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. 4-5
Mann, Buddenbrooks, part 8, Chs. 2-4
2008-2009 “Education”
Book of Proverbs and Blake’s Proverbs of Hell
Plato, Republic, Books 2 and 3 (Bloom translation)
Quintilian, Education of an Orator, Books 1 & 2
Franklin, Autobiography
Voltaire, Candide
Dickens, Hard Times
Freud, Sexual Enlightenment of Children
Mill, Autobiography
Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, pp. 25-137
“Love”
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Plato, Phaedrus
Ovid, Art of Love
Dante, Inferno (in Divine Comedy, Canto 5, 18)
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
William Shakespeare, Othello
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Joyce, The Dead (in Dubliners)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Human Nature: Skepticism and Dogmatism”
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (selections)
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (selections)
Molière, Tartuffe
Blaise Pascal, Pensees (selections)
W. H. Auden, The Massacre of the Innocents (from Collected Poems,
Part VII: For the time Being: A Christmas Oratorio)
David Hume, Of Miracles (from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)
The Sceptic (from Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary)
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (selections)
Either/Or (Part I) (selections)
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (selections)
The Gay Science (selections)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Harvard Address,” from The Solzhenitsyn
Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005
Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
(Selections)
2005-2006 “Politics and Ethics”
Plato, Gorgias (emphasis on 480e-489c, 516a-527e)
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, pp. 23-47 (1101a35-1109b18)
Euripides, Medea
Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor’s Handbook (Meditations) (selections)
More, Utopia, Book II
Moliere, The Misanthrope
Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor (from The Brothers Karamazov)
“Religion and Politics”
Plato, Apology
Augustine, City of God (selections)
Machiavelli, The Prince (selections)
Shakespeare, Richard II
Milton, Paradise Lost (selections)
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.19, “Of Christian Liberty”
Mill, On Liberty (selections)
Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, Volume II, Part IV.
Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance
Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists
George Washington’s National Day of Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 13,1789
Lincoln’s proclamation of a National Day of Prayer and Fasting
on September 26,186l (issued after the defeat of the Union army at Bull Run)
Lincoln’s proclamation of a National Fast day on March 30, 1863
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address