Mar 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> https://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_archives/articles/330-1.html


'Trotter,

Some members are going to pop their corks if you continue to post links to the Utne Reader. For many, that site lies in The Forbidden Zone. Fortunately, this fellow has come to the rescue by compiling links to just about every "great books" list available on the Internet; including Adler and Van Doren's. Who could ask for more?

"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em." Louis Armstrong.


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## manton (Jul 26, 2003)

St. John's sounds great in the abstract, but the exectuion leaves something to be desired.


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## Lord Foppington (Feb 1, 2005)

Columbia College remains a bastion (of sorts) of Western Civ courses. They include CC (Contemporary Civilization), described like this:

Because Introduction to contemporary civilization is a one-year course, readings are necessarily selective. While these readings change from time to time, the factors that lead to adoption of a text always include historical influence, the presentation of ideas of enduring importance, and the demonstrated ability of a text to provoke productive discussion. Among the readings currently required in the course are the Bible, the Qurâ€™an, and works by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Smith, Rousseau, Kant, Burke, Tocqueville, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, DuBois, Freud, and Woolf.

And Literature Humanities, described as follows:

The principal objectives of Literature Humanities are to teach students to analyze literary texts and to construct intellectual arguments. An interdepartmental staff of professorial and preceptorial faculty meets with groups of approximately twenty-two students for four hours a week in order to discuss texts by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Vergil, Augustine, Dante, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Austen, Dostoevsky, and Woolf, as well as Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament writings.

Both courses are two semesters long, and both are required of every single undergrad at Columbia, as well as one one-semester course in Art Humanities and one in Music Humanities.

Far from perfect. But I liked them when I took them. And I liked knowing everybody else in every single one of my classes had taken them too (or would soon have to).

Stap my vitals!


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by manton_
> 
> St. John's sounds great in the abstract, but the exectuion leaves something to be desired.


Care to say why...?


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by JLibourel_
> 
> Regret to say I have read somewhat fewer than half the works in the St. John's list. In my defense, nearly all of the works in Greek and Latin on the list (and I certainly have read a majority of them), I read in the original. Read the entire Latin Vulgate Bible in the original and the New Testament in the original Greek. I never acquired more than a smattering of Hebrew. I wish I had learned enough to read to O.T.
> 
> ...


Not "fashionable" diversity, but Augustine is from Africa.....Not that this is at all relevant with those who wish for diversity in America today...


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by Yckmwia_
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[8D]


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## Karl89 (Feb 20, 2005)

Gents,

Did anyone see Joe Paterno on Charlie Rose last week? A story was told about how a Jesuit novice who had taught Paterno in high school was crushed when Paterno chose Brown over Fordham because they were supposed to work on a new translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam indeed. As Mr. Bunker used to sing.....those were the days!

Karl

P.S. I wonder if we can trace the decline in classical scholarship to the liturgical reforms of Vatican II.


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## Old Brompton (Jan 15, 2006)

St John's is excellent. For a classical liberal education in the Western tradition, try some of the smaller Roman Catholic colleges such as Christendom and St Thomas Aquinas. None of this fashionable, absurd 'diversity' and 'multicultural' propaganda that passes for an education at the Ivies and wanna-be Ivies.


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## tiger02 (Dec 12, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by Old Brompton_
> 
> St John's is excellent. For a classical liberal education in the Western tradition, try some of the smaller Roman Catholic colleges such as Christendom and St Thomas Aquinas. None of this fashionable, absurd 'diversity' and 'multicultural' propaganda that passes for an education at the Ivies and wanna-be Ivies.


Agreed, and thank God for that multicultural propaganda. So yeah, if you're looking for people who look like you and think like you, check out Christendom. I'm not going to sully the great saint's name by including him.

Tom


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## mpcsb (Jan 1, 2005)

Harris,
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 4 years of latin in prep school, 2 of greek, 2 french! Took german in college to read the archaeological papers. Read almost all the greek and latin in prep school, age of reason Locke/Hume/Rousseau et al in college. Remember those d*mn little red and green books, latin/greek on left page - english on the right?
Cheers


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## guyfromboston (Jan 26, 2005)

David Denby wrote a charming book (Great Books) on his return to Columbia to take their two required frosh courses that cover key pieces of the canon. So, at least one Ivy is still making young people receive an education while they attend college. Of course, the books was written several years ago so the tradition may have died in the meantime.


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## JLibourel (Jun 13, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by mpcsb_
> 
> Harris,
> Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 4 years of latin in prep school, 2 of greek, 2 french! Took german in college to read the archaeological papers. Read almost all the greek and latin in prep school, age of reason Locke/Hume/Rousseau et al in college. Remember those d*mn little red and green books, latin/greek on left page - english on the right?
> Cheers


Ah, the good old Loeb Classical Library. I must have 60 or so volumes in my personal library, although it was always instilled in me that getting Loebs was kind of CS when you could get an Oxford or Teubner text without the English translation.

Anent St. John's College, back in my college teaching days about 35 years ago I had a student who had attended their New Mexico campus. It sounded pretty wild, even by the standards of that sexually adventurous and experimental era. To hear her tell it, they had what was tantamount to an orgy room (called the "Commons," as I recall)! Of course the lass may have been embellishing her tale, and that was a long time ago.

On another note, some of these comprehensive classics courses sound rather comparable to an "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" tour of Europe. How one could expect to gain any degree of in-depth familiarity with these authors when served in seemingly enormous helpings seems baffling.


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by JLibourel_
> shing her tale, and that was a long time ago.
> 
> On another note, some of these comprehensive classics courses sound rather comparable to an "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" tour of Europe. How one could expect to gain any degree of in-depth familiarity with these authors when served in seemingly enormous helpings seems baffling.


That's what I was thinking too. I think to really get a lot out of a program like St. John's, you'd have to have had an excellent preparation. It'd be interesting to see where the students are coming from.


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## johnapril (Feb 8, 2006)

> quote:_Originally posted by manton_
> 
> St. John's sounds great in the abstract, but the exectuion leaves something to be desired.


I know a kid going there. He was deep into sci-fi when I met him six years ago. Anyway, he seems to love the school.


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## Lord Foppington (Feb 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by guyfromboston_
> 
> Of course, the books was written several years ago so the tradition may have died in the meantime.


I believe the descriptions I posted above of CC and Lit Hum at Columbia College are from the current catalogue. There are a lot of alums' dead bodies that any curricular reforms would have to roll over before the core courses would ever be scrapped. They've been central to Columbia's idea of itself since World War I.

Stap my vitals!


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## guyfromboston (Jan 26, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Lord Foppington_
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Sorry - missed your original post. Glad to hear that one small piece of academic rigour lives on.


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## Yalie (Nov 24, 2005)

A few of the English and Political Theory professors at Yale speak quite highly of St. Johns, for what that's worth.


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## Wimsey (Jan 28, 2006)

Traditionally you wouldn't learn the western canon at college; you'd learn most of it in high school (the kind you went to that prepared you for college) while learning latin and greek. That, then, would be the base on which your college education was built, not the substance of it.


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