Readings for Past Dallas Precepts 2009-10 “Hard Times and Hard Work” Genesis, Chs. 1-4, Book of Ruth Hesiod, Works and Days Epictetus, “Of Freedom” Aristotle, Politics I.8-11, VIII.1-4 Montaigne, Essays, “Of Glory” and “Of Utility and Honesty” Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 5 Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.1-2, 8 Emerson, Essays, “Compensation” Marx, Capital,“Estranged Labour” Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, part 3, Chs. 4-6 Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Chs.

Less Than Great Books of the Twentieth Century ​ Since it has come to my attention recently that there is some nebulous impropriety in having a historian teach the great books in a humanities class and further that a course in the history of ideas at AMU must, inexplicably contrary to the practice at any major university, refrain from assigning great books, it has occurred to me that I might obviate such cavils by teaching a course on contemporary books that have not been great.

The Age of Trump A few elections ago, I heard a white working class Pat Buchanan supporter say “…the Democrats represent blacks, the Republicans represent rich people, who represents me?” I was worried about this at the time because it seemed only a matter of time till the chickens came home to roost in the form of rightwing white identity politics. The Tea Party was the first iteration of this impulse.

Term I Origins Bible Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, Kings, Job, Isaiah, Daniel Homer Iliad, Odyssey Presocratics Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines; Heraclitus; Parmenides; Pythagoras; Gorgias; Protagoras; Thrasymachus; Anaxagoras; Democritus; Hippocrates; Greek Tragedy (Aeschylus, Orestia; Sophocles, Oedipus, Antigone; Euripides, Medea, Bacchae) Aristophanes Clouds, Frogs Thucydides, Peloponnesian War Plato Republic, Symposium, Protagoras, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Phaedo Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics Virgil Aeneid Roman Writers Horace, Juvenal, Lucian Roman History Tacitus, Livy, Sallust Roman Politics Seneca, Cicero, Aurelius

Castiglione’s The Courtier; A Straussian ReReading *Headed by the Duchess Elizabeta Gonzaga of Urbino on four consecutive nights in March 1507 *Following Duke Guidobaldo’s death in 1508, at the age of 36 she continued to live in Urbino as regent to her underage son *Castiglione was at court 1508-1516 wrote Book of the Courtier 1516-1518, leaves to become Papal Nuncio to Spain. Edits and rewrites The Courtier often over a ten year period.

PLATO’S REPUBLIC Book Stephanus## TOPIC I 327a-331b Going Down to the Piraeus: the separation of knowledge/power 327a-328b Capture of Socrates and Glaucon (stopped by Polemarchus’ slave) 328b-331b Socrates and Cephalus discuss old age and money and eros 331a-354a The Three Definitions of Justice, and their refutations 331c-332a 1: “telling the truth and giving back what one owes” [to gods] ​ (Cephalus, then Polemarchus) 332a-336a 2: “doing good to friends and harm to enemies” Simonides ​ (Polemarchus young metic = free and equal to Socrates)

The only good game of chess I ever played was 48 years ago today. Michael Sugrue - Grandmaster Bent Larsen August 1974 Smith-Morra Gambit e4 c5 d4 cd c3 dc Nxc3 Nc6 Nf3 e6 Bc4 a6 0-0 Qc7 Qe2 Bd6 Rd1 N8e7 a4 Ng6 Be3 Nge5 Nxe5 Bxe5 g3 0-0 Rac1 Qa5 f4 Bxc3 Rxc3 Ne7 Bb3 b6 f5 ef ef Qe5 Qf3 Ra7 f6 Bb7 fe Bxf3 ef=Q+ Kxf8 Rc8+ Ke7 Re1 Kf6 Rc4 Kg6 Rf4 Bd5 Rg4+ Kh5 Bd1 1-0 Photo caption: A photo taken during my match against GM Larsen.

This is a transcription of Professor Michael Sugrue’s lecture posted on his YouTube channel. His lecture on Stoicism is the best I’ve found anywhere on the Internet. Transcribing free flowing speech into text has its challenges so I’ll admit there may be errors in the placement of dashes, colons, semicolons, paragraph breaks, etc. The goal was to create a readable document based on the lecture. It’s a work in progress. I’m interested in improving this document so please reach out if you see punctuation errors or have suggestions in the formatting.

My favorite American politician of the nineteenth century is Henry Clay. He is an underestimated hero who was too intelligent for the arbitrary dogmatism that surrounded him and too responsible to wash his hands of politics and leave fanatics to their folly. During the period in the late 1980s and early 1990s while I was researching this book, I came to have an increased respect for Henry Clay’s pragmatic phronesis. While I was working on my doctoral dissertation, which is the basis of this book, I was subjected to the sanity threatening influences of an intellectual Scylla and Charybdis: different kinds of mutually contradictory historical mythmaking.

Humanities 30(4)-6-7-8-9 Course Description: This course examines selected landmarks in Western culture, combining politics, ethics, literature, philosophy, history, science, psychology, art and religion from antiquity to the present. OVERVIEW The purpose of this class is to help fish realize that they are wet. Like it or not, we are Westerners. This is not an option. It is a fact. We are, in fact, speaking English at an American university in the early 21st century.