πŸ§ πŸ“š Western Re-Education


🟩 Tier 1 – High School Honors

🎯 Goal: Introduce the building blocksβ€”virtue, justice, law, the soul, conscience, and divine order.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Plato – Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Meno, Republic (Book I, IV, VII)
  • Old Testament – Genesis (Creation & Fall), Exodus 19–24 (Law), 1 Samuel 8–10 (Kingship), Ecclesiastes
  • New Testament – Matthew 5–7 (Sermon on the Mount), Romans 1–8, Revelation 21–22
  • Boethius – Consolation of Philosophy
  • Cicero – On Duties
  • Augustine – Confessions (Books I–IX)
  • Luther – Freedom of a Christian, 95 Theses
  • Montaigne – Essays (On Idleness, On Education, On the Art of Conversation)
  • Pascal – PensΓ©es (fragments on authority, paradox, faith)
  • Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration
  • Rousseau – Discourse on Inequality
  • Paine – Common Sense
  • Freud – Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Selections)

🟨 Tier 2 – Bachelor’s Level

🎯 Goal: Engage with structured philosophical systemsβ€”ethics, governance, natural law, reason, revelation.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Plato – Republic (Full), Phaedo, Symposium
  • Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics (Books I–IV)
  • Aquinas – Summa Theologiae: On Law, On Kingship
  • Augustine – City of God (Books I, V, XIX)
  • Maimonides – Guide for the Perplexed (Book I selections)
  • Anselm – Proslogion
  • Dante – Inferno
  • Machiavelli – The Prince, Discourses on Livy
  • Hobbes – Leviathan (Parts I & II)
  • Locke – Second Treatise of Government
  • Rousseau – The Social Contract, Emile (Book I)
  • Montesquieu – The Spirit of the Laws (Selections)
  • Burke – Reflections on the Revolution in France
  • Kierkegaard – Fear and Trembling
  • Hume – Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays Moral and Political
  • Nietzsche – Genealogy of Morals

🟧 Tier 3 – Master’s Level

🎯 Goal: Understand the metaphysical crises of modernity, political revolution, divine absence, and ideological warfare.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Aquinas – Summa Contra Gentiles (Book I–III)
  • Scotus – Ordinatio (selections on law, divine will)
  • Dionysius the Areopagite – Mystical Theology
  • Ockham – Political Writings
  • Descartes – Meditations
  • Spinoza – Theological-Political Treatise, Ethics
  • Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics, Monadology
  • Malebranche – The Search After Truth (Selections)
  • Maimonides – Guide for the Perplexed (Book II selections)
  • Kant – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
  • Hegel – Philosophy of Right, Philosophy of History
  • Marx – Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, German Ideology
  • Engels – The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
  • Maistre – Considerations on France
  • Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents
  • Arendt – The Human Condition

πŸŸ₯ Tier 4 – Doctorate Level

🎯 Goal: Achieve metaphysical fluency in political theology. Interrogate consciousness, ideology, language, myth, and history.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Aquinas – De Potentia, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis Commentaria
  • Pseudo-Macarius – Fifty Spiritual Homilies
  • Gregory of Nazianzus – Theological Orations
  • Meister Eckhart – Sermons
  • Philokalia – Selections from Maximus the Confessor, St. Theophan, Evagrius
  • Kant – Critique of Pure Reason
  • Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Heidegger – Being and Time (Parts I & II)
  • Marx – Capital (Vol. 1)
  • Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil
  • Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations
  • Schmitt – Political Theology, The Concept of the Political
  • Arendt – On Revolution, The Origins of Totalitarianism
  • Jung – Answer to Job, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
  • Charles Taylor – A Secular Age

🟦 Tier 5 – Postdoctoral

🎯 Goal: Explore comparative theology, apophatic thought, and the metaphysics of politics.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Plotinus – The Enneads
  • Bonaventure – The Journey of the Mind to God
  • Ibn Rushd (Averroes) – Decisive Treatise
  • Ibn Sina (Avicenna) – The Metaphysics of Healing
  • Nicholas of Cusa – On Learned Ignorance
  • Zizioulas – Being as Communion
  • Simone Weil – Gravity and Grace, The Need for Roots
  • Eric Voegelin – Order and History (Vol I)
  • David Bentley Hart – The Experience of God
  • John Milbank – Theology and Social Theory

πŸ› οΈ Exercises:

  • Write a comparative essay on the logos in Heraclitus, John, and Maximus
  • Sketch a theological-political map of modernity from Aquinas to Marx
  • Lead a 3-person reading group through any one Tier 3 text

🟫 Tier 6 – Emeritus

🎯 Goal: Not merely to know, but to preserve, interpret, and reform.

πŸ“˜ Readings:

  • Origen – On First Principles
  • Maximus the Confessor – Ambigua
  • Florensky – The Pillar and Ground of the Truth
  • Berdyaev – The Destiny of Man
  • Levinas – Totality and Infinity
  • Charles PΓ©guy – Temporal and Eternal
  • Joseph Pieper – Leisure: The Basis of Culture, The Four Cardinal Virtues
  • Hans Urs von Balthasar – The Glory of the Lord (Vol I)
  • Girard – Violence and the Sacred, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
  • Del Noce – The Crisis of Modernity

πŸ› οΈ Exercises:

  • Draft a β€œLetter to the Future” summarizing the political-theological task of your age
  • Write a 15-minute lecture addressing the crisis of meaning in a post-Christian society
  • Maintain a monthly essay journal engaging a different thinker across the tradition
Edit

Pub: 16 Apr 2025 03:02 UTC

Edit: 16 Apr 2025 03:06 UTC

Views: 79