The core of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults is a four-year certificate program offering a rigorous, liberal arts curriculum that draws on the strong Socratic tradition at the University of Chicago and covers the foundations of modern Western political and social thought and literature through reading and discussion of Great Books.
Basic Program Certificate Structure
- The Certificate consists of a four-year curriculum with one course every quarter of the Academic year (Autumn, Winter, Spring).
- Courses meet for three hours, once a week, for ten weeks.
- Each course consists of a 90 minutes Seminar, covering three or four texts, and a 90 minute Tutorial, which involves in-depth analysis of one or two texts. Both the Seminar and Tutorial focus on close critical reading and discussion of primary texts.
- Students take the curriculum in order, starting with Autumn of Year 1 and progressing with their classmates in the same section from quarter to quarter and year to year.
- Participants earn a certificate upon completion of the entire four-year curriculum, as well as some of the privileges of University of Chicago alumni.
Autumn
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Introduction; Sophocles, Antigone |
| 4-6 | Plato, Apology and Crito |
| 7-10 | Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Plato, Meno |
Winter
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-5 | Herodotus, The History (selections) |
| 6-10 | Aeschylus, Oresteia |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics |
Spring
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Machiavelli, The Prince |
| 4-6 | Hobbes, Leviathan (selections) |
| 7-8 | Rousseau, Second Discourse |
| 9-10 | Shakespeare, The Tempest |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Shakespeare, Tragedy |
Autumn
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Sophocles, Oedipus the King |
| 4-6 | Aristotle, Poetics |
| 7-8 | Euripides, The Bacchae |
| 9-10 | Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Homer, The Iliad |
Winter
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-6 | Homer, The Odyssey |
| 7-8 | Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |
| 9-10 | Woolf, A Room of One's Own |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Plato, The Republic |
Spring
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Montaigne, Essays |
| 3-4 | Pascal, Pensées |
| 5-8 | Nietzche, On the Genealogy of Morals |
| 9-10 | Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Bible (Genesis, Job, Matthew) |
Autumn
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Aristotle, Physics (Bk. I, ch. 1; Bk. II) |
| 3-4 | Lucretius, The Nature of Things |
| 5-7 | Newton, Principia (selections) |
| 8-10 | Darwin, On the Origin of Species (selections) |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Novel |
Winter
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-6 | Virgil, The Aeneid |
| 7-10 | Augustine, Confessions |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-4 | Euclid, Elements (Bk. I) |
| 5-10 | Descartes, Meditations |
Spring
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Aquinas, Treatise on Law |
| 4-5 | Locke, Second Treatise on Government |
| 6-10 | Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Dante, Inferno |
Autumn
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | Plato, Symposium |
| 4-7 | Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (selections) |
| 8-10 | Austen, Pride and Prejudice |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War |
Winter
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-4 | Aristotle, Politics (Bks. I, III) |
| 5-7 | Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections) |
| 8-10 | Marx, Kapital (selections) and The Communist Manifesto |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Lyric Poetry |
Spring
| Week | Seminar |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist 10 + 51 |
| 3-5 | Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France |
| 6 | Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural |
| 7-10 | Toni Morrison, Beloved |
| Week | Tutorial |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Plato, Phaedo |