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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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 ne...

Book One: Chapter 7: That Our Actions Should be Judged by our Intentions ​ (1) Why must restitution be distressing, inconvenient, and "fe...

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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 Un...

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

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