Executive Seminar

While the Jefferson Center’s primary purpose is undergraduate education, we believe that the study of the great books is valuable throughout one’s life, and that by spreading that study more broadly, we can help people to become more thoughtful citizens and to experience the joys of studying the great books. The executive seminars seek to realize that goal through regular classes, available at a minimal cost, in which adults from the community read and discuss core texts under the guidance of an affiliate of the Jefferson Center.

Spring 2012

In this Spring’s seminar, we will be discussing and debating the issue of the American character. Our central and guiding questions will be what qualities and virtues are necessary for citizens of the American republic, and what can and should be done to cultivate them. We will look at various dimensions and components of that question, such as the level and type of political participation that should be expected of citizens, the role of patriotism and of religion, the idea of individual rights, and the meaning of freedom in American society.

We will approach our study by looking at some of the most important and penetrating writings from some of the greatest thinkers about America. We will begin by looking at some of the debates surrounding the ratification of the Constitution, and the competing visions of American society that were embodied by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. We will then turn to Alexis de Tocqueville’s study of American society in the second part of his famous work, Democracy in America, spotlighting his treatment of American individualism and the problems in American democracy which could pose serious dangers to our freedom. We will close the semester with a study of some of the writings and speeches of Abraham Lincoln on the American regime and its citizens.