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I was about to say something along the lines you did. The idea behind a curriculum like this is that, after studying the Greeks, you will be far better equipped

I was about to say something along the lines you did. The idea behind a curriculum like this is that, after studying the Greeks, you will be far better equipped to grapple with something like “post-sexual revolution gender politics” than a graduate of a more mainstream school who majored in gender studies or something. The problems never change, only the labels we attach to them. The thing is to know how to think and how to talk.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Right, it's about foundational concepts and frameworks. Sure you can jump to Rawls (not that the folks who've been arrested so far back that a skim of a few pages of Plato would be enlightening are likely to have done that, either) but you'll miss a bunch and won't wrestle with him as well, if you do. You can always read him, and de Beauvoir, and et c., et c., later—and you'll be so much better equipped to read them if you've got a half-decent foundation in the basics, in the very language and idiom, of intellectual Western (at least) writing—of how to read, how to really read—first. There's nothing stopping you from digging deep into modern social justice or anti-colonialism or whatever after you graduate—and I'd wager St. John's grads are more likely to do exactly that, and to do so more profitably, than most. Anyway, it's not as if either of those began in the 20th century....