Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

sjc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 155 posts

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#91

Post by stbullard »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #88
lakeshastina wrote: post #78

Was a little disappointed to see so little from the east in terms of recommended books. The Bhagavad Gita and ZhuangXi made the list, but nothing in terms of other important works by the Buddha, or Yoga or the epics like the Mahabharata. If someone were to read some of the Upanishadic works, it would be really interesting to see their influence on the works of Plotinus, etc.

The name of the university literally alludes to Christianity.

True, but the name of the school predates the curriculum in question by more than a century; the school has for many years been in no way associated with any religion.

(Likewise, at its founding in 1696, the college was called King William’s School; a name that probably sounded a bit off in post-Revolutionary America, leading to the adoption of the current name in 1784, a year after the War.)

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#92

Post by Glyptodon »

Brother of an acquaintance was going there when I was thinking about college (Santa Fe campus). Before talking to him, I was pretty interested. After, I kind of had the impression there was more weed than reading and didn't apply. (No idea if it was just his circle really. And don't take as huge opinion on weed, even second hand the smoke can get to my nose pretty badly.)

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#93

Post by prepend »

dabiged wrote: post #63

Not an alum, but in an effort to improve my written and spoken english, I picked up the list and read the about 80% of the content. I was kind to myself and skipped any book that I absolutely found a slog (there were only a few, Aristotle's metaphysics and some early of the dark age Christian philosophy). The book list is really good at telling you to skip the really irrelevant bits of ancient books. I found that rea…

> rocinante in 'the expanse' comes to mind

The reference is called out in the first book as Don Quixote’s horse. So it seems hard to miss unless you don’t know that Don Quixote is an old story.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#94

Post by freework »

I live in Santa Fe, and have gone by this campus many times since theres a pretty cool bike trail that runs behind the campus.

I got curious once and looked up what it's like to study there and discovered the "great books" curriculum. These days I'm in my 40s and have a successful computer science career, so there is nothing to gain from enrolling in this program, but if I were to ever enroll in school again, it would probably be this program or one like it.

When I was in school, what I really hated most about it was how common it was for professors to make the class about them. In a program like St. Johns, the curriculum is set in stone, and so there is very little room for the professor to inject himself into the class. When I was in undergrad in the early 2000s, if you disagreed with the professor, you'd be seen as being disrespectful or disruptive and your grade would suffer. I have a feeling that wouldn't be a problem at St. Johns.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#95

Post by dabiged »

voisin wrote: post #82
dabiged wrote: post #63

Not an alum, but in an effort to improve my written and spoken english, I picked up the list and read the about 80% of the content. I was kind to myself and skipped any book that I absolutely found a slog (there were only a few, Aristotle's metaphysics and some early of the dark age Christian philosophy). The book list is really good at telling you to skip the really irrelevant bits of ancient books. I found that rea…

How long did it take you to read them? Did you read them in order as presented? Did you start with a strategy for retention or comprehension (especially with the non-modern English) so that it wouldn’t be wasted time?

From start to finish it probably took around 7-8 years. The booklist I had, started out pretty easy going (i.e. you were expected to read The Illiad in about 2 weeks), towards the fourth year it is frankly delusional how fast you are expected to read (War and Peace was assigned 1 week) and I have NO idea how the students in the course can do it. I was reading maybe 2 hrs a day whilst working fulltime.

Yes I read them in the order presented. The order kind of makes sense (sem 1 & 2: Ancient Greece, sem 3: Early christianity/rome, sem 4: renaissance, sem5/6: enlightenment, rise of democracy, sem 7/8: early modern period.) By the time you get to Shakespeare there are echoes of stories you have already read.

In terms of a strategy for retention, I kept a small book of quotes from the works and would add to them weekly (no idea where this is now).

I should say that the latter stages of the course has large sections that are for essay writing and projects. I skipped all this but added other books instead. These were mainly American literature (Twain, Fitzgerald, steinbeck), English literature (Bronte, Dickens, Orwell) and some older stuff (Suetonius, Xenophon).

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#96

Post by ianai »

voldacar wrote: post #89
thwayunion wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(edit: apparently these are just "books tagged mathematics", not the mathematics tutorial reading list. First and second paragraphs mostly hold) I went through a great books curriculum (not in math), and this list reminds me of my primary complaint with the whole Great Books approach. "Great Books" is mired in fairly a ridiculous fetishism of the Greek classics, the Enlightenment era, the American founding, and the A…

Computing is not yet old enough for us to know which books on computing are great books. Also the point of reading Euclid is not really to learn geometry but rather to investigate and examine the oldest, most primordial expression of the idea that math should be formalized using a few axioms.

Logic goes back. Could have stuff from Babbage, too. I definitely feel SJ would appreciate an old school style math proof exposition even perhaps between mathematicians. (Forgetting any specifics as it’s been way too long.) Notably, NM does have solid math departments to invite for lectures.

I always got the impression SJ is more about an “originalism” towards knowledge. But of course they’re going to have to pick and choose. Maybe it’s time for them to revisit math and add computing.

Edit-read the math curriculum. They threw Darwin, Feynman, and Einstein into there as electives. Seems a little of a catch-all. Also they could add Shannon entropy.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#97

Post by lakeshastina »

stbullard wrote: post #81
lakeshastina wrote: post #78

Was a little disappointed to see so little from the east in terms of recommended books. The Bhagavad Gita and ZhuangXi made the list, but nothing in terms of other important works by the Buddha, or Yoga or the epics like the Mahabharata. If someone were to read some of the Upanishadic works, it would be really interesting to see their influence on the works of Plotinus, etc.

The College offers a Master’s degree in Eastern Classics, applying the same approach to a literary tradition which, while it intersects with and interacts with the Western tradition, easily also stands on its own: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/graduate/masters-easte... The monolithic, slow-to-change Great Books list that forms the core of the St John’s undergraduate Reading List is famously and self-conscious…

Yes, makes sense. It just struck me that someone who graduates from such a learning list might totally miss that eastern thought heavily influenced the Greek philosophers and the practice of Gnosis, derived from the Sanskrit root word Gnana(Knowledge or wisdom).

When investigated down to the fundamentals, it is liberating to realize all the deep enquirers of all regions of the world arrived at many of the same insights regarding life. This hopefully leads to more unity, tolerance and mutual respect between people and different religions.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#98

Post by ianai »

stbullard wrote: post #79
dabiged wrote: post #63

Not an alum, but in an effort to improve my written and spoken english, I picked up the list and read the about 80% of the content. I was kind to myself and skipped any book that I absolutely found a slog (there were only a few, Aristotle's metaphysics and some early of the dark age Christian philosophy). The book list is really good at telling you to skip the really irrelevant bits of ancient books. I found that rea…

RE 3: as an SJC alum, I found my reading speed slowed drastically both during and after four years spent reading and discussing these books. I found myself thinking while reading more often, making more connections within and between works. That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language…

Is it usually a value-add or how often does the push for intellectual rigor slide to something else? Had a notoriously argumentative coworker from nearby SJ in SF. He’d always swear he was just asking questions or wanted to know why “they chose this way over another” but not so secretly just wanted the world to burn.

Re: St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum

#100

Post by gtfoutttt »

voisin wrote: post #83
stbullard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE 3: as an SJC alum, I found my reading speed slowed drastically both during and after four years spent reading and discussing these books. I found myself thinking while reading more often, making more connections within and between works. That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language…

> That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language (from all having read and discussed the earlier works in the Program) that provoked deep thought and reflection, held me to account for intellectual rigor, and built up my faculty for critical thinking. Is there anywhere online that achiev…

Someone below posted about the Catherine project. It sounds like something like that, although the reading list is certainly not as thorough.

https://catherineproject.org/

Post reply on HN