There’s
nothing hard and fast here; I want your experience of the Great Books to be
whatever you want to make of it.
Reading
Read
the selection all the way through, and make notes as you go along. If you don’t make notes, it’s very hard
later to find things to say about it beyond “I loved it” or “I hated it.”
When
your enthusiasm flags, as it is certain to occasionally, take a break from the
text and come back to it later. Try not
to be defeated by any of the reading selections. Otherwise, you will feel left out of the discussion, and you
might even miss something that would be important to you. But start and stop as you please. I find it better to put a dull book aside
and pick it up again later than to keep trying to read while falling asleep.
As
far as I’m concerned, you can skim or skip the dullest parts! I’m currently reading Herodotus, which as a
lot of silly things in it. I skipped
the page where he describes the seven rivers of Scythia, in book III. I wouldn’t inflict that on anyone, nor the
“Cetology” chapter of Moby Dick.
Read
ahead of the group if you please. Most
of us have read some of these texts before, and I think none of us have read
all of them.
Study Questions
Study
questions are a difficulty. The ones
I’ve found on the Internet seem to me pretty awful—dull and “schoolish.” I don’t think we need to write summaries of
these texts, nor to “identify the main themes,” nor to inquire into symbolism
or characters’ motivations. I cannot be
passionate about most such questions, and unlike school, I don’t want us to
answer questions for the sake of answering questions. We don’t need to demonstrate that we’ve read the text; that is
taken for granted and indeed is practically the sole purpose of this
group. There are no grades here, there
is only readers talking to each other.
If you haven’t read the text, you won’t have much to say and you won’t
understand what’s said.
I
want us to come up with our own questions—not study questions, but personal
concerns. Not school questions, but
questions you would actually want to think about and answer.
For
example, in reading Plato’s Apology, our first assignment for January,
the question I’m most concerned with is, is Socrates right about the unexamined
life not being worth living? What does
this mean, and how do I feel about it?
Am I leading an examined life?
Did Socrates? Does it make sense
to recommend this kind of life to everyone?
These
are questions I wish I could discuss with Socrates or Plato, and which I wish
to discuss with the group.
Of
course, the Apology has a lot more going on than just “the unexamined
life”—questions of theology and state, of individual and state, of crime and
punishment—but these questions, at least as presented in the Apology,
don’t excite me as much as those I just gave.
Possibly they will excite other members, and through that excitement and
discussion I may get into writing about these topics as well. We don’t all have to address all topics
raised, or all the Great Ideas discussed in every selection. We can get out of this whatever we want as
individuals, and the group will benefit from the reactions of many individuals.
Writing
What
I want, and I hope you will want, is in essence to “take part in the Great
Conversation.” You could write a letter
to the author of the text: you won’t
tell him the “main themes” of his book, nor what you’ve seen in his symbolism
(unless you think he doesn’t know it).
You may ask more questions than provide answers—but provide your own
answer, if you can, to any question you ask.
Please
don’t post your comments on the current month’s reading until the 15th
of the month.
Supplementary Sources
Jim
said:
>I
audited a number of class meetings at St. John's, and my impression is that
their approach is good for the strongly self-directed student. The activity of the class is based largely
on the contributions of the students, and as a result (I've been told by
alumni) the quality of a class can vary a lot depending on the group of
students that happen to be in it.
Like
St. John’s, I want to base our discussion on the contributed insights of the
members, not on outside authorities. I
want to know what you think rather than what you found in a supplemental
book. Rather than consulting additional
sources, I’d recommend reading the assigned text an extra time or two and
comparing it with the other assignments in the ten-year reading plan.
Of
course, some outside reading may be desirable or necessary. If you’re reading the Iliad and want to look
up Zeus or Achilles in a handbook or encyclopedia, that would be
fine—otherwise, your understanding of the story may suffer. By all means, use dictionaries, encyclopedias,
and general nuts-and-bolts references on the Internet as seems appropriate to
you.
Learning
something about the conventions of Shakespeare’s stage can be helpful when
reading his plays. But to read a book
about someone’s interpretation of the Iliad or Hamlet seems to me a
mistake—though I wouldn’t dream of prohibiting
such outside reading.
I
don’t know, I’m torn about this. I want
the discussion to be as interesting and productive as possible, and
authoritative opinion certainly has value.
But I also don’t want to get too bogged down discussing critics that
most members won’t have read.
Math
and science may require a very different approach; I’ll leave that question
open for now.
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