Braniff Core Curriculum

The study of a "core curriculum," or a selection of classic texts, is the primary focus of study within the Institute of Philosophic Studies. Each of the works read in the Program is distinguished by its extraordinary power to illumine reflective minds through an exploration of the human soul at the deepest moral and metaphysical plane.

Core Reading List

Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Job, Psalms (1, 2, 22, 23, 29, 37, 47, 51, 53, 73, 95, 110, 130, 146-150), Isaiah, Matthew, John, Romans, Corinthians I and II, Revelation

Homer: Iliad

Plato: Republic

Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics

Vergil: Aeneid

Augustine: Confessions

Bernard: On the Necessity of Loving God

Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, 1-5 (Questions on Theology and God); I-II, 90-110, 112-113 (Questions on Law and Grace)

Dante: Divina Commedia

Machiavelli: The Prince

Luther: Freedom of a Christian

Council of Trent: On Justification

Descartes: Meditations

Shakespeare: Hamlet, Tempest, King Lear

Rousseau: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit

Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals

Newman: Essay on the Development of Doctrine

Dostoevski: Brothers Karamazov

Heidegger: Being and Time

Documents of Vatican II: "On Revelation," "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," "The Church in the Modern World," and "On Religious Freedom."

Core Course Work

In an effort to bring concentration disciplines into dialogue with each other, a common core of course work was established. Occupying twenty one hours in the doctoral curriculum, it comprises courses that engage fundamental texts, principles, and issues that are formative of the literary, political and philosophical strains in the Western intellectual tradition. The six required Core Courses are:

8311 HOMER and VERGIL
A study of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer and Vergil's Aeneid

8321 PLATO and ARISTOTLE
Careful reading of seminal texts by two thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy

8326 AUGUSTINE and AQUINAS
A study of the two giant Christian thinkers. Readings include Confessions, City of God, and the Summa Theologiae

8341 DANTE and MILTON
A reading of Dante's The Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost

8342 HOBBES and ROUSSEAU
A study of the Leviathan and Emile contrasting their positions on modernity

8352 HEGEL, NIETZSCHE and DOSTOEVSKY
A study of three thinkers in transition between modernity and postmodernity