The Great Books of Politics and Society

This class is now closed. If you're interested in enrolling, you may contact the tutor, Addy, directly at addyfree@gmail.com
Name of facilitator: Addy Free
E-mail: addyfree@gmail.com
Course description: Some ideas and questions have persisted throughout the history of the west. This course will provide a place to discuss those persisting questions of human political and social existence through the reading of major tracts of classic works. There will be required readings and you are asked to make a commitment to the class—shared inquiry can only be successful through building communication with those also reading the same works.
The class will take place online, asynchronously (meaning you can log-in and participate as you have time, enabling busy people and those with irregular schedules to still participate). The class style will otherwise be similar to the style of shared inquiry used at St. John’s College in Annapolis and Santa Fe—you’ll have a reading assignment for a given week, be provided with a general question to help start out a general exploration of the text and then your interests and thoughts, as well as your responses to the questions and ideas of other classmates will provide the substance of the class. Conversation is a powerful engine for thought.
Over the span of six weeks we’ll cover large sections from Plato’s Republic, Machiavelli’s Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise on Government and Rousseau’s On the Origins of Inequality. After those first six weeks there will be an optional three additional weeks. The works covered during the extra three weeks will present problems of politics and society that can enrich our thinking about prior readings. Those three optional works are Melville’s Billy Budd, Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Kushner’s Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika.
Class Time: Asychronous, online shared inquiry
Class Dates: September 29 – Nov 8 (with an optional two additional weeks)
Place: Online Forum (instructions for access will be provided before class starts)
Class size: Minimum 8 and a Maximum 20
Experience the teacher brings to the class?
I am in the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at St. John’s College in Santa Fe whilst off for the summers from work at Macalester.