At St. John’s College, undergraduate and graduate students explore 3000 years of the West’s most influential texts across literature, philosophy, math, science, astronomy, theology, politics, history, music and more. We call these texts the Great Books and they form our all-required integrated curriculum. Through the Great Books, students explore the multitude of antithetical ideas and common through-lines that form the West’s intellectual traditions. We call this authorial volley the Great Conversation. In addition, the college also offers a graduate education in the great books of the East. Explore our academic programs.

A Skepticism of Expertise

At St. John’s College, we believe in studying original texts without the intermediaries of secondary sources. Rather, we find insights in them together and individually through a spirit of collaborative inquiry and friendship. Here, faculty do not interpret nor dictate answers to students, which is why we call them “tutors” instead of “professors”. At St. John’s, nobody professes to have the answers except for new students, who quickly learn to mistrust this impulse. Explore the Great Books by perusing our Master of Liberal Arts Reading List, our Bachelor of Liberal Arts Reading List.

A Practice of Shared Inquiry

The heart of the St. John’s Program is seminar, where two faculty guide classes of fewer than 20 students, modeling the practice of true inquiry. Through practice, students learn that talking is far less interesting than listening to the diverse ideas that comprise a St. John's classroom. This practice goes back to the founding of the Program in 1937, which was developed as a bulwark against fascism’s rise across the West. During this time, two important documents were developed that still guide the college’s practices today: Notes on Dialogue.

A Pre-partisan Political Education

The St. John’s Program creates a rare environment in which curiosity and a desire for wisdom trump certainty and a desire for mastery. Here, a community emerges in which the political philosophies and complex histories that have helped to develop our Western and democratic traditions can be widely explored, critiqued, and embraced unimpeded by the noise of partisanship and rancor.