Lectures
Every Friday evening, Johnnies flock to the Great Hall to hear a lecture from visiting scholars, artists, poets or faculty. Topics may be closely connected with seminar, tutorial, or laboratory readings, or they may open up a new field of inquiry. For example, lecturers have tackled anthropology, space science, painting, architecture, politics, economics, religion, and more. Lectures are followed by an engaging discussion between the lecturer, students, and faculty.
The St. John’s College Formal Lecture Series in Annapolis and the Dean’s Lecture Series in Santa Fe are free and open to the public, unless specified otherwise.
Recordings and transcripts of lectures are available on the SJC Digital Archives site. Explore some lectures below.
Lecture Highlights
Math & Science
- Aristotle on Respiration: The Origins of Functional Anatomy
- Beyond Point-and-Shoot morality: Why Cognitive Science Matters for Ethics
- Evolution as a Cause
- Brightness at Night: An Old Astronomical Puzzle and its Modern Answers
- Einstein Between War and Fiction
- Leibniz’s Monadology and the Philosophical Foundations of Non-Locality in Quantum Mechanics
- Subjective Sensory Experience and the Fallacy of Neural Codes
- The Power of a Point: Euclid’s Elements and Steiner’s Geometrical Reflections
- What is a Q.E.F.? Reflections on the Nature of Geometrical Making
- What is the Surface Area of a Hedgehog?
Politics & Economics
Who Should Elect the President?
Tocqueville’s American Odyssey
Living Well: Aristotle, on Democracy, Equality, and the Politics of Life
Political Order and Political Decay: the American Political System in a Time of Global Upheaval
Krishna versus the British Empire: the Bhagavad Gita During the Indian Independence Struggle
Can Taxes be Fair? Should They Be?
Religion, Enlightenment, and the American Character
A Short Talk by Judge Michael Mukasey
Stabilizing Currency: Locke on Money, Morality, and Natural Law
Music
The Musical Universe and Mozart’s Magic Flute
Children of Orpheus: the Dialogue Between Ancient and Modern Music
Music and the Idea of a World: on Plato and Schopenhauer
Literature
The Anger of Achilles, and its Source: a Reading of Book One of the Iliad
Audio FileWhy Should I read James Joyce’s Ulysses if it’s Only Going to Make My Head Hurt?
Why Should I read James Joyce’s Ulysses if it’s Only Going to Make My Head Hurt?
Classics and History: Historical and Literary Contexts in the Reading of Sanskrit Texts
The Winnowing oar: Odysseus’ Final Journey
Nighttime Walks with Proust: “Le Pays Obscur” par le Clair de Lune
Poetry Reading from “Train Dance”
Philosophy & Religion
Is Man the Measure of All Things? Plato’s Analysis of Relativism
Teleology as Death Wish: a Nietzschean Critique of Aristotle
Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch What You Are: Machiavelli on Human Nature
Does Beauty Have a Place in Liberal Education?
Going for Gold: Sergio Leone Reads Plato in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Learning to Read Moses Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed
Dante’s Beatrice: Between Idolatry and Iconoclasm
Exploring the History of the Qur’ān: From Canonisation to Textual Criticism
Robert E. Howard: Boxing and the Cult of Masculinity
A Commentary on Motherhood as Presented in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex