 Liberal Studies
in the
Great Books
St. Anselm College
The Liberal Studies Program at Saint Anselm
College is one of perhaps a dozen programs in the United States that offers a
curriculum using the Great Books as its reading list. It aims at a breadth of
knowledge, without being superficial, that comes from being versed in the
principles and methods of various arts and sciences, rather than at know-how
of a distinctive sort, like engineering or business. Every effort is directed
at making a good beginning by getting at what is primary in the different
arts and sciences. The curriculum of the program introduces the student to a
comprehensive study of philosophy, literature, theology, history, and, to a
lesser extent, mathematics and the experimental sciences through some of the
greatest works in these fields. By reading and discussing great works,
students acquire the habits of mind that mark the liberally educated person.
The program has strong roots in history. One can point to an old and long
honored tradition of liberal education which reaches back to a beginning many
centuries before Christ. The works of the greatest minds have, until recent
times, always been the preferred material of study. And the discussion method
of teaching is as old as Socrates.
Classes are small seminars with no more than twenty students rather than
lectures. Learning is essentially an activity that the student does within
himself, and he is the primary agent in his education. This is why daily
preparation and regular participation in the seminars is such an important
part of the program. Students are made to think about what they have read,
discuss with others what a text means, and discern for themselves whatever
truths are contained in it. Original texts are read in preference to
textbooks. Though a professor presides at the seminar, the professor is not
the primary teacher, but simply the leading student among less advanced
students. The real teachers are Plato, Cicero, St. Augustine, Shakespeare,
and Dostoyevsky, the authors of the Great Books.
Some works are deserving of more careful treatment than others. Courses
called "preceptorials" respect this need by devoting an entire
semester to the study of only one or two books. The preceptorials offered
change from year to year and try to take into account the interest of the
students in the program. The Liberal Studies Program is administered by the
Department of Philosophy. Eight semester courses are unique to the program;
the remainder of the required courses are drawn from the regular college
offerings, with the heaviest concentration in philosophy and theology. This
is in recognition that philosophy provides the analytical tools needed to
appreciate fully the great works studied and that the ultimate aim and crown
of the program is a wisdom which only philosophy and theology can reveal.
Requirements for Graduation
Like all students at Saint Anselm College, Liberal Studies majors must
meet the general course requirements of the college. (The required three
semesters of theology will not be waived for non- Catholic students majoring
in Liberal Studies.) In addition to these requirements, the Liberal Studies
Program adds fourteen of its own: six Great Books Seminars, two
preceptorials, three courses in philosophy (logic, philosophy of science, and
metaphysics), one in fine arts, and two in literature.
The Liberal Studies Program is built around the Great Books Seminars
(GBS). These seminars are devoted to a reading and discussion of the original
works of the best minds of the West, both ancient and modern. The sequence of
six Great Books Seminars follows closely their historical order and is
divided into Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern and Late
Modern. The sequence begins with the second semester of the freshman year and
concludes with the first semester of the senior year. Students do best to
take the seminars in order since newer books often cannot be fully understood
without a knowledge of many older books. The sequence will be modified,
however, for a sufficiently weighty reason. A proseminar is also offered to
freshmen in their first semester. The proseminar introduces prospective
majors to the program by means of books from different authors from different
ages. Unlike the six Great Book Seminars, the proseminar is not required,
though it is highly recommended and, if chosen, counts for one of the
literature requirements. Besides the seminars, two preceptorials are also
required of Liberal Studies Majors. Students do best to take them in their
junior and senior years when they are better prepared for the more rigorous
and in-depth study which they involve. In keeping with the character of the
program, the remainder of the required courses are interdisciplinary in nature.
Unlike other majors in which students may graduate with little exposure to
other disciplines, Liberal Studies majors must take prescribed courses in the
fine arts, literature, and philosophy, and they are encouraged to take
courses in classics, history, and the experimental sciences. Nine electives
remain open for Liberal Studies majors, and they are sufficient to allow
interested students to fulfill the requirements of any one of the college's
certificate programs.
Who Should Consider a Major in
Liberal Studies?
- Students who enjoy
examining texts closely and discussing intelligently matters of great
consequence.
- Students who prefer to
meet Aristotle, St. Thomas, Galileo, Descartes, and other great thinkers
of Western Civilization directly in their original writings.
- Students who enjoy the
discipline and discovery of self-motivated study and reading.
The Liberal Studies Program does not demand genius on the part of its
students. It does require an honest desire to learn and the will to do
serious intellectual work.
While the Liberal Studies Program aims at a person's own excellence, the
perfection of a person's own mind, it also develops the logical and verbal
skills which will serve students well in whatever walk of life they enter.
The Liberal Studies major will prepare a person not only to get a job, but
also to live a better, happier life and to begin the lifetime of learning
that makes a person truly educated. Past graduates in Liberal Studies have
developed a breadth of interests that has attracted them to a wide variety of
occupations.
Students should note that any of the Great Books Seminars will fulfill the
college's general requirement of one philosophy elective. For more
information, please contact the Program Director, Montague Brown, or the
Chairman of the Philosophy Department, Kevin Staley, or send us e-mail below.
Basic Reading List
GBS PROSEMINAR
Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex;
Aristotle, Poetics; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things; St.
Augustine, On Christian Doctrine; Machiavelli, The Prince;
Shakespeare, King Lear; Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist
Papers; Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics.
GBS I: GREEK
Homer, Odyssey; Aeschylus, Oresteia; Sophocles, Theban
Plays; Euripides, Hippolytus; Aristophanes, Clouds;
Herodotus, The Histories; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War; Plato,
Republic; Plutarch, Greek Lives; Aristotle, Poetics.
GBS II: ROMAN
Vergil, Aeneid; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things; Cicero,
On Old Age, On Friendship; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations;
Tacitus, Annals; Plutarch, Roman Lives; Plotinus, Enneads;
St. Augustine, Confessions.
GBS III:
MEDIEVAL
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy; St. Augustine, On Christian
Doctrine, On Free Choice of the Will, On the Teacher;
Beowulf; Anselm, Proslogion, Monologion; Thomas Aquinas, On
Kingship, On the Teacher; Dante, Divine Comedy; Chaucer, Canterbury
Tales.
GBS IV:
RENAISSANCE
Shakespeare, Henry V, King Lear, Hamlet, Tempest, Sonnets; Bacon, The
Great Instauration, Novum Organum; Montaigne, Essays; Luther,
The Freedom of a Christian, The Bondage of the Will; Erasmus, Handbook
for the Militant Christian, In Praise of Folly; Machiavelli, The
Prince; Thomas More, Utopia; Milton, Paradise Lost
.
GBS V: EARLY
MODERN
Galileo, Discoveries and Opinions; Descartes, Meditations;
Locke, Second Treatise on Government; Rousseau, The Social Contract;
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Kant, Prolegomena to
any Future Metaphysics; Goethe, Faust; Racine, Phaedre;
Corneille, Le Cid; Swift, Gulliver's Travels.
GBS VI: LATE
MODERN
Madison, Hamilton, Jay, The Federalist Papers; DeTocqueville, Democracy
in America; Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov; Kierkegaard, Fear
and Trembling; Newman, The Idea of a University; Nietzsche,
Beyond Good and Evil; Hegel, Introduction to Phenomenology of Mind;
Tolstoy, Short Stories; Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents,
Future of an Illusion; Austen, Emma.
Recent
Preceptorials
- DeTocqueville:
Democracy in America
- Plato, Aristotle, St.
John, Aelred of Riveaux: On Friendship
- Thomas Aquinas:
Treatise on the Virtues
- St. Augustine: City
of God
- Dante: Divine
Comedy
- Plato: Republic
- Confucius and Lao-Tzu
- Pascal: Penses
and Provincial Letters
- Newman: The Idea of
a University
- Euclid: The Elements
A Typical Course of Studies for a GBS Major:
|
|
|
