List of Great Books
This is the list of
Great Books currently used in the study of literature, philosophy, science and mathematics at
St. John's College, Annapolis. The list has evolved over the years to include new works and to create different emphases.
The List of Great Books, Santa Fe is slightly different.
FRESHMAN YEAR
- HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
- AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
- SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
- THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
- EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
- HERODOTUS: Histories
- ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
- PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
- ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
- EUCLID: Elements
- LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
- PLUTARCH: "Lycurgus", "Solon"
- NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
- LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
- HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
- Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust
SOPHOMORE YEAR
- THE BIBLE
- ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
- APOLLONIUS: Conics
- VIRGIL: Aeneid
- PLUTARCH: "Caesar", "Cato the Younger"
- EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
- TACITUS: Annals
- PTOLEMY: Almagest
- PLOTINUS: The Enneads
- AUGUSTINE: Confessions
- ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
- AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
- DANTE: Divine Comedy
- CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
- DES PREZ: Mass
- MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
- COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
- LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
- RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
- PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
- MONTAIGNE: Essays
- VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
- BACON: Novum Organum
- SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
- POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
- DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
- PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
- BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
- HAYDN: Quartets
- MOZART: Operas
- BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
- SCHUBERT: Songs
- STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms
JUNIOR YEAR
- CERVANTES: Don Quixote
- GALILEO: Two New Sciences
- HOBBES: Leviathan
- DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
- MILTON: Paradise Lost
- LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
- LA FONTAINE: Fables
- PASCAL: Pensees
- HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
- ELIOT: Middlemarch
- SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
- LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
- RACINE: Phaedre
- NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
- KEPLER: Epitome IV
- LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
- SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
- HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
- ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
- MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
- ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
- KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
- MOZART: Don Giovanni
- JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
- DEDEKIND: Essay on the Theory of Numbers
- ESSAYS by: Young, Maxwell, Taylor, Euler, D. Bernoulli
SENIOR YEAR
- ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
- DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
- CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
- SUPREME COURT OPINIONS
- HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist
- DARWIN: Origin of Species
- HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
- LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
- TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
- LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
- KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
- WAGNER: Tristan and Isolde
- MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
- DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
- TOLSTOY: War and Peace
- MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
- TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
- WILLIAM JAMES: Psychology, Briefer Course
- NIETZSCHE: Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil
- FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
- VALERY: Poems
- WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
- DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
- HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
- HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
- EINSTEIN: Selected Papers
- MILLIKAN: The Electron
- CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
- FAULKNER: The Bear
- POEMS by: Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Baudelaire, Rimbaud
- ESSAYS by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy