Read On

Symposium Institute is a genuine community of readers and discussants of serious works that are of concern to persons as persons.  Genuine community, even if online, because it is at a human scale, most participants continue with us over long periods and people get to know each other, and many form good, close friendships.  Symposium and the seminar leaders, sometimes at the suggestion of participants, curate the books, music, paintings as worthwhile to anyone able and willing to inquire into them in a serious manner, individually, and together in seminar over Zoom.  We retreat to our places of reading, thinking, study and come together usually once a week, sometimes twice, for con-versation that seems informal, but is very gently guarded, if and when necessary, by the seasoned seminar leader or co-leaders.  Our discussions are serious and provocative, not typical of many book groups.  We cultivate the practice of reading closely, weekly length of readings are manageable, never monumental.

If you enjoy reading and reflecting on classic works, and you wish to enter into serious, friendly converse.  We strive for each seminar meeting to find its way into one dialogue for all participants, much as a chorus comes together around a great choral piece.  This doesn’t always happen, but when it does it is magical, authentically synergistic and helpful for many, even all, in different ways.  Over time a disposition of contemplation, thoughtfulness, attentiveness to the text or work, collegiality and individuation is nurtured.  

We do much with very little.  The cost supports our online platform, and seminar leaders receive a token honorarium.  Formally, Symposium Institute is a 501(c)3 type of charitable, not-for-profit foundation, chartered in Texas.  The founders and most of the board members are alumni of St. John’s College in Annapolis MD and Santa Fe NM.  St. John’s is a very unusual, small liberal arts college.  Since 1937 it has offered the New Program in liberal arts and philosophy, largely undertaken by the study of great works.  Twenty years ago the co-founders were moved to share the work of that College, and a few others like it, with interested folks in the public at large, especially those who may not have had the opportunity to study in such learning communities.

In so far as we have teachers they are the books we take up.  The seminar leaders are usually and merely more advanced students.  Though occasionally someone joins who is more resourceful than the seminar leader, but our way of learning still works out well for virtually all.  The onus is on participants, and the dialogue is collaborative rather than competitive.  Participants have various backgrounds from not much at all to full professors and emeriti, each contributes uniquely, often the novices contribute much.

We have recently offered/offer readings and discussions of authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Sapho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, Vergil, Catullus, Aurelius, Ptolemy, Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Maimonides, Averroes, Rumi, early medieval Irish poetry, Chaucer, Thomas of Aquinas, Dante, Camoes, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Juana Ines de la Cruz, JS Bach, the Declaration of Independence, de Tocqueville, Sterne, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Douglass, Dickinson, Newman, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Henry Adams, Unamuno, Santayana, Joyce, Louis Armstrong, Ortega y Gasset, Garcia Lorca, Jacob Klein, Nabokov, Ronald Knox, Borges, Bolano.  We also offer language classes in Ancient Greek and Classical Latin.  We hope to offer many more, for instance Ovid, Montaigne, Mary Shelley, Madison, Lincoln, Melville, Lispector, Eva TH Brann.  And as we gradually grow in numbers, we hope to offer more structured pathways in the liberal arts, and philosophy for those who would like that.

Our leaders, like our participants, include professors, professors emeriti, lawyers, editors, translators, a CEO, musicians, a theologian, a classical stage actor, a naval officer, a poet, an art historian.

Some of us are great bookies, some are liberal arts learners, some are both.  We aren’t trying to sell anything, really; or, to move people in any direction other than honest, shared inquiry, their own hard, deep thinking guided by great books.  

Try us out, and see–you may be very pleasantly surprised.