Philosophy & Religion

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Penguin Classes Deluxe Edition
How do individuals know what they know?

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Here are two reasons students might experience the text as transformative: Alice is a stranger-in-a-strange-land tale par excellence. It illustrates how one’s sense of self can be undermined in a new context. We may know ourselves in our own world, but who are we in a world that operates with rules we don’t understand? How do we respond to that which seems nonsensical? Readers are confronted with fundamental questions about the relationship between self and environment. Equally, Alice is a story about joy, innocence, imagination, and fun. Just as nonsense can challenge sanity and order, it can also be embraced and enjoyed.

Discover the Text »
Annihilation of Caste B.R. Ambedkar
Does free will exist?

Annihilation of Caste

Annihilation of Caste is an authoritative text about social hierarchy and denial of basic human rights. It discusses how one class constructs political, legal, and social systems through which basic human rights including right to education, occupation, movement, and freedom to consume food of one’s choice is denied to a large section of the society, who then are forced to live in abject poverty. The first and second year students can effortlessly relate to the arguments made by Ambedkar as many of students have experiences discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or class themselves or are aware about these discriminations as they are discussed in news or social media platforms. Faculty should consider using this text as it demonstrates the universal aspect of class division and how different communities have established diverse methods to control one class over another.

Discover the Text »
The Complete Greek Tragedies, 3rd edition. Ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Trans. Elizabeth Wyckoff
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

Antigone

Antigone confronts the audience with the questions- is what is legal always what is just? Creon’s law denies Polyneices a basic burial rite. It is illegal to break this law, but Antigone makes the case that Creon has no right to make this law since is flies in the face of the will of the gods. She refuses to obey an unjust law. The play makes clear that Creon offends the gods with his unjust law and that he perverts the relationship between the living and dead; first by refusing to allow Polyneices to be buried and then again by burying Antigone alive. The play also offers an interesting reflection on leadership and the role of the state.

Discover the Text »
Labyrinth Jorge Luis Borges
How do individuals know what they know?

Borges Selected Stories

Borges is a writer intoxicated with infinity. He is a writer with secrets buried; you will need to bring a shovel (or the internet). Reading him is like being in an old antique curio shop where you have to go slowly, examining all the unique pieces individually, turning them over to reveal their histories and stories. In a single one of his works he may switch from arcane literary figures, to linguistic theories, to alternate geometries, and back again to heretical theologies. He writes in an almost academic style, and his encyclopedic mind peppers his writing with real sources and references interspersed with fictional ones—making no distinction whatsoever. Anyone interested in infinity, labyrinths, mirrors, esoteric writing, the fine line between fiction and reality, and the porous boundaries of the self will find much treasure in Borges.

Discover the Text »
Civilization and its Discontents Sigmund Freud
Does free will exist?

Civilization and its Discontents

Admittedly, Civilization and its Discontents paints a bleak view of the possibilities for both the individual and civilization. In Freud’s view, human beings are caught, seemingly eternally, between a rock and a hard place. But the book itself provides so many opportunities for debate—about religion, which Freud considers a “mass delusion.” About the Arts, which are not something that anyone “would care to put . . . in the background as trivialities” but which are also “useless” and “with no practical value whatever.” About love. About suffering. About addiction. At its core, the book invites a debate about basic human nature—are we capable of transcending aggression? Is our core hostile and selfish?

Discover the Text »
Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
What is Justice?

Communist Manifesto

The Manifesto of the Communist Party is a pamphlet that discusses economic disparity. The primary aim of the text was to demand equal rights for all social classes. The inequalities of wealth discussed by the authors are ubiquitous in our present society, and the first-year students enrolled in community colleges are quick to recognize and can relate with the disparities of wealth discussed in the text. Marx and Engels argued that the capitalistic system established in Europe was inherently flawed, and presently our students are experiencing a world that is reeling with the aftereffects of a highly industrialized world. The present climate change and environmental degradation, food insecurity, pollution, inequality in pay, and refugee crisis are all products of the industrialized capitalistic world.

Discover the Text »
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Published by The Library of America, 2004. ISBN-13: 978-1931082549
What is Justice?

Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America allows students to grapple with complexities and paradoxes associated with democracy and democratic government. Furthermore, Democracy in America allows students to explore how democracy has changed in the United States over time. Tocqueville’s purpose for writing Democracy in America is to examine why democracy worked in the United States by the early-nineteenth century, while previous attempts in France failed. Tocqueville’s purpose will require students to examine how certain social, economic, and political conditions in individual nations can influence the success and failure of certain forms of government.

Discover the Text »
Don Quixote
How do individuals know what they know?

Don Quixote

Don Quixote is often called the first novel. Despite the humor that suffuses the tale, it is a serious and even a tragic work. The laughter the novel provokes, and the distance combined with affection we feel for its noble yet ridiculous protagonist as he attempts to live out his ideals in a decidedly unsympathetic world, provoke examination of themes that students will feel deeply. Many of them, in coming to college, have themselves set off on a grand adventure. Like Don Quixote, they may be inspired by high ideals to advocate for causes to which they are deeply committed, only to find themselves met not with opportunities for heroism but by cynicism, bureaucracy, ridicule, and the insistent humdrum demands of everyday life.

Discover the Text »
Linehan, Katherine, ed. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 2003
Does free will exist?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is suitable for a variety of community college courses and can be included in units of differing lengths and focuses. A seemingly simple story of approx. 60 pp., the novel has been frequently dismissed as “sensationalist fiction” concerned only with lurid, grisly violence and depravity. Jekyll is, however, an amazingly rich tale of a human who pursues indulgence in unspecified pleasures, vices, or criminal actions while attempting to maintain social respectability in Victorian society. As a result, in addition to literature and composition courses, the text is useful as a basis of discussion in the environments of psychology, sociology, criminology, genetics and physiology, human sexuality, gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, and others.

Discover the Text »
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
How do individuals know what they know?

Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Readers of Montaigne revel in the way he shook many of the foundations of Western thought. Students may be most interested in his writing against violent governmental actions and corruption, both in French domestic policy and in the actions of Europeans attempting to conquer the Americas. His delineation of cultural relativism is also very relevant to students’ increasing interest in human diversity. Montaigne resists the inclination to normalize aristocratic and bourgeois European culture; he defines barbarism as a subjective term people use to describe difference from the dominant culture. Another assumption he questioned was that of the superiority assigned to humans over animals. Students may also be inspired by his celebration of human imagination, which he sees as the cause of miracles, visions, and extraordinary events.

Discover the Text »
Keirkegaard Fear and Trembling
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

Fear and Trembling

Many students will be at least passingly familiar with the Biblical story at the heart of Fear and Trembling, and for those who aren’t, the passage in Genesis is short enough easily to be presented or even read aloud in the classroom. Part of the impact of Kierkegaard’s work comes from the fact that although the story is not new, most readers avoid allowing themselves fully to consider the horror of what God has demanded and to contemplate the questions raised – specifically questions about faith. What does it mean to have faith in a God that would make such a terrible and incomprehensible demand? The text prods students to dwell with this question in many different forms, through the story of Abraham and a variety of other interesting characters such as “The Knight of Infinite Resignation” and “The Knight of Faith.” What IS faith? Is it admirable, or even possible? What is the relationship between faith and reason? Between faith and ethics? Between faith and love? If I am to be a person of faith, what should be my relationship to the finite – to other people, and to this world? These are questions with which many students are likely to have wrestled at some point in their lives.

Discover the Text »
Frankenstein- Or the Modern Prometheus Mary Shelley
What is Justice?

Frankenstein

Few students will not encounter Frankenstein without some preconceptions, as the character of the creature (if not the story itself) is ubiquitous. But popular culture versions of the story often exaggerate the monstrosity of the creature and minimize or even ignore Victor’s abandonment and renouncement of the creature and his responsibilities toward his own creation.

Discover the Text »
Genealogy of Morals
What is Love?

Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche remains one of the most influential and destabilizing figures of modern philosophy. His works continue to artfully wound readers in ways which may heal beautifully. Nietzsche’s investigation of “resentment” and “slave” morality challenge readers to reconsider the value of contemporary pieties and the ultimate aim and origins of their own moral perspectives, which overflowing love may transform.

Discover the Text »
Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals
Does free will exist?

Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals

Kant is notoriously difficult to read and, although it was intended for a more general audience than some of his other works, the Grounding is no exception. Still, the overall goal – to find one, single principle that can be a key to deciding questions of morality – is one that students find relatable. Who hasn’t struggled to find clarity, or wished for a principle about which we could all agree, when considering issues of right and wrong?

Discover the Text »
Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
How do individuals know what they know?

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan

Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, literally “Alive, Son of Awake”, raises many fundamental questions: What is life and how does animal life differ from that of plants and inanimate objects and why? Where did everything come from, and how did that happen? Why am I asking these questions and how/do the conclusions I draw here affect my life and the decisions I make? Asking these questions along with Hayy, students may begin to wrestle with some of the deepest and most persistent questions human beings have asked. Following Tufayl’s narrative provides an opportunity for students to become awake and alive to these questions.

Discover the Text »
Hebrew Bible
Does free will exist?

Hebrew Bible and New Testament

The transformational power of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament is undeniable. Both make claims about the human relationship to the divine, the origins and nature of the world, and the sort of life one ought to live in response to these truths. These texts have shaped entire civilizations and innumerable individual lives, and most students will be aware that much is at stake in discussing them. The challenge in class is make possible a serious engagement that respects the stances taken by a wide variety of students – from those who live within the faith traditions these texts represent, to those who are more or less indifferent to religious truth claims, to those who actively reject them.

Discover the Text »
Jataka Tales
How do individuals know what they know?

Jatak Tales

Jataka tales are about life’s challenges, temptations, and uncertainties. They are held in esteemed position in all Buddhist traditions and have been immortalized in art, music, and drama. The Jatakas are the most comprehensible among all Buddhist literature and are perfect text to introduce first year college students to Buddhism and Buddhist literature. Students can easily relate to the moral and philosophical questions addressed in the text, including who is deceitful? Who is a good politician? What should be the ethics of running a business?

Discover the Text »
Wu Cheng’en The Journey to the West
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

Journey to The West

The Journey to the West not only provides insights into Daoism, Buddhism, and Taoism and how these teachings interact with each other and co-exist harmoniously. However, at the same time, The Journey to the West raises important questions on human nature and morality that still have relevance to today’s society. For example, the journey that Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Baije, and Sha Wujing take serves to symbolize one’s detachment from material items as they corrupt the human condition and prevents true enlightenment. Moreover, The Journey to the West highlights the long-standing relationships that exists between individuals and a Supreme Being of Supreme Beings, which has continued relevance today.

Discover the Text »
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”
Does free will exist?

Letter From a Birmingham Jail

In addition to its transformative impact on the civil rights movement, King’s speech also grapples with a timeless human question: is it just to disobey an unjust law? How do you overcome and end oppression? What in fact is the difference between a just and an unjust law? Is it wrong to fight for what is right if you know it will lead to violence?

Discover the Text »
Hobbes, Thomas, and E. M. Curley. Leviathan : with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 1994. Print.
What is Justice?

Leviathan

Hobbes’ text is one of the most transformative texts in this history of political thought. This text is a classic of political philosophy and foundational for social contract theory, which in part influenced the framing of the US Constitution and other modern political forms. While pre-hobbesian politics was concerned with the moral and spiritual development of citizens, the modern political projects ushered in by authors like Hobbes were decidedly not. Hobbes was a pioneer in applying the modern scientific method to the study of politics. He saw his work as bringing light into the “kingdom of darkness”, which is how he characterized the understanding of human moral and social life before the application of the scientific method to their study. Hobbes was to the study of politics what Francis Bacon was to the study of nature; truly revolutionary. The political thought of Hobbes continues to influence us today in our taste for representative political institutions, our deference to the will of the majority and in our understanding of the pursuit of power as fundamental to all human action.

Discover the Text »
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Does free will exist?

Love in The Time of Cholera

This novel is about Love and all its itinerant forms. Unrequited love. Platonic love. Romantic Love. Parental love. Forbidden love. It is about obsession and rejection. It is about the enduring nature of love and of hope. It asks difficult questions about what love is and who is entitled to it. No one walks away from this text not thinking that love is complex and nuanced and dangerous. Marquez presents love as an illness, with many of the same symptoms of Cholera. And the way the characters compartmentalize who they love and the way they love requires that your understanding of the text transcend traditional considerations of what love is.

Discover the Text »
Clark, Sandra, and Pamela Mason, eds. Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Arden Shakespeare, 3rd series. Bloomsbury, 2015
Does free will exist?

Macbeth

Does Macbeth kill Duncan because he is fated to do so, or because he was tempted to do so? Would he have killed Duncan of his own free will without the influence of others? Why do people commit acts that they know are wrong, even when they understand the consequences of these actions? Unlocking such questions for students allows them to engage with some of the central questions about human agency, desire for self-worth and achievement, and the dark, unknowable impulses of all people.

Discover the Text »
Mahabharata
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

Mahabharata / Bhagavad Gita

Mahabharata is the ultimate tale ever told; it is the longest poem in the world with almost 80,000 verses. It’s ingenious and engaging stories have captured the fancy of people for centuries and its stories and characters have found afterlives in contemporary drama, cinema, and popular culture including music and video games. What is most beautiful about the text is that there is no single Mahabharata, but many. While the Sanskrit version of the text is believed to have been composed by the mythical sage Vyasa, several versions or recensions of the texts appear in many different South Asian languages and traditions. This not only reflects on the diverse communal tradition of the subcontinent, but also about the power of the stories narrated. Students can find meaning in the stories because of their relatable themes of human aspirations, greed, lust, and resentment.

Discover the Text »
Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
Does free will exist?

Meditations on First Philosophy

The Meditations, by Rene Descartes, is a pivotal text, marking the break between distinctive ancient and modern conceptions of self and world. In the preface to the work, addressed to the Sorbonne, Descartes explicitly states that his goal is to prove the existence of God and the soul. However, the world Descartes recovers after all his doubt is not the one we left behind. Colors are no longer in the object, but are relegated to mere secondary qualities in us. The bodies that inhabit this world are no longer understood through Aristotelian natures, but rather, their essence is captured by their mathematical (geometrical and arithmetical) properties and relations alone. In this way, Descartes sets the metaphysical foundation for the emerging physical sciences of the early modern period.

Discover the Text »
Metamorphosis
What is Beauty?

Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is about human suffering and is a perfect novella to introduce students to Kafka’s work. While the story can be disorienting in the beginning, as the reader progresses, they can relate to Gregor’s situation. The story is a complex narrative with multiple layers that explores variety of human emotions and relationships including, fear, frustration, disappointment, love, loneliness, suffering, meaning of death, and disgust.

Discover the Text »
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
How do individuals know what they know?

Never Let Me Go

Since it is written as a first person coming-of-age novel, Never Let Me Go is accessible to all students. Students of traditional college age will relate to the late adolescent/early young adult experiences of Kathy H. and her peers, like negotiating friendships with romantic and sexual relationships and adjusting to life outside of adult guidance and protection. Non-traditionally aged students will remember these experiences as well. So, while the genre and narrative will be unlikely to challenge students, the experience of connecting emotionally to the characters, while coming to understand they have been bred to be used by non-cloned humans, will test students’ assumptions about technology and human exploitation of that technology. Rather than approaching the question heavy handedly, Ishiguro leads readers gently to interrogate not only the attitudes of humans to the clones, but the matter-of-fact resignation of the clones to their own fates.

Discover the Text »
aristotle nicomachean ethics
What is Love?

Nicomachean Ethics

This text is transformative because of the absolutely direct way it takes up the essential question of what it is to live a good life. Aristotle’s definition of happiness is challenging to the modern reader on many fronts, and whether or not one ultimately agrees with him, his arguments will compel students to articulate, refine, and perhaps profoundly rethink, their own positions. Although the highest form of happiness is determined to be that arising from contemplation, students of less contemplative natures can also find themselves in the text as Aristotle looks closely at many different types of human excellence, including for example the compelling portrait of the “high-minded” (often translated as “great-souled”) person, described in book four. This person is much concerned with honor and dishonor, recognizes their own greatness, assesses it accurately, and makes claims that “correspond to his deserts.”(1123b 15)

Discover the Text »
On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy

Philosophy, by its very nature of bringing things into question, is at odds with the authority of the political and the religious. So it is no small task that the twelfth century Andalusian philosopher, Ibn Rushd, sets for himself in On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy. This harmony is achieved by adjusting the Quran to fit Aristotelian philosophical thought through the allegorical interpretation of intransigent passages. That scripture should be interpreted symbolically when it conflicts with demonstrative truths was quite radical for its time, and makes this work important for the history of hermeneutics in general and scriptural interpretation in particular. This work is essential reading for anyone interested in the concept of esoteric and exoteric readings of texts. What is even more radical than Ibn Rushd’s hermeneutic prescriptions, particularly for us, is his insistence that not everyone is capable of the truth, and thus that the truth should not be revealed to everyone equally—for some it can actually be harmful to their ability to believe religious claims and ultimately to their motivation to act morally. Thus this text tangentially brings up questions about the connection between religion and morality.

Discover the Text »
Phenomenology of Spirit
How do individuals know what they know?

Phenomenology of Spirit

The Phenomenology of Spirit is arguably one of the most difficult philosophical texts to engage with. Partly this stems from Hegel having to, like Plato and Kant before him, invent terms and phrases to describe ideas and concepts for which ordinary language is inadequate. Because of this, there is not always agreement on just what Hegel is doing. Wherever one comes down interpretively, his impact on the history of thought is undeniable. He is the culmination of German idealism, a philosophical movement that starts with Kant and runs through Fichte and Schelling. His treatment of sense certainty has been taken up by many 20th century critiques of empiricism within the analytic tradition, while the master-slave dialectic has proven to be equally influential within 20th century continental philosophy. Of course, the influence Hegel had on Marx’s dialectical materialism, and hence the historical development of Western radical politics, cannot be overstated. Whatever one may ultimately think of Hegel, reading through the Phenomenology is a philosophical experience like none other, full of “moments” of deep insight as one explores with hallucinatory fluidity his processional-thought terrain.

Discover the Text »
republic
What is Justice?

Republic

The Republic is a book of liberation and transformation. According to Dr. Simon Blackburn, “If any books change the world, Republic has a good claim to first place.” The Republic is the foundational text of political science and moral philosophy. The questions it raises regarding the nature of justice and its relationship to the good life are important for all human beings to consider. It may be impossible to find a notable thinker in the western or Islamic world whose thought has not been shaped in some meaningful way by this text. Apart from its world historical significance, Republic is one of the most meaningful texts to read and discuss with students of all backgrounds.

Discover the Text »
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Equality)
What is Justice?

Second Discourse

Rousseau with his Second Discourse is a superlative example of the self-critique of the Enlightenment project from within the Enlightenment project itself. The development of civilization and political society, while bringing great benefits to mankind, is paradoxically the source of most of our evils. In fact, the ultimate progress of political society will end in tyranny! This is an innovative text featuring methods and conclusions new to the history of thought. Along with his revolutionary explanation of the origins of inequality in the invention of property, he has equally revolutionary proposals about the origins of language and its development. He engages in the earliest anthropological studies, utilizing physiological and biological arguments, especially in his notes to the text, to make many of his points about the peacefulness of the state of nature.

Discover the Text »
The Souls of Black Folk
How do individuals know what they know?

Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois is one of the most influential US authors in the 20th century. His work helped shape productive advocacy for equal rights and treatment of Black people in the United States and remains relevant in that continued struggle. His penetrating insight into “double consciousness” remains an important psychological and sociological framework. Du Bois is an evangelist for the liberatory power of Liberal Education and its, “simply old time-glorified methods of delving for Truth, and searching out the hidden beauties of life, and learning the good of living.” In our time of spiritual striving and moral ambiguity, Du Bois’ work may help students reorient their educational paths from one pointed solely at work to one also aimed at Truth, and perhaps also to see with him the final product of education as, “neither a psychologist nor a brick mason, but a man.”

Discover the Text »
Plato, Symposium
How do individuals know what they know?

Symposium

The Symposium consists of a series of speeches about love given by Socrates and his friends during a drinking party at the house of Agathon. Having overindulged the night before in celebration of Agathon’s award winning play, the group agrees to pace themselves tonight by means of their speeches to the god of love. Phaedrus starts things off, followed by Pausanias and Euryximachus. Next, Aristophanes delivers his unforgettable origin myth, explaining our unconquerable urge to unite with our one true love as a literal seeking out of our other half. After Agathon delivers a beautiful but sophistical speech praising love, the dialogue culminates with Socrates telling the group about what he learned from Diotima, the woman who trained him in the erotic arts. According to this teaching, love is a desire for the good eternally, and it achieves this through giving birth, both physically and spiritually.

Discover the Text »
Tao Te Ching
What is our relationship to the non-human world?

Tao Te Ching

The Dao De Jing is attributed to Laozi, translated as “The Old Master,” a possibly fictitious legendary contemporary of Confucius. As such, the Dao De Jing is a response to Confucianism and its emphasis on social relations grounded in the family to create a harmonious cosmos. Daoism criticizes Confucianism here by claiming that the exclusive focus on proper social relations is an attempt to fix and concretize dao in a way that will ultimately backfire and miss the mark. While both Confucianism and Daoism emphasize wuwei (non-action), Daoism seems to expand the sage’s realm of focus beyond the merely societal to include nature and the entire cosmos. Later, Buddhism would combine its unique features with Daoism to produce Zen. This text is fascinating to anyone interested in texts as a way of being in the world.

Discover the Text »
Virgil The Aeneid
What is Justice?

The Aeneid

While The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas’s journey to settle in Rome, Virgil’s larger point is to highlight how Roman greatness was not by accident. The Aeneid is therefore seen as a glorification of Rome, its values, and its people. This can be seen through Aeneas, who Virgil uses to personify Roman ideals and values. Throughout the epic, Aeneas is presented as a man who is bound by duty. This can be seen as he leaves Dido, seeing his love affair taking him away from his destiny and responsibility. While The Aeneid is seen as a glorification of Rome, the work’s significance is tied to its ability to inform students of the values that defined Rome. This has relevance today, as many nations are defined by a set of values that people are willing to fight and die for. Furthermore, students can look at The Aeneid within its time and circumstance to see it as offering an insightful commentary on Rome during the early years of Pax Romana.

Discover the Text »
The Analects Confucius
What is Beauty?

The Analects

Analects is about morality, and introduces students to the Confucian way or, path. While students may not choose to agree with Confucius understanding of morality and social hierarchical relationships, it is in this disagreement and dialogue that lies the essence of Analects. It is important that students can connect with the text and can reflect on it through their experience. Confucius lived in a period of acute political and cultural crisis, and this is reflected in the text. First year students who also face climate, moral or social crises can reflect on the text and come to their own conclusions about an ideal society and government.

Discover the Text »
Euclid's elements : book one : with questions for discussion
How do individuals know what they know?

The Elements

Euclid’s text is a model for how to think clearly and logically. Through the study and demonstration of his geometrical proofs, students learn the structure of logical arguments and what it means to prove something. After one understands an entire proof of Euclid’s, you know what it feels like to really know that something is true. His proofs provide a window onto the beauty of truth and inspire us to want to open it further. Studying this text provides a benchmark by which students can judge how well they know other things. “Is this as clear to me as a Euclid proof?” If not, there is more to understand and work to be done!

Discover the Text »
Federalist Papers
Does free will exist?

The Federalist Papers

The arguments of Publius are alive today. In 1821, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote of The Federalist Papers, “It is a complete commentary on our constitution; and is appealed to by all parties in the questions to which that instrument has given birth. Its intrinsic merit entitles it to this high rank, and the part two of its authors [i.e., Hamilton and Madison] performed in framing the constitution, put it very much in their power to explain the views with which it was framed.” This view has not waned. The Federalist Papers continue to be cited in US Supreme Court cases as the authoritative interpretation on the original intent of the US Constitution as well as in thousands of law review articles and cases of the lower courts.

Discover the Text »
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

The History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War represented a change in how historical narratives were written. While previous historical works by people like Herodotus tended to at times depart from the facts or used literary novelties, Thucydides communicated his intention to write an accurate account. He outlines how he acquired the information he used in writing his history. As such, present-day historians have praised the methodology Thucydides used in writing The History of the Peloponnesian War. The idea that one must have and use evidence in reconstructing the past, though, to be sure, Thucydides had his own interpretations and opinions.

Discover the Text »
The Poetry of John Donne
How do individuals know what they know?

The Poetry of John Donne

Community college students find Donne’s poetry both arcane and modern, both puzzling and satisfying. Complex human scenarios are described with language that is at turns colloquial or learned. Ideas are often constructed in extended metaphors called “conceits.” When these extended metaphors use obscurely technical imagery or make surprising, unexpected comparisons, they are called “metaphysical conceits.” Donne’s poetry invites students to inhabit the speaker’s mind, to follow his thoughts through the complexities of language and emotion in his investigations of love, society, and religion. The sample poems included are among Donne’s most accessible and exciting. As a result, they easily lend themselves to class discussion and written response.

Discover the Text »
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
What is Justice?

The Prince

Considering the reputation of the author of The Prince allows students to see the value of interpreting works in historical and generic context. Machiavelli and his works demonstrate that reception is as important as the content of the work itself. The term Machiavellian typically evokes the idea of “The ends justify the means,” with the implication that Machiavelli himself must have supported absolutism or tyranny. The Prince upset contemporary readers because it is the first printed work that separated civic virtue from morality. As a result, the author’s name became associated with despotism and violence, and the menacing figure of a Machiavel became a common figure in drama at the time.

Discover the Text »
The Rihla Ibn Battuta
What is Beauty?

The Rihala

Rihla is about passion for traveling, learning, and experiencing new cultures. Battuta had a great appetite for travel and adventures, and this sentiment comes across to the readers. The beauty of the text lies in its vivid description of people, flora-fauna, food, and customs of the land he travelled. Ibn Juzayy, the writer of the text brilliantly interspersed these physical descriptions with poetry and satirical personal anecdotes. Rihla is an exceptional travelogue and exposes the global interconnectedness of the medieval world, something that is challenging for first year students to comprehend. The text is also an excellent commentary on fourteenth-century global economics, polity, and international relations.

Discover the Text »
John Locke The Second Treatise of Government
What is Justice?

The Second Treatise of Government

John Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government represented a marked shift in political thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At a time when the political power of many nations vested in a monarch or emperor, The Second Treatise of Government placed power in the hands of the people. Furthermore, Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government demonstrates that the people are deserving of the power that they receive in a state of nature. When a government violates life, liberty, and property, the people can depose of the existing government and create a new one. This highlights Locke’s belief that people can improve with experience, as they can establish a better government than the one before. Locke’s philosophy on government helped influence the American Revolution. After all, the structure Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence followed the argument presented by Locke. Jefferson highlighted the colonists’ right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and then proceeded to outline how Great Britain violated it. As a result, the colonies were justified in becoming independent.

Discover the Text »
The Story of an African Farm Olive Schreiner
Is there a Supreme Being or Beings?

The Story of an African Farm

Students are likely to be both surprised and intrigued by the modernity of ideas and situations in the novel. If they are familiar with Victorian literature or culture or have some sense of it, the nature of the sexual relationships, Lyndall’s feminism, the complicated race relations, and one character’s decision to live as a different gender for a period of time, will likely challenge what they think they know about the period, not to mention any impressions they may have about rural South African culture (if any). The book raises questions about gender, sexuality, responsibility, child rearing and abuse, spirituality, the nature of work/labor, and tension between the natural world and man-made world. Long passages of interior thoughts, particularly those of Waldo and Lydall, provide ample philosophical meat on which students may chew. This is a novel that has the ability to transform through testing students’ assumptions and beliefs. Much of what it discusses feels as important in our current place and moment as Schreiner felt it was in hers.

Discover the Text »
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
What is Justice?

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is the foundational argument for capitalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and derivatively, libertarianism. It is the central text of political economy. While the work is often invoked by the ideologues of free-market capitalism, it is just as often misunderstood, misread, or ignored by those same proponents. Smith’s analyses of how interventions and changes in one section of the economy have unforeseen ramifications elsewhere is always fascinating and insightful. His fundamental belief that the self-interested economic behavior of individuals can lead, as an epiphenomenon, or as he says, by an “invisible hand,” to economic prosperity for the whole of society, can be seen as the ultimate conclusion to a line of thought initiated by Thomas Hobbes.

Discover the Text »
Mill, Utilitarianism
What is Justice?

Utilitarianism

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals “utility” or the “greatest happiness principle” holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.

Discover the Text »