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The Great Books

The Great Books

A Closer Look

The Great Books

The foundation of the Core is the Great Books; each student engages primary texts written by the most influential authors of western tradition.

 

  • Homer:
    • "The Iliad"  "The Odyssey"
  • Vergil:
    • "Aeneid"
  •  "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
  • Dante Alighieri:
    • "The Divine Comedy"
  • John Milton:
    • "Paradise Lost"
  • Aeschylus:
    • "Prometheus Bound," "Agamemnon," "Libation Bearers," "Eumenides"
  • Sophocles:
    • "Oedipus the Tyrant," "Oedipus at Colonus," "Antigone"
  • Euripides:
    • "Bacchae"
  • Aristophanes:
    • "Frogs"
  • Aristotle:
    • "Poetics"
  • The Book of Job
  • "Everyman" & "The Second Shepherd's Play"
  • Marlowe:
    • "Dr. Faustus"
  • William Shakespeare:
    • "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear," "Merchant of Venice," " The Tempest"
  • Jane Austen:
    • "Mansfield Park"
  • Herman Melville:
    • "Moby Dick"
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky:
    • "Crime and Punishment"
  • William Faulkner:
    • "Go Down, Moses"
  • Adam Smith
    • "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (selections)
  • Pope John Paul II
    • "Centesimus Annus"
  • Thomas Jefferson
    • The Declaration of Independenc
  • The United States Constitution
  • The Book of Job
  • Thucydides
    • "History of the Peloponnesian War"
  • Livy
    • "The Early History of Rome"
  • Boethius
    • "The Consolation of Philosophy"
  • Einhard
    • "Life of Charlemagne"
  • Thomas More
    • "Utopia"
  • John Calvin
    • "Institutes of the Christian Religion"
  • Diderot
    • "The 'Philosophe'"  from  "Encyclopdie"
  • Immanuel Kant
    • "What is Enlightenment?"
  • Edmund Burke
    • "Reflections on the Revolution in France"
  • Marx and Engels
    • "The Communist Manifesto"
  • Pope Leo XIII
    • "Rerum Novarum"
  • Eli Wiesel
    • "Night"
  • Thomas Jefferson
    • "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," The Declaration of Independence
  • The United States Constitution
  • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, & James Madison
    • "The Federalist Papers"
  • Frederick Douglass
    • "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave"
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
    • The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
  • Benjamin Franklin
    • "Autobiography"
  • Henry Adams
    • "The Education of Henry Adams"
  • Abraham Lincoln
    • Selected Speeches
  • Frederick Jackson Turner
    • "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
  • George F. Kennan
    • "American Diplomacy"
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • Letter from a Birmingham Jail
  • Plato
    • "Republic," and "Phaedo" or "Symposium"
  • Aristotle
    • "Nichomachean Ethics" (selections), "On the Soul" (selections), "Categories" (selections), "Physics" (selections), "Metaphysics" (selections)
  • St. Augustine
    • "Confessions" (selections)
  • St. Thomas Aquinas
    • "Summa Theologiae" I-II, q. 94 a. 2, (natural law) or I-II, qq. 1-5 (man's end), "De ente et essentia," "Super Boetii De Trinitate," q. 5, a. 1
  • René Descartes
    • "Meditations on First Philosophy"
  • Immanuel Kant
    • "Critique of Pure Reason" (selections) or "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics"
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • "On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life," "Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense"
  • Martin Heidegger
    • "The Question Concerning Technology" or "What is Metaphysics?" or "The Age of the World-Picture" or "Identity and Difference"
  • A contemporary Christian personalist, such as Robert Spaemann, Jacques Maritain, Karol Wojtyla, or Norris Clarke, SJ.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville
    • "Democracy in America"
  • Thomas Jefferson
    • The Declaration of Independence
  • The United States Constitution
  • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison
    • "The Federalist Papers"
  • Gregory Nazianzus
    • "Theological Orations"
  • Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy

  • Psalms

  • Isaiah

  • 2 Samuel

  • 2 Maccabees

  • Gospel of John

  • Romans

  • Acts of the Apostles

  • Gospel of Matthew

  • Didache
  • Augustine
    • "Confessions"
  • St. Thomas Aquinas
    • "Summa Theologiae" (selections)
  • Martin Luther
    • "Heidelberg Disputation," "The Freedom of a Christian"
  • Melanchthon
    • "The Augsburg Confession"
  • John Calvin
    • "Institutes of the Christian Religion"
  • The Westminster Confession of Faith
  • Council of Trent (selections)
  • Vatican I (selections)
  • Vatican II: "Lumen Gentium"
  • St. Clement
    • Letter to the Corinthians
  • St. Ignatius
    • Letters to the Ephesians, Letters to the Romans
  • St. Athanasius
    • "On the Incarnation"
  • St. Irenaeus
    • "Against Heresies"
  •  
    • "Theological Orations"