This last Friday night our Great Books Patio Club met to discuss Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Pictured below is the schematic that I created (and later co...

If you have ever found yourself wondering why you shouldn't marry your cousin, especially if your grandma was an X-ray technician, or, if you've got question...

This Friday evening I will be hosting another book discussion on my back patio. We will be discussing The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Enge...

Volume 1, Part 1, Chapter 5: Tocqueville describes two kinds of centralization. "Governmental centralization" concerns the "formation of general laws and rel...

NO. 1 General Introduction (A. Hamilton) Hamilton writes: "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country,...

(1) Smith writes: "In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state ...

Chapter XV: The Progress of the Christian Religion, and the Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, and Condition, of the primitive Christians (1) How much did the the...

Book One ​ (1) Rousseau opens the first chapter of this book with this claim: "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains." Reflect and expound upon t...

Chapter Two: Of the State of Nature ​ (1) Locke opens this chapter as follows: "To understand political power right, and derive from its original, we must co...

(1) Hamlet says to Gertrude, "I must be cruel, only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind" (Act 3, Scene 4).  Does this necessity of cruelty b...

Book One: Chapter 7: That Our Actions Should be Judged by our Intentions ​ (1) Why must restitution be distressing, inconvenient, and "felt as a weight" in o...

(1) Consider the closing remarks of Rabelais in Pantagruel. Do you find yourself agreeing with those critics that accused Rabelais of foolishly writing "idle...

(1) Machiavelli offers us this description of a wise prince: "...a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and k...

Book One ​ (1) Consider Augustine's poignant opening paragraph: "Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutabl...

Compare the classically idealized state of a norm-minded and stratified community to the community experienced in the early church as described in the book o...

Compare kingdoms as they are conceived by men (ex. Plato's Republic and Laws, Aristotle's Politics) versus the kingdom of God ruled by a humble king, who cam...

What is the fate (or destiny) of those who seek absolute power?

(1) I find Aristotle's comments on currency in section nine of book one to serve as a relevant (and perhaps prophetic) critique of the United States departur...

(1) Is the human good the pursuit of happiness? What is happiness? (2) Aristotle writes, "...while both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth about our ...

Note sections 376-377 on teaching the young first through storytelling (mythos). This may be as critical a component of classical pedagogy as Socratic dialog...