Think better about
being human.
Philosophy, literature, and history organized around the questions that keep returning in an ordinary life.
SEMESTER I
The Human Condition
Mortality, duty, desire, fate, and the stories humans use to make life bearable.
8 lessons
1.1Epic Mortality and the Human Problem
What should a human do with the knowledge that life ends?
Rage, Honor, and War
When does the pursuit of honor become self-destruction?
Duty Under Pressure
Is doing one's duty enough to live well?
Suffering, Desire, and Liberation
Is suffering caused more by the world or by craving?
The Inner Life
What do we discover when we turn inward?
Fate, Providence, and Control
How should a person act when the world is not under their command?
Myth as Thought
What can myth say that argument cannot?
First Synthesis: What Is a Human Being?
Are humans best understood as seekers, sufferers, citizens, souls, animals, or storytellers?
THE COMPLETE CURRICULUM
Eight semesters,
one continuous inquiry.
- 01Now reading
The Human Condition
Confront mortality, suffering, duty, heroism, and the first human attempts to turn life into meaning.
- 02Mapped
Wisdom and Virtue
Study the classical question of how to live well across Greek, Indian, Chinese, and religious traditions.
- 03Mapped
Power and Political Order
Understand why humans create states, why power corrupts, and what legitimacy requires.
- 04Mapped
Empire, Capital, and Social Order
Study how societies create hierarchy and how oppressed people understand freedom.
- 05Mapped
Science, Reality, and Knowledge
Learn how scientific ways of knowing transformed humanity's picture of reality.
- 06Mapped
Mind, Self, and Consciousness
Question the rational, unified, transparent self.
- 07Mapped
Modern Alienation and Catastrophe
Understand modernity's crises: bureaucracy, totalitarianism, trauma, absurdity, and evil.
- 08Mapped
Futures of Humanity
Ask what humanity should become under conditions of technology, ecology, inequality, and pluralism.