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.
Please inquire via email here.
Online Seminar
Free Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic, Take II
Monday, August 24, 2020
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?
The August 24 reading is -
The Constitution, Article 2,
Click the icon to download.
Schedule:
5:30 - 6:30PM PDT
Readings:
Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, selected Federalist Papers, selected Anti-Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, selections from Democracy in American, Dred Scott Decision and Dissenting View (edited), selected Lincoln speeches, Lincoln Douglass Debates (edited), Plessy v. Ferguson and Dissenting View (edited), Brown v. Board of Education, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Proposed Equal Rights Amendment, UN Declaration of Human Rights
Meeting ID: 873 2597 3122
Online Seminar
Series On Marcel Proust - Swann's Way - Part IV -
Swann in Love, pp. 195-260
Saturday, August 15, 2020
“I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinancy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky."
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Patricia Locke
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Free Community Seminar Series
Eastern Classics
Next session Thursday, August 20, 2020
Like the west, the east has its own tradition of influential texts that address the perennial questions of human kind. Centering around the bodies of work from China, Japan, and India, this series will focus on the texts of Taoism, Confucius, Buddhism, and Hinduism. We invite you to join us.
The August 20 reading is:
Bhagavad Gita - Chapters Eight (Verse 18) and Nine
Click here to access the readings.
Schedule:
12:00 - 1:00PM PDT
Location:
Online. Click here.
Meeting ID: 810 4367 0999
Online Seminar
Series On Nietzsche - On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life
Thursday, August 20 and Thursday, August 27
“The power of gradually losing all feeling of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture.”
Schedule:
6:00-8:00PM PDT
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Shame - 1968 Film Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Shame is at once an examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as musicians living in quiet retreat on a remote island farm, until the civil war that drove them from the city catches up with them there. Seminar participants view the film prior to the seminar.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Peter Rainer
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Athens and Jerusalem - Reason and Revelation - Part IV
Sunday, August 23, 2020
We invite you to this six-part series, exploring all three Jerusalem faith traditions from the Socratic philosophical perspective focusing on the questions: What does it mean to be good at being human... To live the best human life?
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
August 23 Reading:
Maimonides - Guide for the Perplexed - Creation and the Eternity of the Universe
Readings in the Series:
Genesis 1-3 and Leo Strauss - On the Interpretation of Genesis
Plato, Euthyphro
Papal Encyclical Fides et Ratio and Thomas Aquinas on natural law
Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Creation and the Eternity of the Universe
Al Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers - Discussion 3 and Averroes, Decisive Treatise;
Leo Strauss, Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy
Tutors:
Karl Haigler and Dennis Gura
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Love - Selections from Thomas Aquinas - Part III
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Othello said about himself that he “loved not wisely but too well.” It seems that one can love things too much, but can one really love someone too much? Does the answer to that question depend on what is meant by love? Perhaps more fundamentally: are there different kinds of love? This series will devote itself to a discussion of the mystery and majesty of love.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Readings in the Series:
Plato, Symposium
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Bk. 8 and 9 edited)
Aquinas, Selections
Augustine, Sermon on Love
Dostoevsky, A Gentle Creature
Ibsen, A Doll’s House
Shakespeare, Othello
Sigrid Unset, Gunnar’s Daughter
Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First
C.S. Lewis, Four Loves
Tutor:
Paul O'Reilly
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Waiting for God (Essays) - Simone Weil
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Simone Weil philosophized on thresholds and across borders. Her persistent desire for truth and justice led her to both elite academies and factory floors, political praxis and spiritual solitude. At different times she was an activist, a pacifist, a militant, a mystic, and an exile; but throughout, in her inquiry into reality and orientation to the good, she remained a philosopher.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Thucydides - The Peloponnesian War - Book Four
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Is there an art to writing and reading history? Is a detached view of historical events desirable, or even possible? What does this conflict (431-404 BC) in particular have to teach us. This series will cover all eight books over time, with one two-hour online seminar per book.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Michel de Montaigne, Part III
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Montaigne is widely appreciated both for his literary innovations as well as for his contributions to philosophy. As a writer, he is credited with having developed a new form of literary expression, the essay. As a philosopher, he is best known for his skepticism, which profoundly influenced major figures in philosophy such as Descartes and Pascal. Join us as we explore one of the most important figures of the French Renaissance.
September 6th Reading:
Of Experience
Future Readings in the Series:
Apology for Raymond Sebond, Raymond Sebond, To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die, On Schoolmaster’s Learning, On Practice, On the Armor of the Parthians, On Cato the Younger, On Democritus and Heraclitus, On the Vanity of words, On Books, On the Power of the Imagination,
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Walter Sterling
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Oceans and Underworld, Part III
Aristophanes - The Frogs
Saturday, September 12, 2020
What mysteries are hidden underwater and deep in the underworld? Will one who explores these realms discover ancestors, gods, monsters,... or even oneself? This series will consider the ocean and the underworld as depicted in these classic literary texts.
Future Readings in the Series:
Lucian, A True Story
Virgil, Aeneid - Books 3, 4, 5, 6
Cervantes, Don Quixote - The Cave of Montesinos
Dante, Inferno (selections)
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Melville, Moby Dick (selections)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PDT
Tutor:
Elizabeth Reyes
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Athens and Jerusalem - Reason and Revelation - Part V
Sunday, September 13, 2020
We invite you to this six-part series, exploring all three Jerusalem faith traditions from the Socratic philosophical perspective focusing on the questions: What does it mean to be good at being human... To live the best human life?
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
September 13 Reading:
Al Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers - Discussion 3 and Averroes, Decisive Treatise;
Readings in the Series:
Genesis 1-3 and Leo Strauss - On the Interpretation of Genesis
Plato, Euthyphro
Papal Encyclical Fides et Ratio and Thomas Aquinas on natural law
Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Creation and the Eternity of the Universe
Al Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers - Discussion 3 and Averroes, Decisive Treatise;
Leo Strauss, Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy
Tutors:
Karl Haigler and Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar
Seneca - On Anger, Book 3
Saturday, September 19, 2020
"Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement. The one loves to do good, the other to do harm ; the one to help even strangers, the other to attack even its dearest friends."
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Anguish and the Absurd - Part IV
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Text and Film
Saturday, September 26, 2020
This series will explore the troubling world of the absurd through the writings of Kafka, Gogol, Camus, Sartre, Borges, Beckett, and others.
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Paul Herder and Andy Gilman
Film:
Click here to view the play. Click here to view another version of the play. Please view one or both performances prior to the seminar.
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.