The depth and beauty of the great books reveal themselves when we slow down to give them the time they deserve...

New Seminars begin in April! (in progress)

Rousseau, First and Second Discourses - Sunday mornings

Sundays, 10:00-11:20 am ET | April 5 to June 28, 2026

Has the progress of civilization made us better or worse? In his First Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences corrupt morality rather than improve it. In the Second Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, he traces how natural human freedom was lost to society, property, and political power. Together these texts form one of the most radical and searching critiques of modern civilization ever written. We'll read about 12 pages a week, allowing us time to work through important passages line by line. No background in philosophy is necessary. Beginners are welcome.

Texts: Rousseau, The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated and edited by John T. Scott (University of Chicago Press)

Reading load: 10-15 pages/week

Seminar Leader: Jess Joseph is a graduate of the University of Chicago and has led great books reading groups on Plato's Theaetetus, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed.

Shakespeare, Reading the Sonnets Aloud - Mondays (6 week workshop)

Borges, Poems - Tuesdays, days

Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartes - Tuesday afternoons

Tuesdays, 5:30-7:00 pm ET | April 7 to June 30, 2026

After his wife’s suicide in 1885, Henry Adams tried to think through the topsy-turvy contemporary world and his own life in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1913), which served as prequels to The Education of Henry Adams (1918).  He sees the High Middle Ages as a civilization that had built and nurtured a transcendental unity, as he leads the reader on a pilgrimage back in time, through a veiled confession to a homecoming. Adams introduced Americans to a half-forgotten past-present. In the summer quarter we plan to offer The Education of Henry Adams.

Text: Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres: A Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, 402 pp., paperback ISBN 9780691003351.

Reading Load:  25-30 pp./week.

Leader: Reynaldo Miranda-Zúñiga is an alumnus of St. John’s College, Annapolis, and past president of the large Northern California Alumni Chapter.  He has led seminars with Symposium for 20 years and with other organizations.   

Plato, Meno (with Klein Commentary) - Tuesdays

Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (of III) - Wednesday afternoons

Joyce, Ulysses - Wednesdays

An Introduction to Eastern Thought - Thursdays

Gospel of Mark - Thursdays

Tolstoy, War and Peace - Friday afternoons

You may register for a program at any time (if it is not fully enrolled.)  

All-Access registration includes all Symposium seminars each quarter.