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While not an exhaustive list, these works are required in their respective Great Books (GBK) courses.

GBK 101: Among Gods and Heroes

HOMER: The Iliad and The Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus the King and Antigone or Oedipus at Colonus
THUCYDIDES: History of the Peloponnesian War
PLATO: Euthyphro and Apology

GBK 202: Classical Cultures

PLATO: The Republic and Meno
ARISTOTLE: Nicomachean Ethics
EUCLID: The Elements (selections)
VIRGIL: The Aeneid

GBK 203: The Hebrew and Christian Traditions

HEBREW BIBLE: Genesis 1-11, Exodus 1-24, Jeremiah 1-33, Isaiah 40-55 and Job
NEW TESTAMENT: Two Gospels, Galatians, and Romans
AUGUSTINE: Confessions (selections)
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica (selections)

GBK 304: Order and Ingenuity

DANTE: The Divine Comedy (selections)
CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales (selections)
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince
CERVANTES: Don Quixote (selections)
LUTHER or CALVIN: Selections
GALILEO: “The Two Chief World Systems”
MONTAIGNE: Essays (selections)

GBK 305: The Modern Worldview

SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet and King Lear
BACON: The New Organon (selections)
DESCARTES: Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Pensees (selections)
HOBBES: Leviathan (selections)
NEWTON: Selections
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
HUME: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
MILTON: Paradise Lost

GBK 306: Reason and Revolution

ROUSSEAU: The Social Contract
GOETHE: Faust
SMITH: Wealth of Nations (selections)
JEFFERSON: “Declaration of Independence”
HAMILTON: The Federalist Papers (selections)
ROMANTIC POETS: Selections
KANT: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (selections)
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America (selections)
MARX and ENGELS: The Communist Manifesto
AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion
EMERSON: Essays: First Series or THOREAU: Walden
DARWIN: The Origin of Species (selections)

GBK 407: The Age of Ambivalence

DOSTOEVSKY: The Brothers Karamazov
PEIRCE: “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”
YEATS: The Tower
MENDEL: “Experiments in Plant Hybridizations”
FREUD: Civilization and its Discontents (or another selection)
WEBER: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
NIETZSCHE: Twilight of the Idols (or another selection)
DU BOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
O’CONNOR: Selected short stories

GBK 495: Special Topics (Subtitle)

This year's topics are Marcel Proust (Fall semester with Dr. John Dunaway) and Paradise Lost (Spring semester with Dr. Rick Wilson). Other recent Special Topics Courses include Flannery O’Connor, Early Modern Allegories and Make-Believe Worlds, Soul and Conscience, The Iliad of Homer, Goethe: Poet & Scientist, Milton, Jane Austen, Walker Percy, and Narratives of Calling.

Civilization and Its Discontents is read in GBK 407: The Age of Ambivalence.

To contact us: Will R. Jordan, Director
Great Books Program ׀ Mercer University
1400 Coleman Avenue ׀ Macon, Georgia, 31207
(478) 301-2445 or (800) MERCER-U