The Humanities Reading List

Sattler College’s core curriculum in the humanities consists of four components:

1. An intensive introduction to expository writing, rhetoric, and the tradition of liberal arts education
2. A three-semester sequence of lectures and discussion-based seminars devoted to the key philosophical, literary, and artistic works of the western intellectual tradition, from Antiquity to the modern era
3. A three-semester sequence of seminars on the Old and New Testaments, the foundational texts of Christian theology, and apologetics
4. A survey of Global Christianity, equipping students with understanding of the history and life of the Church in non-western societies  

Students will grapple with the core texts that generation upon generation has returned to read – in times of war and peace, in times of plague and plenty – in order to gain special insights into our human struggles and to reclaim our highest ideals:

• The Bible
• Homer, Iliad
• Homer, Odyssey
• Aeschylus, The Oresteia
• Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
• Herodotus, Histories
• Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
• Plato, Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, The Republic
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics
• Cicero, On Duties, On the Orator
• Livy, The History of Rome
• Virgil, The Aeneid
• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, On the Shortness of Life, On Mercy, On Liberal and Vocational Studies
• Plutarch, Parallel Lives, On Listening, On Contentment
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• Athanasius, Life of St. Antony
• The Rules of St. Basil and St. Benedict
• Augustine, Confessions, City of God, On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed
• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
• Cassiodorus, Introduction to Divine and Humane Letters
• The Song of Roland
• Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion
• Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon

• Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs
• Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead
• Dante, The Divine Comedy
• Petrarch, The Ascent of Mont Ventoux, Secretum
• Boccaccio, The Decameron
• Catherine of Siena, Dialogue
• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
• Vergerio, The Character and StudiesBefitting a Free-Born Youth
• Machiavelli, The Prince
• Erasmus, Enchiridion, Paraclesis, The Complaint of Peace
• Luther, Two Kinds of Righteousness, The Freedom of a Christian, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Large Catechism
• Sattler, The Schleitheim Confession
• Calvin, The Institutes
• Ursinus, The Heidelberg Catechism
• Teresa of Avila, Autobiography
• Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians
• The Book of Common Prayer
• Shakespeare,Richard II, King Lear
• de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
• Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
• Blaise Pascal, Pensées

• Hobbes, Leviathan
• van Braght, Martyrs’ Mirror
• van Schurman, Eukleria
• Milton, Samson Agonistes
• Molière, The Misanthrope
• Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Locke, Second Treatise on Government
• Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, The Social Contract, Emile
• Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations
• Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, What is Enlightenment?
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
• Franklin, Autobiography
• Hamilton, Madison & Jay, The Federalist Papers
• Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Blake, Poems
• Wordsworth & Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads
• Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit 
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America
• Marx, Capital
• Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
• Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
• DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk