Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults: YEAR 3

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Founded in 1946, the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults is a structured, four-year, non-credit curriculum in which students read and discuss the classics of the Western traditions under the guidance of experienced staff instructors. Readings span ancient Greece and ancient Israel to modern Europe and America and include works of philosophy, drama, fiction, poetry, politics, and history. These works present a variety of perspectives on enduring human questions, such as: What is justice and how can we best achieve it? What does it mean to live a good human life? What is truth, does it exist, and how do we find it?

Texts*

AUTUMN SEMINAR

  • Aristotle, Physics
  • Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
  • Newton, Principia
  • Darwin, The Origin of Species

AUTUMN TUTORIAL

  • Novel Rotation
    [War and Peace, Middlemarch, Don Quixote or Tom Jones]

WINTER SEMINAR

  • Virgil, The Aenied
  • Augustine, Confessions
  • Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

WINTER TUTORIAL

  • Euclid, Elements
  • Descartes, Meditations

SPRING SEMINAR

  • Montaigne, Essays
  • Pascal, Pensees
  • Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
  • Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

SPRING TUTORIAL

  • Dante, Inferno

* THE READING LIST HAS VARIED SLIGHTLY OVER THE YEARS.


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TAUGHT: 1993-PRESENT