Coming Online Events
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. One-day ONSITE seminar tuition is $125 per person. Special events have differing tuition. Scholarships are available for teachers and students. Please inquire via email here.
Online Weekly Intensives
Online Seminar Series - NOW ENROLLING
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wednesday Evenings - January 24 - April 17, 2024
Crime and Punishment was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. The book is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is often cited as one of the greatest works of world literature.
Through brilliant dialogue and vivid characters the book explores the consequences of nihilism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, extending the ideas the author earlier animates in Notes from Underground. Raskolnikov, our main character and point of entry, exemplifies the potentially disastrous hazards contained in some developing western ideals. Questions of morality, kindness, sympathy, faith and pity come to the fore, as well as the antitheses of pride, contempt, and solipsism. The moving conflicts ask us all to consider torment and disorder, but also higher social goods, right and wrong, and the potential of redemption. Dynamically portraying mysticism, psychological struggle, and social inequity, Crime and Punishment is an emotionally engaging pinnacle of art. We invite you to join us over 13 online sessions as we explore this work in the spirit of civil discourse, camaraderie, and adventure.
Online seminars in this series will take place on Wednesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Books will be supplied and sessions will be facilitated by Elizabeth Reyes. Groups will be limited to 14 participants and no prior knowledge is required. Teachers will be offered 3 CEU credits for participating. This thirteen-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 Book of Leviticus
Tuesday Evenings - January 30 - April 2, 2024
The Agora Foundation's online series on the books of the Old Testament / Torah will continue in the winter with The Book of Leviticus. The overall initiative is expected to last three to four years, with attendees choosing which book offerings to participate in.
The Book of Leviticus (/lɪˈvɪtɪkəs/, from Ancient Greek: Λευιτικόν, Leuïtikón; Biblical Hebrew: וַיִּקְרָא, Wayyiqrāʾ, "And He called") is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. In Leviticus, God tells the Israelites and their priests how to make offerings in the Tabernacle and how to conduct themselves while camped around the holy tent sanctuary. Leviticus takes place during the month or month-and-a-half between the completion of the Tabernacle and the Israelites' departure from Sinai. The instructions of Leviticus emphasize ritual but also reflect the world view of the creation story in Genesis, and that God wishes to live with humans. The book teaches that faithful performance of the sanctuary rituals can make that possible, so long as the people avoid sin whenever possible.
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 Leviticus. Sessions will be facilitated by 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 ten-week series is $600. Community of Lifelong Learner subscribers receive a discount of $50 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Online Seminar Series - NOW MEETING
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Tuesday Evenings - September 5 - December 19, 2023
How can a hidden life be the subject of an epic? How can an invisible human being become the subject of history? To put it another way, what could be the history of a hidden life, and how could a hidden life have one? But must not all hidden lives have (hidden) histories, or does someone’s history only come to be history when it ceases to be invisible? How does one inquire about what is invisible? Or is what is invisible only unseen, i.e., do we confuse a fact with an impossibility? What is invisible cannot be seen, but what is unseen, after all, may be looked into; that it is unseen may be a fact, but that fact ceases to be a fact when the thing comes to be seen. The notion of alternate facts – of facts whose contradictories are also facts -- is absurd, but facts by their nature are contingent; they admit of change, in verb tense at least: they go from is to was with the spinning of Time’s whirligig, as will we who read novels and histories and contemplate facts and fictions. And so it is that George Eliot, presumably the name of a man, but actually the name taken up by a woman named Mary Ann Evans, gives us, in one of the most expansive and beautiful fictions in English, the fact of a woman named Dorothea, whose life is told in front of the glancing backdrop of a woman famous in “the history of man.” Indeed, is Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life more a fiction, or less a fact, than The Iliad or The Odyssey?
Online seminars in this series will take place on Tuesday evenings, 5:30-7:00PM Pacific Time. Books 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 sixteen-week series is $900. Community of Lifelong Learners subscribers receive a discount of $100 through a refund. Payment options are available.
Free Community Series
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Glory of Art
Sunday, January 20, 2024
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 January 20 reading is:
Vitruvius on Architecture - Books I-III
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PST
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Free Online Community Seminar Series
The Foundations of Our Republic - The Federalist Papers Complete Series
Saturday, February 24, 2024
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 February 24 reading is:
Federalist Papers 13-16
Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00PM PST
Readings in the series:
Complete Federalist Papers and selected Anti-Federalist Papers
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Upcoming Regular Events
Online Seminar Series
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Wednesday, November 29, 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 a few pages 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.
November 29 Reading:
Book One - Chapter Seven (page 173, Line 3), Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (December 1999). ISBN 9780141181264. Also, Chapter Seven of A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William Tindall. Syracuse University Press; Reprint edition (May 1996), ISBN 0815603851
Schedule:
12:30-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Barry Rabe
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Saturday, December 2, 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.
December 2 Reading:
Lectures Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen - Saintliness (pages 259-325)
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Penguin Classics; Later Printing edition
(December 16, 1982) - ISBN 978-0140390346
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Leibniz
Sunday, December 3, 2023
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How does knowledge differ from belief? 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 not just on intellectual issues, but on broader cultural challenges as well?
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (July 1646 - November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology. Leibniz is noted for his optimism, i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created. Over four monthly online seminars, the series will cover:
- September 10: "On the Ultimate Origination of Things" (pp. 149-155) and
"Preface to the New Essays" (pp. 291-306)
- October 8: Excerpts from the Letters to Clarke (pp. 320-332*) and
"On Nature Itself" (pp. 155-167)
- November 5: Discourse on Metaphysics (pp. 35-68)
- December 3: Excerpts from the Letters to de Volder (pp. 171-178*), "Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason" (pp. 206-213) and The Monadology (pp. 213-225)
*Note: reading doesn't include all the pages excerpted in Philosophical Essays.
Join us as we discuss these foundational works from Leibniz. 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.
December 3 Reading:
Excerpts from the Letters to de Volder (pp. 171-178*), "Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason" (pp. 206-213) and The Monadology (pp. 213-225)
*Note: reading doesn't include all the pages excerpted in Philosophical Essays
Hackett Publishing Company (March 1989)
ISBN 978-0872200623
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Epic of Gilgamesh (in two sessions)
Thursday, December 7 and December 14, 2023
"From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death."
The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be one of the oldest surviving literary works. It was composed 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, though the story’s oral origins date back much further, influencing the Old Testament and the Iliad and Odyssey. The epic’s authorship and intended readership are unknown. Through his struggle to find meaning, Gilgamesh defies death and becomes our first literary epic hero. The grief of Gilgamesh and the questions of mortality and morality invoked by the death of his dear friend Enkidu universally resonate and comment on human experience that transcend millenia. We invite you to join us for two Thursday evening online sessions as we discuss this wonderful story, rendered in verse translation.
Reading:
Gilgamesh - A Verse Translation by Herbert Mason
Mariner Books; First Edition (July 2003)
ISBN 978-0618275649
Thursday, December 7 - pages 11-50
Thursday, December 14 - pages 51-92
Schedule:
5:30-7:00PM PST, both evenings.
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Laws by Plato
Saturday, December 9, 2023
“...there is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom; and he who is under the influence of the latter fancies that he knows all about matters of which he knows nothing.”
The Laws (Greek: Νόμοι, Nómoi; Latin: De Legibus) is Plato's last and longest dialogue. The conversation depicted in the work's twelve books begins with the question of who is given the credit for establishing a civilization's laws. Its musings on the ethics of government and law have established it as a classic of political philosophy alongside Plato's more widely read Republic. Scholars agree that Plato wrote this dialogue as an older person, having failed in his effort to guide the rule of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, instead having been thrown in prison. These events are alluded to in the Seventh Letter. The text is noteworthy as Plato's only undisputed dialogue not to feature Socrates. We invite you to join us as we read this often overlooked text, one section at a time, in monthly online events.
December 9 Reading:
The Laws by Plato
Book 1 - Section 2: Drinking Parties as an Educational Device (pages 20-38)
Penguin Classics (June 2005)
ASIN B01FIXK9JK
ISBN 9780140449846
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
David Appleby
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
US Supreme Court—Decisions and Interpretations
Sunday, December 10, 2023
In this seminar series we will explore Supreme Court decisions that have helped define what it means to live in a constitutional republic. Ranging from the powers of government as articulated by the Court in its early days to the impact of its decisions in the 21st century on civil and individual rights, we will examine the nature of the Court’s various—and sometimes competing--interpretations of the Constitution. The roles of the Declaration of Independence and the 14th Amendment will be a particular area of focus in seeing how the Court has drawn upon principles of “equal protection” and “human dignity” in its rulings. The goal will be to come away with a more informed citizen’s view of the Court’s contributions to our understanding of the “rule of law” in both its political and Constitutional meaning.
There will be six meetings in the series, once per month:
Sunday, September 17
Sunday, October 15
Sunday, November 12
Sunday, December 10
Sunday, January 14
Sunday, February 11
Central Text:
Supreme Court Decisions
Penguin Books; 1st edition (August 2012)
ISBN 978-0143121992
December 10 Reading:
Supreme Court Decisions - Chapter 4 - Civil Rights (pages 89-109)
Schedule:
2:00-4:00PM PST
(please note later than usual weekend time)
Tutor:
Karl Haigler
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
Chapter Six
Saturday, December 16, 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.
December 16 Reading:
The Descent of Man by Darwin - Chapter Six - On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man -
pages 172-193
Penguin Classics Reprint Edition
(June 2004) - ISBN 978-0140436310
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Romantic I/Eye
Sunday, December 17, 2023
A pan-European and American phenomenon, Romanticism influenced Western notions about the individual as well as humans' relationship to nature. This series of online seminars addresses both themes through a variety of genres and nationalities, most of which texts are written in the first person. How did the Romantic Era shape the notion of what a subject is? Does first-person writing, in seeming to explore the subject or the self, reveal it or make it more obscure? To what extent does the choice an author makes to portray an experience through the use of the first person affect that experience, and do these authors' texts coalesce into a coherent portrait of the Romantic period? Finally, how do these singular voices engage with nature, particularly under the looming shadow of the Industrial Revolution?
Readings in the Series (ISBNs and Posted PDFs will added soon):
Goethe — The Sorrows of Young Werther
Rousseau — Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Holderlin — Hyperion
Wordsworth — The Prelude (Two-Part 1799 version)
Chateaubriand — Rene, and Atala
Foscolo — The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
Byron — Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto One
Hazlitt — On the Love of the Country, On Living to One's Self, and On Thought and Action
Müller/Schubert — Die Winterreise
Pushkin — Eugene Onegin
Emerson — Nature, The Over-Soul, and Circles
Poe — The Landscape Garden, William Wilson, and The Fall of the House of Usher
Join us as we read explore these readings, with sessions about one month apart. Click here to visit The Romantic I/Eye Online Seminar page, with links to media and the Discussion Forum.
December 17 Reading:
Reveries of a Solitary Walker by Rousseau
Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (February 1980)
ISBN 978-0140443639
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Jordan Hoffman and Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Epistemology of Spinoza
7 Thursday Afternoons, January 25 - May 9
What can we say we know with certainty? What does it mean to say that we know something? How does knowledge differ from belief? 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 not just on intellectual issues, but on broader cultural challenges as well?
Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Baruch Spinoza. It was written between 1661 and 1675 and was first published posthumously in 1677. The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and
corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal." Over seven afternoon online seminars, the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month, the series will cover:
January 25: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (pp. 233 to 262)
February 8: Ethics, Part I, Propositions 1-15 (pp. 31-43)
February 22: Ethics, Part I, Propositions 16-36 and Appendix (pp. 43-62)
March 14: Ethics, Part II (pp. 63-101)
April 11: Ethics, Part III (pp. 102-151)
April 25: Ethics, Part IV (pp. 152-200)
May 9: Ethics, Part V (pp. 201-223)
Join us as we discuss these foundational works from Spinoza. 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.
January 25 Reading:
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (pp. 233 to 262)
Ethics: with The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters
Hackett Publishing Company (November 1992)
ISBN 978-0872201309
(This is the text for all seven seminars in the series)
Schedule:
Thursdays, 12:00-1:30PM PST
Tutor:
Carol Seferi
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Work of Flannery O'Connor
The Enduring Chill by O'Connor and
Question 83, Article 2 - Aquinas on Prayer
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Her writing is exquisite and reflects her Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic style and relied heavily on regional settings and troubling characters.
"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic... The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism... When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an an incredible grasp of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. We invite you to join us as we read a collection of her work, meeting about about once per month online.
January 27 Reading:
The Enduring Chill
The Complete Stories - Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (January 1971)
ISBN - 978-0374515362, and Question 83, Article 2 - Aquinas on Prayer
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Kevin Walker
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Sunday, January 28, 2024
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.
January 24 Reading:
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
Chapter Eight - Continental imperialism : the pan-movements
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; First edition (March 1973)
ISBN 978-0-156-70153-2
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Modern Heroine Autobiographies
Saturday, February 3, 2024
The genre of autobiography necessarily invokes difficulties of subjectivity. omission, and distortion. At the same time, what one chooses to write about oneself can also be highly illuminating. Nowhere will this tension, and treasure, better reveal itself than in the autobiography of the modern heroine. In addition to the fruitful knowledge any reader would gain from a male writer of historic note, the modern heroine is also a witness, and an inspiration, of the dramatic evolution of technology, equality, and gender politics of the 20th century. We invite you to join this online series, reading autobiographies about one month apart.
February 3 Reading:
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
Signet; Reprint edition (June 2010)
ISBN 978-0451531568
Readings in the Series:
The Story of my Life by Helen Keller - ISBN 978-0451531568
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - ISBN 978-0553577129
Art and Writing of Georgia O'Keeffe - ISBN 978-0140046779
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir - ISBN 978-0060825195
The Fun of It by Amelia Earhart - ISBN 978-0915864553
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - ISBN 978-0345514400
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt - ISBN 978-0062355911
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutors:
Roxana Zirakzadeh and Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Seminar Series
Shakespearean Marriage, Italian-Style (Mostly) -
& One by Marlowe!
Sunday, February 4, 2024
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) (Penguin - 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
February 4 Reading:
The Jew of Malta by Marlowe
Penguin - ISBN 9780140436334
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Eric Stull
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.
Online Contemporary Issues Seminar Series
The Gene - An Intimate History
by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2017)
Sunday, February 18, 2024
This revived online series will inquire into contemporary issues of science, politics, culture, and economics, meeting once per month and covering 30-50 pages of a text per session. We kick off the series with a look into the history and current questions of genetics. The Gene: An Intimate History was written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist, published in 2017. The book chronicles the history of the gene and genetic research, all the way from Aristotle to Crick, Watson and Franklin and then the 21st century scientists who mapped the human genome. The book discusses the power of genetics in determining people's well-being and traits. It delves into the personal genetic history of Siddhartha Mukherjee's family, including mental illness. However, it is also a cautionary message toward not letting genetic predispositions define a person or their fate, a mentality that the author says led to the rise of eugenics in history. This series will span over ten monthly sessions on this book, and then turn to other contemporary subjects.
February 18 Reading:
The Gene - An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
A Certain Mendel, Eugenics, Three Generations of Imbeciles Is Enough, Part Two - Abhed,
(pages 56-100)
Scribner; Reprint edition (May 2017)
ISBN 978-1476733524
Schedule:
12:00-2:00PM PST
Tutor:
Andy Gilman
Location:
Online. Register to receive the link.