John Locke: Is the Human Mind a Blank Slate?

One of the books I’m reading right now is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (no, “Essay” does not mean that it’s a short book; quite the contrary) by English thinker John Locke, published in 1690.

One of the questions I had while reading was whether the metaphor of the tabula rasa (the “blank slate”) is being taken more literally than Locke himself intended. No metaphor walks on four feet; if you try to make it so, it will stumble. That is to say, no metaphor and no analogy perfectly picture reality in all its details.

The basic thought of Locke’s metaphor of the blank slate (which he did not invent) is clear enough, namely that the human “Soul” does not think “before the Senses have furnished it with Ideas to think on” (Book II, Ch. 1, §20). Humans are not born with full-fledged ideas in their heads but slowly form them through the sensory input of the material world. Lock does seem to believe in the existence of immaterial souls, but certainly not of the Platonic kind that existed before birth in the world of pure ideas, in which case education would primarily consist of “rediscovering” what was already inside of us. (That, by the way, is what “education” means: to “bring forth” what is already “within” us; one of Plato’s many bequeathments to the modern world.)

So, it is clear what the metaphor of the blank slate is meant to combat. What is not so clear to me is whether Locke would deny that we are “wired” a certain way, or, since Locke was a Christian, created a certain way that strongly influences the way we take in and process the sensory data. Understandably, since he tries to combat the concept of full-fledged innate ideas, that is not where Locke puts his emphasis. But does he deny it?

Locke says that rather than implanting innate ideas in humans, God gave us the necessary tools to build those ideas, just like God has not build bridges or houses for people, but has given us hands and the necessary resources to build them (Book I, Ch. 12, §12). That, however, implies that we are preconditioned to take in reality and “build” it according to the mental tools we are furnished with. That’s where the blank-slate metaphor breaks down.

Locke wants to refute innate ideas. But does he also want to refute our human limitations—our inner structure through which we filter the world? From my incomplete reading, it seems to me rather that he prepares the way for those thoughts that we later have in Kant and others.

Or am I trying to make Locke less extreme than he was?

Great Courses at the Teaching Company

For the last two weeks, I’ve started listening to courses by The Teaching Company and have mostly been pleasantly surprised. Very worth listening to (or watching, if you get them in video format).

Right now, I’m going through “Great Ideas of Psychology,” and I’ve done the following courses so far:

• America’s Religious History
• Books that Have Made History – Books that Can Change Your Life (in part)
• Lost Christianities
• Machiavelli in Context
• Origin of the Modern Mind
• Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations
• Science and Religion
• Theory of Evolution – History of a Controversy

There seems to be plenty of good material at The Teaching Company. Here are some examples (just looking at this list makes me feel like a little boy having stumbled upon a treasure chest):

1. A Brief History of the World

2. A Modern Look at Ancient Greek Civilization

3. Abolitionism, Anti-Slavery and the Origins of the American Civil War

4. Abraham Lincoln – In His Own Words

5. Aeneid of Virgil

6. After the New Testament – The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers

7. African Experience from Lucy to Mandela

8. Age of Henry VIII

9. Age of Pericles

10. Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age

11. American Civil War

12. American Identity

13. American Military Experience

14. American Mind

15. Americas in the Revolutionary Era

16. America’s Religious History

17. Ancient Greek Civilization

18. Ancient Near Eastern Mythology

19. Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Then – Prophecy, The Creation of the Modern World

20. Apostle Paul

21. Argumentation – The Study of Effective Reasoning

22. Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Poetics, and Logic

23. Augustine – Philosopher and Saint

24. Bach and the High Baroque

25. Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

26. Between Crescent and Cross – Jewish Civilization from Mohammed to Spinoza

27. Bible and Western Culture

28. Biological Anthropology – An Evolutionary Perspective

29. Biology and Human Behavior – The Neurological Origins of Individuality

30. Biology – The Science of Life

31. Birth of the Modern Mind

32. Book of Genesis

33. Books that Have Made History – Books that Can Change Your Life

34. Buddhism

35. Business Law

36. Business Statistics

37. Can the Modern World Believe in God?

38. Chamber Music of Mozart

39. Change and Motion – Calculus Made Clear

40. Christmas Traditions in Victorian Britain and America

41. Christian Religions and Religious Fundamentalism

42. Churchill

43. Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights

44. Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome

45. Classical Mythology

46. Classics of American Literature

47. Classics of Russian Literature

48. Comedy Through the Ages

49. Concert Masterworks

50. Concerto

51. Conquest of the Americas

52. Contemporary Economic Issues

53. Detective Fiction

54. Discovering the Middle Ages (Video)

55. Discovery of Ancient Civilizations

56. Doctors – The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed Through Biography

57. Early Christianity – Experience of the Divine

58. Early History of National Soc

59. Early Middle Ages

60. Earth’s Changing Climate

61. Economics

62. Einstein’s 100^th Anniversary – Two Complimentary Lectures

63. Einstein’s Relativity and the Quantum Revolution

64. Elements of Jazz – From Cakewalk to Fusion

65. Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement

66. Energy and Climate – Science for Citizens in the Age of Global Warming

67. Era of the Crusades

68. Ethics of Aristotle

69. Europe and the Wars of Religion (1500-1700)

70. Europe and Western Civilization in the Modern Age

71. European History and European Lives

72. European Thought and Culture in the 19^th Century

73. European Thought and Culture in the 20^th Century

74. Explaining Social Deviance

75. Famous Greeks

76. Famous Romans

77. Finance and Accounting

78. Foundations of Western Civilization

79. Foundations of Western Civilization II

80. Francis of Assisi

81. Freedom – The Philosophy of Liberation

82. From Jesus to Constantine – A History of Early Christianity

83. From Monet to Van Gogh – A History of Impressionism

84. From Yao to Mao – 5000 Years of Chinese History

85. God and Mankind

86. Great American Music – Broadway Musicals

87. Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor

88. Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance

89. Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition

90. Great Figures of the New Testament

91. Great Figures of the Old Testament

92. Great Ideas of Classical Physics

93. Great Ideas of Philosophy

94. Great Ideas of Psychology

95. Great Masters

i. Beethoven

ii. Brahms

iii. Haydn

iv. Liszt

v. Mozart

vi. Shostakovich

vii. Stravinsky

viii. Tchaikovsky

96. Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition

97. Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

98. Great World Religions

i. Buddhism

ii. Christianity

iii. Hinduism

iv. Islam

v. Judaism

vi. The Religions of India

99. Greece and Rome – An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean

100. Greek and Person Wars

101. Heroes, Heroines, and the Wisdom of Myth

102. History of the Construction of St. Peter’s Basillica

103. History of the English Language

104. History of World Literature

105. How to Listen to and Understand Great Music

106. Ideas in Western Culture – The Medieval and Renaissance World

107. Introduction to the Study of Religion

108. Italian Renaissance

109. Italians Before Italy – Conflict and Competition in the Mediterranean

110. Jesus and the Gospels

111. Jewish Intellectual History

112. Jewish Mysticism

113. Joy of Thinking – The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas

114. Joy of Mathematics

115. Joy of Science

116. Joyce’s Ulysses

117. King Arthur and Chivalry

118. Late Middle Ages

119. Legacies of Great Economists

120. Lewis and Clark – The Explorers

121. Life of the Mind – An Introduction to Psychology

122. Life and Legacy of the Roman Empire

123. Life and Operas of Verdi

124. Life and Work of Mark Twain

125. Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis

126. Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer

127. Life and Writings of John Milton

128. Literary Modernism

129. Lives and Works of English Romantic Poets

130. Lives of Great Christians

131. Long 19^th Century (1789-1914)

132. Lost Christianities

133. Love and Vengeance – A Course on Human Emotion

134. Luther – Gospel, Law and Reformation

135. Machiavelli in Context

136. Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature

137. Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind – Literature’s Most Imaginative Works

138. Masterpieces of the Early 20^th Century Literature

139. Meaning from Data

140. Medieval Europe – Crisis and Renewal

141. Medieval Heroines in History and Legend

142. Mind of the Enlightenment

143. Modern British Drama

144. Modern Economic Issues

145. Mr. Lincoln – The Life of Abraham Lincoln

146. Museum Masterpieces

147. Must History Repeat the Great Conflict of This Century?

148. My Favorite Universe

149. Natural Law and Human Nature

150. Neolithic Europe

151. New Testament

152. Nietzsche and the Postmodern Condition

153. No Excuses – Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

154. Odyssey of Homer

155. Old Testament

156. Operas of Mozart

157. Origin of the Modern Mind

158. Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution

159. Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations

160. Origins of Life

161. 1492 – Ferdinand, Isabella, and the Making of an Empire

162. Palestine, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

163. Papal Elections

164. Particle Physics for Non-Physicists

165. Peoples and Cultures of the World

166. Philosophy and Human Values

167. Philosophy and the Religion in the West

168. Philosophy as a Guide to Living

169. Philosophy of Mind

170. Philosophy of Science

171. Plato, Socrates and the Dialogues

172. Plato’s Republic

173. Poetry – A Basic Course

174. Popes and the Papacy

175. Power Over People

176. Practical Philosophy – Greco-Roman Moralists

177. Psychology of Human Behavior

178. Quest for Meaning

179. Questions of Value

180. Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

181. Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Rise of Nations

182. Representing Justice – Stories of Law and Literature

183. Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism

184. Robert E. Lee and His High Command

185. Rome and the Barbarians

186. Roots of Human Behavior

187. Science and Religion

188. Science Fiction – The Literature of Technological Imagination

189. Science in the Twentieth Century – A Social-Intellectual History

190. Science Wars – What Scientists Know and How They Know It

191. Search for a Meaningful Past – Philosophies, Theories and Interpretations of Human History

192. Search for Intelligent Life in Space

193. Self Under Siege – Philosophy in the 20^th Century

194. Sensation, Perception, and the Aging Process

195. Shakespeare – Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies

196. Shakespeare – Word and Action

197. Sociology of Sexuality

198. Soul and the City – Art, Literature and Urban Living

199. St. Augustine’s Confessions

200. St. Patrick – The Patron Saint of Ireland

201. Story of Human Language

202. Story of the Bible

203. Superstring Theory – The DNA of Reality (Video)

204. Swift – Gulliver’s Travels

205. Terror of History – Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition

206. The American Dream

207. The Developing Adult

208. The English Novel

209. The Enlightenment – Invention of the Modern Self

210. The Human Body

211. The Olympics from Ancient Greece to Athens 2004

212. The Passions – Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions

213. Theories of Human Development

214. Theory of Evolution – A History of Controversy

215. Thomas Aquinas – The Angelic Doctor

216. Thomas Jefferson – Visionary American

217. Tocqueville and the American Experiment

218. Tools of Thinking

219. Truth or Fiction in The DaVinci Code

220. Twentieth Century American Fiction

221. Understanding Genetics

222. Understanding Literature and Life – Drama, Poetry and Narrative

223. Understanding the Human Body (Video)

224. Understanding the Universe – What’s New in Astronomy

225. Understanding the Universe – Introduction to Astronomy

226. Using Literature to Understand the Human Side of Medicine

227. Utopia and Terror in the Twentieth Century

228. Victorian Britain

229. Vikings

230. Voltaire and the Triumph of Enlightenment

231. World of Byzantium

232. World Philosophy

233. World War I – The “Great War”

234. World War II – A Military and Social History

Magical School (Or Not?): Hogwarts as a Parody of Public School

“Potions lessons were turning into a sort of weekly torture.”
—J.K. Rowling; about Professor Snape

At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry was the most famous boy, perhaps the richest (because he did not have any parents who could control how much money he spent), and the best player at the wizard sport Quidditch.

However, in a way the bubble burst very quickly. Yes, Harry was famous, rich, and athletic, but he soon discovered that this was not a guarantee for happiness. Indeed, in many ways the wizard school was exactly the same as a public Muggle school (“Muggles” are non-magical people). Because of his fame, money, and athletic ability, Harry managed better at the wizard school than at the public school, but that was not because it was a wizard school. The wizard school had just as many “uncool kids” as Harry himself used to be at public school.

It is worth taking a closer look at this wizard school, Hogwarts, to see how much like a public school it is.

First of all, some students experience great pressure of expectation. While Harry was on his way to his first year at Hogwarts, another boy, Ron Weasley (who was to become his best friend), told him, “I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left – Bill was Head Boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy’s a Prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wand and Percy’s old rat.”

As regards to peers’ relationships, it is the same old story every time. Hogwarts is no different to Muggle schools: the same clambering for status and acceptance, the same hierarchy and survival of the fittest, the same cliquism, the same trampling on each other’s feelings, the same boasting and gloating. This is especially shown in Harry’s enmity with Draco Malfoy:

Harry hadn’t had a single letter since Hagrid’s note, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course. Malfoy’s eagle owl was always bringing him packages of sweets from home, which he opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table.

Draco Malfoy, who was Snape’s favourite student, kept flicking puffer-fish eyes at Ron and Harry, who knew that if they retaliated they would get detention faster than you could say ‘unfair’.

Or take this passage about Ron, when he joined the Quidditch team in his fifth year:

The only thing really worrying Harry was how much Ron was allowing the tactics of the Sytherin team to upset him before they even got on to the pitch. Harry, of course, had endured their snide comments for over four years, so whispers of, ‘Hey, Potty, I heard Warrnington’s sworn to knock you off your broom on Saturday’, far from chilling his blood, made him laugh. ‘Warrington’s aim’s so pathetic I’d be more worried if he was aiming for the person next to me,’ he retorted, which made Ron and Hermione laugh and wiped the smirk off Pansy Parkinson’s face.

But Ron had never endured a relentless campaign of insults, jeers and intimidation. When Slytherins, some of them seventh-years and considerably larger than he was, muttered as they passed in the corridors, ‘Got your bed booked in the hospital wing, Weasley?’ he didn’t laugh, but turned a delicate shade of green. When Draco Malfoy imitated Ron dropping the Quaffle (which he did whenever they came within sight of each other), Ron’s ears glowed red and his hands shook so badly that he was likely to drop whatever he was holding at the time, too.

“A relentless campaign of insults, jeers, and intimidation”—this is the reality of the peers’ relationships at Hogwarts. Certainly not better than non-magical schools.

Indeed, the school system makes the development of competition, rivalry, and factions all too easy:

‘Welcome to Hogwarts’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory and spend free time in your house common room.

‘The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honour. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.’

To say nothing of the teachers. Most of the wizard teachers at Hogwarts are just as “non-magical” as the non-magical teachers at our Muggle schools. Some of them are unfair and spiteful, like Professor Snape:

‘Double Potions with the Slytherins,’ said Ron. ‘Snape’ Head of Slytherin house. They say he always favours them – we’ll be able to see if it’s true.’

‘Wish McGonogall favoured us,’ said Harry. Professor McGonogall was head of Gryffindor house, but it hadn’t stopped her giving them a huge pile of homework the day before.

Harry soon discovers that Professor Snape’s reputation of being unfair is only a shadow of his real nastiness; he is actually worse than people say! “At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had got the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he’d been wrong. Snape didn’t dislike Harry – he hated him.” During the first lesson, Professor Snape told the class, “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.” How did that make the students feel, I wonder? And when the clumsy, “uncool kid” Neville Longbottom did something wrong at first try, Snape immediately snarled, “Idiot boy!” Not only did he put Neville down, he then irrationally blamed Harry for Neville’s mess-up. Said he, “You – Potter – why didn’t you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he’d make you look good if he go it wrong, did you? That’s another point you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”

This was so unfair that Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Ron kicked him behind their cauldron. ‘Don’t push it,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve heard Snape can turn very nasty.

And during another year, Professor Snape said to a new professor in front of the whole class, “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.” Naturally, “Neville went scarlet. Harry glared at Snape; it was bad enough that he bullied Neville in his own classes, let alone doing it in front of other teachers.” Snape was so horrible a teacher that “potions lessons were turning into a sort of weekly torture.”

But not all teachers at Hogwarts are cruel, sarcastic, and unfair; some are simply boring: “History of Magic was by common consent the most boring subject ever devised by wizardkind. Professor Binns, their ghost teacher, had a wheezy, droning voice that was almost guaranteed to cause severe drowsiness within ten minutes, five in warm weather. He never varied the form of their lessons, but lecture them without pausing while they took note, or rather, gazed sleepily into space. Harry and Ron had so far managed to scrape passes in this subject only by copying Hermione’s notes before exams; she alone seemed able to resist the soporific power of Binns’s voice.”

“It was amazing how he could make even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percy’s cauldron-bottom report.”

One time, Harry “glanced round at Professer Binns who continued to read his notes, serenely unaware that the class’s attention was even less focused upon him than usual.”

Other classes are a total sham. Professor Trelawney, for example, teaches divination. But by the end of the fifth book she has only uttered two true prophecies in her life—and she does not even know about them because she spoke them in a trance. In other words, her classes are a waste of time and energy. The students learn a fake system of divination, which causes them to “play” with the teacher: to invent dreams and prophecies in order to see how much of them she would believe. Sad to say, they are rather successful. Professor Trelawney is a teacher who considers “her subject above such sordid matters as examinations.” Indeed, her subject is so much above real knowledge that the students do not learn anything of true value from her.

To top it all, during Harry’s fifth year the Ministry of Magic sent a commissioner to monitor the school. She taught some classes herself, which revealed her educational dictum only too plainly:

‘Using defensive spells?’ Professor Umbridge repeated with a little laugh. ‘Why, I can’t imagine any situation arising in my classroom that would require you to use a defensive spell, Miss Granger. You surely aren’t expecting to be attacked ruing class?’

‘We’re not going to use magic?’ Ron exclaimed loudly.

‘It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be more than sufficient to get you through your examination, which, after all, is what school is all about. And your name is?’ she added, staring at Parvati, whose hand had just shot up.

‘Parvati Patil, and isn’t there a practical bit in our Defence Against the Dark Arts OWL? Aren’t we supposed to show that we can actually do the counter-curses and things?’

‘As long as you have studied the theory hard enough, there is no reason why you should not be able to perform the spells under carefully controlled examination conditions,’ said Professor Umbridge dismissively.

Not only did Mrs. Umbridge believe that proper education only consist of “studying the theory hard enough,” she also disallowed the students to question any of her teachings. When Hermione asked, “Surely the whole point of Defence Against the Dark Arts is to practice defensive spells?” Professor Umbridge did not give a real answer but asked in a falsely sweet voice, “Are you a Ministry-trained educational expert, Miss Granger?” Since Hermione had to admit that she was not, Mrs. Umbridge said, “Well then, I’m afraid you are not qualified to decide what the “whole point” of any class is. Wizards much older and cleverer than you have devised our new programme of study. You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way –”

On another occasion, Hermione said that she disagreed with a certain point that was made in a text book: “Mr Slinkhard doesn’t like jinxes, does he? But I think they can be very useful when they’re used defensively.”—“Oh, you do, do you?’ replied Professor Umbridge. “Well, I’m afraid it is Mr Slinkhard’s opinion, and not yours, that matters within this classroom, Miss Granger.”

Such are the teachers at Hogwarts. I have not yet mentioned Professor Quirrel, who actually turns out to be a servant of the evil Lord Voldemort and tries to kill Harry! Have you ever heard of a teacher who tries to kill a student? Quite a school, isn’t it! Or Professor Lockhart. He could be put in a similar category as the divination teacher Trelawney, because, like her, he is an unbelievably gigantic impostor. The only difference is that he is so much more self-conceited than Trelawney. Or Hagrid. Although a kind friend, he is insecure, clumsy and not quite “with it.” Not exactly a good teacher.

To be fair, I should say that Hogwarts also has a number of teachers that are actually “OK.” But my point is that the educational quality at Hogwarts is no better than in most public schools today; perhaps worse. For Harry, studying Magic was not particularly magical, but just as torturing, boring, or theoretical as the non-magical subjects Muggles study at school. In that way, Hogwarts is very much a parody of the problems in public schools today.

Why Is Homeschooling So Often Pushed into the Religious Corner?

I just read this article on German homeschoolers being granted asylum in the US, and once again the right to homeschool is defended on religious grounds.

I find that frustrating – as if the only reason for homeschooling was to protect one’s children from the supposed evil influence of the world or to indoctrinate them with pseudo-science.

Why can’t we simply say that school is not the be-all and end-all of education, and that for some children alternatives should be considered, one of them being homeschooling?

John Stuart Mill, one of the greatest pioneers of political freedom, would certainly agree, and he was an early skeptic of religion.

________________________________

P.S.: I published a book last year that relates to this issue: The Gobblestone School: A Tale Inspired by the German Criminalization of Homeschooling – a children’s story somewhat in the vein of Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc.).

Teach Every Child About Food!

Is a Superficial Education Worse Than None?

First of all, I’d like to say that I feel slightly guilty posting on anything other than Haiti right now. My thoughts continue to be with the people there, and I encourage everyone to donate some money to the relief efforts.

But, unfortunately, tragedy is always with us. We have to continue our lives in the face of it, and part of my life is the world of books, among them Gore Vidal’s novel Julian. I recently found a passage on education in it that I thought worthwhile sharing.

This is Caesar Julian speaking (fictionally, of course):

“Priscus thinks that there should be widespread literacy. Sallust thinks not, on the grounds that a knowledge of literature would only make the humble dissatisfied with their condition. I am of two minds. A superficial education would be worse than none: envy and idleness would be encouraged. But a full education would open every man’s eyes to to the nature of human existence, and we are all of us brothers, as Epictetus reminds us.”

A Liberal Education: Books You Absolutely Have to Read Before You Die

About eight years ago, someone recommended to me the book list in How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. So I got the book from the library and scanned the list into my computer.

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. The list has provided me with untold hours of great reading and will, I’m sure, continue to do so for many years to come. These books are shaping who I am as a person. They are giving me a liberal education.

Of course these days you don’t have to go to the library anymore to get Mortimer’s list. Here it is, free on the internet:

1. Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus: Tragedies
4. Sophocles: Tragedies
5. Herodotus: Histories
6. Euripides: Tragedies
7. Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
8. Hippocrates: Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes: Comedies
10. Plato: Dialogues
11. Aristotle: Works
12. Epicurus: Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
13. Euclid: Elements
14. Archimedes: Works
15. Apollonius of Perga: Conic Sections
16. Cicero: Works
17. Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil: Works
19. Horace: Works
20. Livy: History of Rome
21. Ovid: Works
22. Plutarch: Parallel Lives; Moralia
23. Tacitus: Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic
25. Epictetus: Discourses; Encheiridion
26. Ptolemy: Almagest
27. Lucian: Works
28. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
29. Galen: On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus: The Enneads
32. St. Augustine: On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
33. The Song of Roland
34. The Nibelungenlied
35. The Saga of Burnt Njál
36. St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
37. Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
38. Geoffrey Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
39. Leonardo da Vinci: Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus: The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Thomas More: Utopia
44. Martin Luther: Table Talk; Three Treatises
45. Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne: Essays
48. William Gilbert: On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser: Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
51. Francis Bacon: Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, The New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare: Poetry and Plays
53. Galileo Galilei: Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler: Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
57. René Descartes: Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton: Works
59. Molière: Comedies
60. Blaise Pascal: The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
61. Christiaan Huygens: Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics
63. John Locke: Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine: Tragedies
65. Isaac Newton: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding; Monadology
67. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
68. Jonathan Swift: A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve: The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope: Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu: Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws
73. Voltaire: Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
75. Samuel Johnson: The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
76. David Hume: Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile, The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
80. Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography
82. James Boswell: Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison: Federalist Papers
85. Jeremy Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust; Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier: Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth: Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems; Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice; Emma
92. Carl von Clausewitz: On War
93. Stendhal: The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
94. Lord Byron: Don Juan
95. Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism
96. Michael Faraday: Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte: The Positive Philosophy
99. Honoré de Balzac: Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative Men; Essays; Journal
101. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
102. Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America
103. John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
104. Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
105. Charles Dickens: Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times
106. Claude Bernard: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience; Walden
108. Karl Marx: Capital; Communist Manifesto
109. George Eliot: Adam Bede; Middlemarch
110. Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
111. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov
112. Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary; Three Stories
113. Henrik Ibsen: Plays
114. Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
115. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger
116. William James: The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. Henry James: The American; ‘The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincare: Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. George Bernard Shaw: Plays and Prefaces
122. Max Planck: Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson: Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. John Dewey: How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
125. Alfred North Whitehead: An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
126. George Santayana: The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
127. Lenin: The State and Revolution
128. Marcel Proust: Remembrance of Things Past
129. Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
130. Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain; Joseph and His Brothers
131. Albert Einstein: The Meaning of Relativity; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; The Evolution of Physics
132. James Joyce: ‘The Dead’ in Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses
133. Jacques Maritain: Art and Scholasticism; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Rights of Man and Natural Law; True Humanism
134. Franz Kafka: The Trial; The Castle
135. Arnold J. Toynbee: A Study of History; Civilization on Trial
136. Jean Paul Sartre: Nausea; No Exit; Being and Nothingness
137. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle; The Cancer Ward

Ireland: Off to a Bad Start (What Would Jesus Say about the New Blasphemy Law?)

Here in Ireland we had a rather bad start to the new decade: As of January 1, the Blasphemy Law is in effect.

That means it is now illegal to say anything that is ”grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”

My family and I came to Ireland because we sought freedom in relation to homeschooling. But if anything, I’m even more passionate about freedom of speech than about freedom of education.

Not to mention that religious people can be very quick to regard something as blasphemy and take deep offense. After all, some of the things Jesus said were considered blasphemy by his fellow Jews.

Doesn’t the above description fit Jesus all too well? According to the Gospels, Jesus definitely said things that were “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.”

Has the Irish government forgotten that most essential aspect of Jesus’ life, namely the fact that he was crucified – crucified for having offended religious sentiments?

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that a country that claims to be inspired by Jesus now takes the side of his opponents. But, alas, history is full of such irony, not least Christian history.

Prayer in School

How TV Provides Nutritional “Education”

Here are some amazing (and very sad) facts:

I just learned that by the time the average American graduates from high school, he or she has watched 360,000 ads on television. Yes, three-hundred-sixty-thousand.

The majority of these are food ads, and now here it comes: 95 % of the advertised foods are actually unhealthy. Speak of nutritional education, or rather indoctrination. A bad ad or two might not influence a person right away, but thousands and thousands of junk-food ads? Who can withstand that kind of brainwashing, especially as a child?

Clearly, laissez-faire capitalism doesn’t have the answers here.