Coming Online Events
One-day ONSITE seminar tuition is $125 per person. Any contribution above $125 is classified as a tax-deductible donation. Special events have differing tuition. Scholarships are available for teachers and students. Or, become a subscriber in the Community of Lifelong Learners for $40 per month for unlimited attendance at on-site and online events, or $25 per month for only ONLINE events.
Subscribers are responsible for ordering their own books. Please inquire via email here.
Online Weekly Intensives
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
The Book of Exodus Intensive
Wednesday Evenings - September 6 - November 15, 2023
The Agora Foundation's online series on the books of the Old Testament will continue in the fall with The Book of Exodus. The overall initiative is expected to last three to four years, with attendees choosing which book offerings to participate in.
The Book of Exodus (from Ancient Greek: Ἔξοδος, romanized: Éxodos; Hebrew: שְׁמוֹת Šəmōṯ, 'Names') is the second book of the Bible. The text tells the story of the Israelites leaving the slavery of Egypt, led by Moses to Mount Sinai, where the 10 commandments are given. Covenants are made between God and the people, promising a holy nation and offering specific laws and instructions which suggest that God will dwell with them and lead them to possess the promised land to the descendants of Abraham. We invite you to join us as we explore this infinitely rich text, discussing just a few pages at a time. One need not have attended The Book of Genesis Online Intensive to fruitfully participate in this course. Exodus, and all of the books in the series, will be explored through the lenses of theology, philosophy, history, psychology, and literature.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees are encouraged to read their preferred translation of The Book of Exodus. Sessions will be facilitated by Elizabeth Reyes and Dennis Gura. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating. This eleven-week series is $750. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
The Ways of the Romans - Section One -
The Founding - Intensive
Thursday Evenings - September 14 - December 7, 2023
Rome became the greatest empire in the ancient world, spanning three continents, ruling millions of people, and lasting more than one thousand years. The enduring influence of its art, technology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and language continue to shape western culture and the entire world every day. How can we access this ancient world, with some aspects so foreign and others so familiar, and discover foundations that create the civilization we have inherited. This series is developed in five sections: 1) The Founding, 2) Literature, 3) Philosophy and Nature, 4) Politics and Law, 5) Religion and History. Attendees will gain a deep understanding of Roman life through some of its greatest authors, and will be better able to see the profound influence the Romans have on us today. Online seminars in will take place on Thursday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Section One - The Founding - will focus on The Aeneid by Virgil, The Early History of Rome by Livy, fragments from the first Roman historians, and The Twelve Tables.
All reading materials (in English translation) will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participation in each section. This twelve-week series is $750. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
The Book of Genesis Intensive
Tuesday Evenings - March 14 - May 30, 2023
Beginning in March, 2023, the Agora Foundation will launch an online intensive series on the book of the Old Testament. This series will begin with the Book of Genesis, and all future books will be launched as separate offerings, with differing schedules and pricing. The overall initiative is expected to last three to four years, with attendees choosing which book offerings to participate in.
The Book of Genesis (from Greek Γένεσις, Génesis; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית Bəreʾšīt, "In [the] beginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, Bereshit. Genesis is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and of Israel's ancestors and the origins of the Jewish people. The book is roughly divisible in two parts: the primeval history and the ancestral history, and contains some of the world's most famous stories and passages. The importance of Genesis focuses on the covenants between God and the chosen people, as well as the people and a promised land. In addition to the book itself, commentaries from Jewish and Christian scholars will be offered and discussed to add to the conversation. Genesis, and all of the books in the series, will be explored through the lenses of theology, philosophy, history, and literature.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Attendees are encouraged to read their preferred translation of the Book of Genesis, and all commentaries will be supplied in English translation, as attached PDFs. Sessions will be facilitated by Elizabeth Reyes and Dennis Gura. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 2 CEU credits for participating.
This twelve-week series is $750. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Intensive
Thursday Afternoons - January 19 - May 18, 2023
Human ingenuity could probably find a way to exaggerate the greatness and importance of Don Quixote, but it might take a Cervantes to do it, and he would surely do it in a novel like Don Quixote. “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha” is the title of a book, but it is also the name and description of the title character of that book. Are the man and the book two or one? And what about Sancho Panza, who cannot read the book which brings him into existence, though he can render a life-or-death judgement when given an isle to rule in it? Can such a book depict justice? And Dulcinea del Toboso: what does it mean to be the actual human being (in a fiction), with a real and different name (in a fiction), standing behind the love-object of a man she does not know loves her (in a fiction)? Can a fiction portray real love? Is Quixote’s love, inside the fiction, a fact or a fiction? Then there’s the immortal horse who looks half dead: Rocinante, who loves his home so well he knows the way to it when his master does not. The romance of the historical Spanish horse notwithstanding, is this one, a fictional animal, the most famous of all Spanish horses? How did Cervantes do that - make the glory of Spanish horseflesh a broken-down nag with an unforgettable name? In what Spain does this horse live?
Online seminars will take place on Thursday afternoons, 12:30-2:00PM Pacific Time. All reading materials (in English translation) will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Eric Stull. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This eighteen-week series is $950. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $100 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Free Community Online Series
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic - The Federalist Papers Complete Series
Saturday, July 1, 2023
What are the fundamental principles of our Republic? Are these principles based on a view of objective reality/nature, or simply the "consent of the governed"? Depending on how one addresses the previous question: Are these principles changeable, and if so on what grounds? How should one read the founding documents? What authority does the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches have? What are rights? Are they based on nature or consent? Are they inalienable? Please join us as we explore these political works through monthly weekend meetings.
The July 1 reading is:
Federalist Papers 1-4
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PDT
Readings in the series:
Complete Federalist Papers and selected Anti-Federalist Papers
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Glory of Art
Sunday, July 2, 2023
What is Art? Why does it hold such a central position in humanity’s self-understanding? Art seems to have subjective, contingent, and relative aspects, while also evoking the eternal, essential, and radical. Art represents, communicates, explores, inspires, challenges, creates, and questions. This semi-monthly series will explore the work of artists and thinkers through history.
Aristotle - “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”.
O’Keeffe - “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.”
da Vinci - “Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all generations of the world.”
O’Connor - “Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
Picasso - “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Klee - “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”
Brecht - “Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
de Beauvoir - “Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom.”
Dostoevsky - “Art is as much a need for humanity as eating and drinking. The need for beauty and for creations that embody it is inseparable from humanity and without it man perhaps might not want to live on earth.”
The July 2 reading is:
Man the Musician - The Meaning of Song and
Words and Tones in Song
by Victor Zuckerkandl
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PDT
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Upcoming Regular Events
Online Seminar Series
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
Chapter Two
Saturday, May 27, 2023
In 1871 Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, which applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biological adaptation distinct from, yet interconnected with, natural selection. The reception was mixed, with some concerned that “this book would unsettle our half educated classes and people will begin doing as they pleased, breaking laws and customs…” The text discusses many issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society. We invite you to join us as we discuss this entire text, with readings about one month apart.
May 27 Reading:
The Descent of Man by Darwin - Chapter Two - On the Manner of Development of Man
from some Lower Form - pages 43-85
Penguin Classics Reprint Edition
(June 2004) - ISBN 978-0140436310
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Sunday, May 28, 2023
The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work. The book strives to understand the causes and the mechanics of Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the 20th century. Regarded as one of the most important books of the last 100 years, Arendt warns that, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” We invite you to join us as we explore this entire book, meeting about once per month.
May 28 Reading:
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Antisemitism - Chapter Four (pages 89-120)
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; First edition (March 1973)
ISBN 978-0-156-70153-2
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
“Giambattista Vico bestrides the modern humanities and social sciences like a colossus.” —Anthony Grafton, Historian, Princeton University
Originally published in 1725, ‘New Science’ takes a blended philosophical and philological approach to identify predictable patterns in the development of human history. Among many surprising but convincing findings, Vico’s research leads him to conclude, over a century before the publication of ’The Ancient City,’ by Numa Fustel de Coulange, that the ancients saw the world in a fundamentally different way than modern man.
The historian Anthony Grafton, addressing Vico’s “massive decoding of ancient history, mythology and law,” writes that ‘The New Science’ “is commonly recognized as one of the founding works of the modern human sciences, a work in some ways as deep and original as the contemporary work that transformed the natural sciences, the ‘Principia’ of Isaac Newton.”
Vico’s many admirers include the author James Joyce, who used Vico’s cycles of history in the structure of his final work “Finnegans Wake.” Join us to explore this highly original and influential work.
Join us as we read this text one chapter at a time, every other Tuesday afternoon. Click here to visit the New Science by Vico Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
May 30 Reading:
New Science by Giambattista Vico
Section 2 (pages 75-118)
Penguin Classics; 3rd edition (January 2000)
ISBN 978-0140435696
Series Schedule:
Every other Tuesday afternoon
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.
Having done the longest day in literature with Ulysses (1922), Joyce set himself an even greater challenge for his next book - the night. "A nocturnal state... That is what I want to convey: what goes on in a dream, during a dream." Published in 1939, the book would take Joyce two decades to complete.
A story with no real beginning or end, the work has come to assume a preeminent place in English literature. Anthony Burgess has lauded Finnegans Wake as "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page". Harold Bloom has called it Joyce's masterpiece, and, in The Western Canon (1994), wrote that "if aesthetic merit were ever again to center the canon, Finnegans Wake would be as close as our chaos could come to the heights of Shakespeare and Dante".
Join us as we read this text one chapter at a time, every other Wednesday afternoon. Click here to visit the Finnegans Wake Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
May 31 Reading:
Book One - Chapter Five of Finnegans Wake by Joyce continued (Page 124), and Chapter Six, Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (December 1999). ISBN 9780141181264. Also, Chapter Six of A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William Tindall. Syracuse University Press; Reprint edition (May 1996), ISBN 0815603851
Schedule:
12:00-1:30PM PDT
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Natural Law - Treatise on Law by Thomas Aquinas
Saturday, June 3, 2023
The term natural law is a little hazy. Is natural law simply a more authoritative version of positive law? And if that is true, how might we understand how the founders of the American republic came to believe in the proposition that we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights which are self-evident truths? Conversely, does science and civil law show us that there are no natural laws, rather only values?
If natural law is real is it grounded in the metaphysical or in something else? How do we reconcile the problems of the is and ought, skepticism, positivism, notions of right and wrong, teleology, scientism, the connection between virtue and happiness, and human dignity.
This portion of the series will study the Treatise on Law by Thomas Aquinas. Registrants need not have attended prior sessions in the series to fruitfully gain from discussing this work, which stands autonomously.
June 3 Reading:
Treatise on Law by Aquinas -
Q98 Prelude and Article 1
Q99 All
Q100 Prelude and Articles 1-3; 8-12
Q105 Prelude and Article 1
Q106 Prelude and Articles 1+2
Q107 Prelude and Articles 1-3
Q108 Prelude and Articles 1+3
St. Augustines Press; 1st edition (June 2009)
ISBN 978-1587318801
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carl Bobkoski
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Locke's Essay
Sunday, June 4, 2023
What assumptions, perhaps unexamined, underlie our opinions on such subjects as individual rights, tolerance and the role of government? Can an exploration of basic philosophical questions, such as How do we know what we know? and What are the limits of our understanding? inform our thinking on political issues and foster mutual understanding?
John Locke, whose words are echoed in the Declaration of Independence and whose ideas informed the framers of the U.S. Constitution thought the study of philosophy had that power. He embarked on An Essay Concerning Human Understanding following an impasse among friends in a discussion of subjects of morality and religion. He writes, “After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see, what objects our understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with.”
Join us as we discuss Locke’s study of human understanding, his examination of those philosophical questions which underpin his political insights.
This series continues a broader series on epistemology. All are welcome. Please join us even if this will be your first seminar in the series.
Click here to visit the Epistemology Page.
June 4 Reading:
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
Abridged and Edited by Kenneth P. Winkler
Continue Book IV Of Knowledge and Opinion (pages 274-322)
ISBN 978-0-87220-216-0
Series Schedule:
Sunday, July 9 - end of the Essay, excerpts from The Stillingfleet Correspondence (pages 323-357)
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Shakespearean Marriage, Italian-Style (Mostly) -
& One by Marlowe!
Saturday, June 17, 2023
Almost the last detail the reader hears of Socrates at the end of Plato’s Symposium, which is Apollodorus’ recollection of Aristodemus’ account of the dinner party, is that after a night of speechmaking and drinking, Socrates was still awake near dawn, pressing Agathon and Aristophanes (tragedian and comedian, respectively), the three of them still passing the jug around, to admit that the same poet could write both tragedy and comedy. As “dawn spread forth her fingertips of rose,”[1] the two poets, deep in their cups, nodded off to sleep, Aristophanes just before daybreak, Agathon just after. What would one do for the encore of a Socratic lullaby!
Fast forward two millennia: in a strange land, in a tongue that had not existed on the occasion of that Athenian sunrise, Shakespeare proved Socrates right in a very different city with a very different climate. One can only guess at Socrates’ argument, for Aristodemus seems not to have heard or remembered it, as he was only just waking up, presumably with a hangover, but one might try surmising the logic backwards from the evidence of Shakespeare’s drama, different as it is from that of ancient Athens, and say that comedy and tragedy in the hands of the same poet can show themselves as the inside-out, upside-down mirror images of each other. Whence comes the hypothesis that the same poet can write both if he understands the mirror and can give each dramatic form, in each of its many instances, “a local habitation and a name.”[2] This hypothesis serves as an invitation to consider Shakespearean comedy and tragedy together, loosely grouped, all but one of the plays set in Italy, all but one by the Bard, comedies followed by tragedy, each play always standing on its own, winking perhaps at the others.
Group 1:
The Taming of the Shrew (Signet Classic - ISBN 9780451526793)
Much Ado About Nothing (Pelican - ISBN 9780143130185)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (set in Athens) (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128588)
Romeo and Juliet (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128571)
Group 2:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Pelican - ISBN 9780143132240)
The Jew of Malta (by Marlowe) (Pelican - ISBN 9780140436334)
The Merchant of Venice (Pelican - ISBN 9780143130222)
Othello (Pelican - ISBN 9780143128618)
[1] a translation of an expression from Homer
[2] A Midsummer Night’s Dream
June 17 Reading:
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Penguin Classics - April 2017
ISBN 9780143130185
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Saturday, June 24, 2023
“We must judge the tree by its fruit. The best fruits of the religious experience are the best things history has to offer. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, and bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have all been flown for religious ideals.”
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures (20 in total) on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concern the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and use a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions. James concludes that religion is overall beneficial to humankind, although acknowledges that this does not establish its truth. He also considers the possibility of over-beliefs, beliefs which are not strictly justified by reason but which might understandably be held by educated people nonetheless, and had relatively little interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious experiences. Join us as we work through these lectures, with online seminars taking place about one month apart.
June 24 Reading:
Lecture Eight - The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification (pages 166-188)
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Penguin Classics; Later Printing edition
(December 16, 1982) - ISBN 978-0140390346
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
On Reading Six Women Artists/Thinkers -
Personal Truths, Metaphors and the Public Sphere
Sunday, June 25, 2023
In this series we will explore diverse writings of women ranging over four centuries, texts that are both timely and timeless. Starting with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1794), we will move through arguments from the public sphere—including Hannah Arendt’s Truth and Politics (1954) and Eva Brann’s Is Equality an Absolute Good? (2022)—to those dealing with the more personal truths found in literature, culminating in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Thinkers and artists alike, including Martha Nussbaum and Iris Murdoch, will help guide our conversations to those aspects of dialogue that underlie civil discourse with explorations of Rational Emotions (Nussbaum) and The Sovereignty of Good (Murdoch).
June 25 Reading:
Jane Austen - Persuasion
ISBN 9798741674918 (Amazon on-demand print book)
Schedule:
2:00-4:00PM PDT (please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutors:
Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.