Fundamental Questions

Students will begin by exploring two rival visions of the best life that have shaped our own tradition of great books in the West, one exemplified in the reverent faith of Abraham and the other in the skeptical questioning of Socrates. They will consider different answers to the questions of where and whether definitive guidance for human life is to be found, what the proper place is of religion in human life, and what the proper relation is between religious and political authorities. They will study the schools of thought that have emerged from a fruitful interplay between the ideas drawn from Jerusalem and Athens, sometimes resulting in grand syntheses and sometimes in fierce contests.

Thus one great cluster of questions students will study will concern the relation of reason to revelation. Another will concern the idea of human nature, including the question of what is constant in human nature and the question of what the character is of human excellence, understood both as individual self-realization and self-transcendence. We will study theoretical, literary, and artistic works that shed light on these issues, including the meaning of heroic virtue and erotic love, the importance and the proper structure of the family, the problem and the potential for harnessing human ambition, the meaning of freedom, the requisites of true education, the constancy or malleability of human nature under the influence of culture and history, and the question of whether there are universal standards of right that transcend all cultures.

Delving more deeply into this last question, we will explore at length and from many angles the problem of justice. Here, too, the question has been the subject of sustained controversy since ancient times. We will explore philosophic debates about the relative merits of democracy, aristocracy, kingship, and theocracy; about the proper aims and limits of government; about the basis and character of human rights; and about the principles that should govern international relations.