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
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Psalms
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Isaiah
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2 Samuel
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2 Maccabees
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Gospel of John
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Romans
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Acts of the Apostles
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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"
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- "Theological Orations"