The Great Books in the Bachelor of Humanities Program

A selection of the books studied in the four years of the Bachelor of Humanities Program

First Year — Ancient Religions and Cultures

Tao Te Ching Homer medea
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • The Upanisads
  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • Jayadeva, Gita Govinda
  • Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
  • Confucius, Analects
  • The Hebrew Bible
  • Homer, The Iliad
  • Homer, The Odyssey
  • Hesiod, Theogony
  • Aeschylus, The Oresteia
  • Sophocles, Antigone
  • Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
  • Euripides, Bacchae
  • Euripides, Medea
  • Aristophanes, Clouds

Second Year — Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Religion

Plato Augustine Dante
  • Plato, Apology
  • Plato, Meno
  • Plato, Symposium
  • Plato, Republic
  • Aristotle, Physics
  • Aristotle, Ethics
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses
  • Vergil, Aeneid
  • Mishnah
  • Talmud
  • The New Testament
  • Plotinus, Enneads
  • Augustine, Confessions
  • Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
  • Al-Qur’an (Koran)
  • Eriugena, Periphyseon
  • Bonaventure, The Mind’s Journey to God
  • Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
  • Dante, The Divine Comedy

Third Year — Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment

Hamlet Machiavelli Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • Petrarch, Canzoniere
  • Boccaccio, Decameron
  • Machiavelli, The Prince
  • Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
  • Castiglione, Book of the Courtier
  • Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
  • Luther, 95 Theses
  • Calvin, Institutes
  • Montaigne, Essays
  • Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem
  • Cervantes, Don Quixote
  • Sidney, Defence of Poetry
  • Bacon, Essays
  • Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
  • Shakespeare, The Tempest
  • Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Milton, Paradise Lost
  • Molière, Tartuffe
  • Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography
  • Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
  • Voltaire, Candide
  • Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew
  • Kant, What is Enlightenment?
  • Goethe, Sorrows of Young Werther
  • Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women
  • Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
  • American Declaration of Independence & Federalist Papers #10

Fourth Year — German Idealism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Globalisation

Nietzsche Heidegger Second_sex
  • Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality
  • Rousseau, Social Contract
  • Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
  • Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man
  • Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History
  • Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
  • Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto
  • Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy
  • Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
  • Hesse, Siddhartha
  • Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics
  • Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art
  • Heidegger, Essay Concerning Technology
  • Heidegger, Being and Time
  • Arendt, The Human Condition
  • Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
  • Camus, The Plague
  • Foucault, Discipline & Punish
  • Said, Orientalism
  • Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children: A Novel
  • Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries

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