The Core Curriculum

Texts in the Common Core Curriculum

The Bible
Homer: Iliad, Odyssey
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides
Sophocles: Oedipus The Tyrant, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
Euripides: Bacchae
Aristophanes: Frogs, Clouds
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
Parmenides: On Nature
Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic
Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, On the Soul, Metaphysics, Poetics
Vergil: Aeneid
Livy: The Early History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita, Books 1-5)
Augustine: Confessions
Boethius: On the Consolation of Philosophy
Beowulf
Einhard: Life of Charlemagne
Aquinas: On Being and Essence, Summa Theologiae (selections: Treatises On Happiness, On Man, On Law)
Dante: The Divine Comedy
Everyman & The Second Shepherd’s Play
Machiavelli: The Prince
More: Utopia
Luther: The Freedom of a Christian
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
Marlowe: Dr. Faustus
Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Merchant of Venice, Tempest
Descartes: Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy
Milton: Paradise Lost
Kant: What is Enlightenment? A Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Diderot: Encyclopedie
Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Jefferson: A Summary View of the Rights of British America
The Declaration of Independence
The United States Constitution
Hamilton, Jay, and Madison: The Federalist Papers
Franklin: Autobiography
Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France
Hegel: Phenomenology of the Spirit
Austen: Mansfield Park
Tocqueville: Democracy in America
Lincoln: Selected Speeches
Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Stanton: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
Landmark Supreme Court Decisions
Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto
Melville: Moby Dick
Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals
Adams: The Education of Henry Adams
Heidegger: What is Metaphysics? The Question Concerning Technology
Faulkner: Go Down, Moses
King: Letter from a Birmingham Jail