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 pag

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....