Program of Liberal Studies (PLS)

This is a close study of selected books of the Bible and their later interpretations as both great works of literature and sacred texts of the Jewish and Christian traditions. This course fulfills the first university core theology requirement, and it introduces students to the seminar-style approach to learning that is unique to the Program of Liberal Studies.

This course introduces philosophical inquiry, both as distinct from and as it relates to other disciplines, through the exploration of primary texts representative of its different forms and questions, and within the context of an integrated liberal education. It fulfills the first university core philosophy requirement, and it introduces students to the seminar-style approach to learning that is unique to the Program of Liberal Studies.

Through the study of some of the greatest works of ancient literature, across a range of genres, we will seek not just better understanding of these complex, fascinating works, but the development of skills in textual analysis, oral and written argumentation, and discussion. This seminar also serves as an introduction to the curriculum and discussion-based method of the Program of Liberal Studies.

In his classic book "Philosophy as a Way of Life," the French philosopher Pierre Hadot argued that ancient Mediterranean "philosophia" – the pursuit of wisdom – entailed not merely a body of knowledge or a narrow set of intellectual methods but an entire “way of life.” In a similar vein, we might ask what constitutes an “intellectual life,” a life that takes the pursuit of truth as a central and salient orientation. What features, structures, and practices characterize such a life? Does an intellectual life require withdrawal to a solitary, monastic existence in libraries and quiet contemplation? Or can it be lived alongside raising children and working a typical job? If so, how? Further, what, if anything, demarcates a particularly Catholic intellectual life, and how might one cultivate such a life? This course aims to help students grapple with these questions by reading and discussing authors, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, whose lives and work can inform our understanding of the intellectual life. Yet the course is not merely theoretical: students will be challenged, and indeed required, to test and weigh ideas from the course by putting them into practice and reflecting upon them. Our goal, ultimately, is not to learn about the intellectual life but to begin to foster that life ourselves.

This class explores the human relationship to nature and technology, building upon encounters with fundamental, transformative texts. Throughout the course, we will draw on insights from a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, history, literature, and science. The theme of the course this Fall is "Artificial Intelligence and the Soul." The class is team-taught in a blend of lecture and seminar; this Fall component satisfies the USEM and WKAL requirements. It is only open to Hypatia Scholars, who have committed to the second part of the course in the Spring as well, and who will be given the required attribute to enroll.

An introduction to poetry through intensive study of several lyric poets writing in English. Through close reading of selected poems, students will become familiar with central literary devices, including rhythm and meter, image, metaphor, symbol, paradox, and irony. Poems studied will range from the Renaissance to the 20th century, and may include Shakespeare's sonnets and Keats' odes, along with the works of other major poets such as Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Gray, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. Fall.

This course introduces philosophical inquiry, both as distinct from and as it relates to other disciplines, through the exploration of primary texts representative of its different forms and questions, and within the context of an integrated liberal education. It also investigates the formal and informal principles of logical reasoning. Readings include selections from the Pre-Socratics, Plato's <i>Meno</i>, selections from Aristotle, beginning with his <i>Organon</i> and <i>Physics</i>, and such authors as Boethius, Descartes, and Aquinas. Fall.

A close study of the selected books Bible. The course will consider the role of the Bible in the life of the church, the history of its interpretation and the various approaches of modern scholarship. Spring.

This course raises questions fundamental to our experience of the physical world. Questions such as "What is space?" and "What is time?" and broader issues about the nature of life are initially raised through a close reading of Plato's <i>Timaeus</i> and Aristotle's <i>Physics</i>, along with excerpts from other ancient texts. In attempting to answer these questions over the course of the semester, we will read a wide variety of sources: principally ancient and modern primary texts, with some secondary readings. These readings will include Euclid's <i>Elements</i>, Descartes' <i>Principles of Philosophy</i>, and Einstein's <i>Theories of Relativity</i>. Spring.

The first in a series of six Great Book seminars, and the first in the sophomore sequence, this course focuses on ancient Greek literature and is designed to introduce students to the great books seminar method, which emphasizes discussion, close reading, and the communication of complex ideas. The texts include Homer's <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, Herodotus's <i>Histories</i>, Aeschylus's <i>Oresteia</i>, Sophocles's <i>Theban Plays</i>, Aristotle's <i>Poetics</i>, Euripides's <i>Medea</i> and <i>The Bacchae</i>, Thucydides's <i>Peloponnesian War</i>, Aristophanes's <i>The Clouds</i>, and three early dialogues by Plato: the <i>Apology</i>, <i>Crito</i>, and <i>Symposium</i>.

The second seminar in the sophomore sequence, this course represents a continuation of Great Books Seminar I. The material studied extends from ancient Greece through the Roman period through early Christianity and into the Middle Ages. The texts include Plato's <i>Republic</i> and <i>Phaedrus</i>, Aristotle's <i>On the Soul</i>, Lucretius's <i>The Way Things Are</i>, Cicero's <i>On The Republic</i>, Vergil's <i>Aeneid</i>, Epictetus's <i>Handbook</i>, Augustine's <i>Confessions</i> and <i>City of God</i>, St. Anselm's <i>Proslogion</i>, and St. Bonaventure's <i>Journey of the Mind to God</i>.

This class explores the human relationship to nature and technology, building upon encounters with fundamental, transformative texts. The theme of the course this Spring is "The Costs of Technology," including the environmental, social, moral, and spiritual costs of our technological society.The class is team-taught in a blend of lecture and seminar; this Spring component satisfies the WKIN requirement, or the WR for students who cannot fulfill that otherwise. It is only open to Hypatia Scholars, who have already taken the first part of the course in the Fall, and who will be given the required attribute to enroll.

As a complement to the traditional PLS Great Books Seminars, in which students read multiple texts and authors rather quickly, this course is designed to give PLS students the opportunity to engage in a focused reading of one work or a collection of closely related works.

PLS draws students with wide-ranging interests who often have multiple strengths. But that very breadth can make it challenging to decided your next steps after graduation. This course draws on materials developed at Stanford to help young adults and mid-career professionals use "design thinking" to clarify, develop, and pursue their goals. While following that process, we will also reflect upon it using texts and questions from the PLS curriculum. Is it in fact possible to "design your life," as the Stanford project promises? What assumptions and expectations are embedded in this approach? How should PLS students (or anyone) discern their future plans? Note: This is a practice-oriented course; you will be expected not just to talk about discernment but to actually pursue it!

Building on the techniques of close reading developed in Literature I, this course will focus on the expressive power of literary genres, modes, and conventions and will take up the question of the unity and coherence of long works. The class will take one particular long poem or novel as its main object of study.

From their origins, the liberal arts have been associated with the freedom that their name implies. These are the arts practiced by free persons, who are not forced to serve any ends but those chosen by themselves, and they are the arts that ultimately create free individuals and societies. Nearly co-original with the liberal arts, however, is the critique that only a privileged few, limited by perceived ability or circumstance, can access this liberation. Reading material from the social sciences and humanities, this course will consider whether and how the liberal arts can be truly liberating for all people.

An examination of modes of moral reasoning and what constitutes the good life, based primarily on the study of Aristotle's <i>Nicomachean Ethics</i> and the moral philosophy of Kant. Readings may also include a selection from the Utilitarian ethical tradition as well as from works in moral development and in moral theology, such as by Augustine, Aquinas, and Newman. Fall.

This course examines a selection of canonical works in the history of political thought. Current readings are: Plato's Republic, Rousseau's Second Discourse and Social Contract, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx's early philosophical writings, and Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. These texts are read in full. Small selections from other texts (e.g. Aristotle's Politics and Locke's Second Treatise) are also included.

Using major historical texts as primary material, students will investigate crucial philosophical and methodological issues that arise in modern scientific inquiry, especially in the physical and life sciences. What can cause scientists to adopt (or resist) new theories? What relationships has science held to other intellectual disciplines, and how have those relationships changed over time? What fundamental assumptions about the natural world are adopted in much of modern science? What methods have scientists advocated for creating reliable knowledge? Students will grapple with these questions as we study and discuss central texts in the development of modern science, including the works of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.

Using major historical texts as primary material, students will investigate crucial philosophical and methodological issues that arise in modern scientific inquiry, especially in the physical sciences. What can cause scientists to adopt (or resist) new theories? What relationships has science held to other intellectual disciplines, and how have those relationships changed over time? What fundamental assumptions about the natural world are adopted in much of modern science? What methods have scientists advocated for creating reliable knowledge? Students will grapple with these questions through laboratories and the discussion of central texts in the development of modern science, including works by Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Einstein.

This course examines music as a case study for the non-verbal communication of meaning. We will ask what music means? How does it mean? Does it mean anything? We will engage these questions not simply on a philosophical level—reading core texts in the history of aesthetics—but also on a historical one: studying a diverse selection of musical works from across (and beyond) the Western canon. Rather than simply asking what music means, then, we will ask what it has meant, charting the changing conceptions of the medium's form, function, and significance. In the course of this music-historical journey, students will interrogate the relationship between artistic theory and practice; and they will draw comparisons with other art forms (painting, sculpture, literature, and so on). Last but not least, students will confront the central challenge of translating their own ephemeral, seemingly ineffable, musical experiences into clear, verifiable, and eloquent written prose. Typical core aesthetic texts encountered in the class include: Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794), Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation (c. 1844), Moreas's "Symbolist Manifesto" (1886), W. E. B. Dubois "Criteria of Negro Art" (1926), Adorno's "On the Fetish Character in Music" (1938), and Cage's "Future of Music: Credo" (1937). Typical repertoire includes Bach's cantatas, Beethoven's symphonies, Schubert's songs, Wagner's music dramas, African-American spirituals, Tchaikovsky's ballets, Cage's experimental music, classical Hollywood film scores, and contemporary popular music.

Continuing from Great Books Seminar II, and the first in the junior seminar sequence, this course focuses on great works of the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The texts include two treatises from Aquinas's <i>Summa Theologiae</i> (<i>On Law</i> and <i>On Faith</i>), Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i> (in its entirety), Petrarch's <i>Ascent of Mont Ventoux</i> and <i>On His Own Ignorance and that of Others</i>, selections from Chaucer's <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, Julian of Norwich's <i>Showings</i>, Erasmus's <i>Praise of Folly</i>, Machiavelli's <i>The Prince</i>, More's <i>Utopia</i>, essays by Montaigne, St. Teresa of Avila's <i>Interior Castle</i>, and Cervantes's <i>Don Quixote</i>.

Continuing from Great Books Seminar III, and the second in the junior seminar sequence, this course focuses on works from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment period. The texts include Shakespeare's <i>Tempest</i>, Bacon's <i>New Organon</i>, Descartes' <i>Discourse on Method</i> and <i>Meditations on First Philosophy</i>, Hobbes's <i>Leviathan</i>, Pascal's <i>Pensees</i>, Swift's <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, Hume's <i>Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i>, Rousseau's <i>Discourse on the Origin of Inequality</i>, Smith's <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, Kant's <i>Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics</i>, Malthus's <i>Essay on the Principles of Population</i>, Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, Goethe's <i>Faust</i>, and Mozart's <i>Don Giovanni</i>.

The Enlightenment (roughly the 17th - 18th centuries) has been celebrated as the birth of the modern world, the dawning of an age of reason that cast off the dogmatism and superstition of the past. Yet it has also been castigated for its hubris, prejudice, and narrow-minded rationalism. In this course, you will have the opportunity to examine the foundations of modern European thought for yourself by reading, analyzing, and discussing some of the Enlightenment's greatest texts. Authors include William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Jonathan Swift, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Malthus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jane Austen, and Johann von Goethe. Under the direction of a seminar leader, students study and discuss a range of major texts from the period of the Enlightenment, chosen on the basis of their enduring value and considerable influence on the subsequent Western Tradition. Through the reading of selected "Great Books", students will acquire a broad intellectual background while developing their abilities to read texts critically, formulate articulate and thoughtful arguments, and communicate effectively.

This seminar will examine, in detail, some examples of Shakespearean Comedy. Shakespeare's comedies end in marriage: however, many trials and obstacles have to be overcome along the way. We shall explore the complex issues raised on the journey towards a so-called happy ending. Recommended (not obligatory) text: RSC William Shakespeare Complete Works ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale.

An introduction to the major political theorists from the classical to the modern era who devoted themselves to the task of analyzing the social order.  Their theories also provide the foundation for the formation of the modern nation state.  Among the theorists examined will be Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Hegel and Marx.

At about the same time that George Orwell declared that "all art is propaganda," Jawaharlal Nehru observed that the "art of a people is a true mirror to their minds." These sentiments will serve as something of a mantra for this course. Part aesthetic appreciation course and part cultural history, "British Culture and the Arts" uses artworks from the first half of the twentieth century as a window into modern British culture and identity. Students will learn how to approach and interpret a range of artistic forms and to relate them to the cultural contexts from which they came. We will learn about the cultural institutions that supported these artworks, the artists that conceived them, and the audiences that consumed them. We will explore how British artists and audiences responded to movements and trends from across the globe, including continental modernism, American jazz, and music from the colonies. But we will also examine how British artworks reflected and refracted broader social and political concerns: race, empire, class, war, gender, among other themes. The set works have been selected in order to cover a diverse range of genres—from opera and ballet, through poetry and novels, to painting and film. They have also been chosen with our London setting in mind. This will enable students to experience the artworks not just in the seminar room, but also live in performance in the original institutions, spaces, and cultures for which they were conceived. Last but not least, it will afford students the opportunity to take advantage of local libraries and archives in order to complete an independent and original research project of their own.

In this course students will learn about some of the milestones in Chilean artistic production, from the second half of the 19th century to the first decade of the 21st century. Through the analysis of works and authors, students will critically examine the future of Chilean art. In this way, they will be informed about the transformations that have occurred in the field of art (mainly national, but also international) that determined the emergence of contemporary plastic languages. RE - Rome, Italy (JCU) The course looks at philosophy and history of music starting in the ancient world and moving up until modern philosophers. It looks at music specifically through the lens of Opera, asking the question of why Opera was created and what was the philosophic and ethical inquiry was for doing so.

A study of the major Christian doctrines in their development, including God, creation and humanity, incarnation and redemption, and the sacraments. The course moves toward a historical and systematic understanding of Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic tradition. Readings typically include patristic authors, medieval authors such as Aquinas, and the documents of Vatican II. Fall.

An engagement with philosophical conceptions of the nature of knowledge, reality, and the relation between them. Selections from the Platonic tradition, Aristotle's <i>Metaphysics</i>, and Kant's <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> form the basis of the course. Other readings may include works by such thinkers as Aquinas, Heidegger, and other 20th Century authors. Spring.

In this course students will explore what can science tell us about human nature and human social interactions. By reading and discussing important historical and contemporary texts, students will engage the conundrums, challenges and insights created through the scientific study of human beings and society. Readings will include works by Charles Darwin, William James, and Jean Piaget. Spring.

This course will deal with the issue of historical consciousness and with the limits and possibilities of historical understanding. The first portion of the course will examine the issues of historiography and the use of historical analysis in the contextualized reading of texts. From this foundation, the issue of history will be explored with reference to authors such as Augustine, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Kant, Hegel, Ranke, and Eliade. Fall.

The first in the senior Great Books seminar sequence, this course focuses on classic texts from the nineteenth-century literature, and, in addition, on important works from the Eastern tradition that entered the European canon during the nineteenth century. The works studied include Tolstoy's <i>War and Peace</i>, Confucius's <i>Analects</i>, <i>The Way of Lao Tzu</i>, the <i>Bhagavad Gita</i>, Hegel's <i>Philosophy of History</i>, Kierkegaard's <i>Philosophical Fragments</i>, Newman's <i>Idea of a University</i>, De Tocqueville's <i>Democracy in America</i>, Melville's <i>Moby Dick</i>, Thoreau's <i>Walden</i>, Mill's <i>On Liberty</i>, and Darwin's <i>Descent of Man</i>.

The second in the senior Great Books seminar sequence, this course focuses on works of seminal importance from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The texts studied include Dostoevsky's <i>Brothers Karamazov</i>, Marx's <i>Capital</i> and <i>Communist Manifesto</i>, Flaubert's <i>Madame Bovary</i>, Nietzsche's <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, William James's <i>Varieties of Religious Experience</i>, Freud's <i>Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis</i>, Buber's <i>I and Thou</i>, Weber's <i>Protestant Ethic</i> and <i>The Spirit Of Capitalism</i>, Wittgenstein's <i>Blue Book</i>, Heidegger's <i>What Is Philosophy?</i>, and Ellison's <i>Invisible Man</i>.

This course is designed for those students coming to the Angelicum for the second or third cycle whose prior philosophical training was not in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Students will take part in the lectures (and follow the readings) for the first-cycle course Metaphysics 2. Students will also be assigned and assessed on additional reading, which will address topics dealt with in Metaphysics 1.

This is a partially on-site Roman History course that covers the period between the founding and early Christianity. It is taught at Temple University Rome. This survey of Roman History begins with the foundation of Rome in the 8th century BCE. and ends with the transformation of the Roman Empire in the 5th and 6th cent. CE. Students will read a narrative history, a study of various aspects of Roman society and culture, and a selection of the ancient sources upon which our knowledge is based. Archaeological material will be used in addition to the literary sources. The influence of Rome on later Western Civilization in government and law will be studied as well as its role in determining the foundation of Christianity.

Beginning in 1265 Thomas resided at the Dominican Basilica Santa Sabina in Rome and was tasked with founding another Dominican house of study. He did some of his best writing during this time: he completed the Summa Against the Gentiles, undertook his Summa of Theology, as well as wrote philosophical and theological tracts, and commentaries on the Bible, On the Divine Names, and Aristotle. The course would have three parts. First, students would study key writings composed during Thomas’s Roman sojourn. The central work that we would examine in this list is the Summa Against the Gentiles. It is in the Summa Against the Gentiles that Aquinas engages most directly with other Abrahamic traditions, namely Hebrew thinkers (e.g., Maimonides) and Islamic philosophers (most notably Avicenna, i.e., Ibn Sina, and Averroes, i.e., Ibn Rushd). Moreover, the Summa Against the Gentiles, also bears witness to Aquinas systematically grappling with ancient Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle), as well as the secularizing thesis that he detected in the teachings of his contemporary Parisian philosophers, namely the so-called ‘double- truth’ theory according to which religion and philosophy offer two different sources, methods, and truths (one revealed and the other secular). Second, undergraduates enrolled in Thomas Aquinas’s Rome would obtain a broader context for their studies of Thomas’s works by reading secondary literature on the intellectual and cultural history of Rome in the thirteenth century. I would supplement these readings with fields trips to important historical sites, including Dominican places of worship like Santa Sabina, where Thomas lived and wrote, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and San Clemente, as well as other central sites of Medieval Roman Christianity like the Lateran. Third, I have been in contact with my colleague at the Vatican’s Apostolic Library to incoorporate material pertaining from the Vatican Library for ND undergraduates. The Vatican’s Apostolic Library is one of the most important institutions of culture and learning ever created. It was founded as a public library in the fifteenth century and houses some of the world’s most prized treasures. For example, it houses some of Thomas Aquinas’s personal manuscripts, including his copy of the Summa Against the Gentiles.

This course is for students doing independent research abroad through the Rome Scholars Program under the supervision of a PLS faculty person at Notre Dame. The topic(s) and frequency of meetings should be worked out with the advisor in the course of applying to study abroad in Rome. Department approval is required to register.

Instructor's written permission and permission of chair required. Reading courses in areas of interest to the student.

Instructor's written permission and permission of chair required. Reading courses in areas of interest to the student.

This course provides the framework in which seniors in the program prepare a substantial essay, as the culmination of their three years in the program. Faculty members working with small groups of students help them define their topics and guide them, usually on a one-to-one basis, in the preparation of their essays. Fall.

This course provides the framework in which seniors in the program prepare a substantial essay, as the culmination of their three years in the program. Faculty members working with small groups of students help them define their topics and guide them, usually on a one-to-one basis, in the preparation of their essays. Spring.