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Fundamentals: Issues
and Texts

Program of Study

Rationale. There are fundamental questions that any thoughtful human being must seriously confront sooner or later, for example, Socrates' "What is?" questions: What is man? What is god? What is justice? or, alternatively but similarly, Kant's questions: What can I know? What ought I do? What may I hope? Such questions and others like them are often raised in the Common Core, not only in humanities and social sciences but also in the physical and biological sciences. Some students, engaged by such fundamental questions, wish to continue to explore them more thoroughly and deeply. This program enables these students to concentrate on basic questions and seeks to provide them with the wherewithal to address them on a high level.

That wherewithal is to be found in the fundamental or classic texts--literary, philosophic, religious, historical, and scientific--in which the greatest minds and teachers articulate and examine the basic questions, often in different and competing ways. These books are both timeless and timely; they not only illuminate the persisting questions of human existence but also speak to our contemporary concerns, especially as they are both the originators and the most exacting critics of our current opinions. Accordingly, these texts serve best not as authorities but as friends who present us with rich alternatives at the highest level and hence with the most provocative material for reflection.

This program emphasizes the direct and firsthand experience and knowledge of major texts, read and reread and reread again. Because they are difficult and complex, only a small number of such works can be studied. Yet the program assumes that intensively studying a profound work and incorporating it into one's thought and imagination prepares one for reading any important book or reflecting on any important question. Read rapidly, such books are merely assimilated into preexisting experience and opinions; read intensively, they can transform and deepen experience and thought.

But studying fundamental texts is, by itself, not enough. Even to understand the texts themselves, supporting studies and training are necessary: a solid foundation in at least one foreign language and in disciplines and subject matters pertinent to the student's main questions are essential parts of the concentration program. Knowledge of the historical contexts out of which certain problems emerged or in which authors wrote; knowledge of specific subject matters and methods; knowledge of the language in which a text was originally written, as well as an understanding of the shape a given language imparts to a given author or language as such to thought as such; fundamental skills of analysis, gathering evidence, reasoning, and criticism; different approaches and perspectives of conventional disciplines--all these are integral parts of the educational task.

Individual Program Design. Genuine questions cannot be given to a student; they must arise from within. For this reason, a set curriculum will not be imposed upon the student. It must answer to his interests and concerns, and begin from what is primary for him. One student may be exercised about questions of war and peace, another about the nature of man, a third about science and religion, a fourth about freedom and determinism, a fifth about distributive justice. Through close work with a suitably chosen faculty adviser, the choice of texts, text courses, and supporting courses for each student will be worked out in relation to such beginning and developing concerns. Beginning with a student's questions and interests does not, however, imply an absence of standards or rigor; this program will be most demanding.

Application to the Program. Students should apply in the spring quarter of their first year to enter the program in their second year; the goals and requirements of the program are best met if students spend three years in the concentration. Applications may, however, be made during the second year as well. Each student will be interviewed and counseled in order to discover those students whose interests and intellectual commitments would seem to be best served by this program. Students will be admitted on the basis of the application statement, interviews, and previous performance.

Program Requirements

1. Required Introductory Sequence (2). A two-quarter sequence, open to second- and third-year students, will serve as the introduction to the concentration. It will set a standard and a tone for the program as a whole by showing how texts can be read to illuminate fundamental questions. Each course in the sequence will be taught by a different faculty member; each course will be devoted to the close reading of one or at most two texts, chosen because they illuminate the great questions and powerfully present important and competing answers, and because they might contain the truth about, for example, nature, the soul, community, art, or the best way to live. Students should learn a variety of ways in which a text can respond to their concerns and questions and can compel consideration of its own questions and concerns.

2. Elected Text Courses (6). The central activity of the concentration will be the study and learning of six classic texts. Late in the second year, each student will, with the help of a faculty adviser, begin to develop a list of six texts. The list will grow gradually during the following year; a final list of six should be established early in the fourth year. This list should contain fundamental works in the area of the student's primary interest, but should include works which look at that interest from diverse perspectives. The texts selected will usually be studied in seminar courses offered by the faculty of the program or in courses cross-listed or approved for these purposes. Some books may, however, be prepared in reading courses or tutorials (independent study), if appropriate. Students will write term papers in each of their text courses. These will be carefully and thoroughly criticized by the responsible faculty members. The books taught will come from a variety of times and places, East and West, and the selections will reflect both the judgments and preferences of the faculty and the different interests and concerns of the students. Normally, six text courses will be required for the degree (in addition to the introductory sequence). At the end of the fourth year, students will take a Fundamentals examination on the books they have selected (see below).

3. Foreign Language (6). Each student in the program is expected to achieve a level of competence in a foreign language sufficient to enable him to study in the original language (other than English) one of the texts on his examination list. Achieving the necessary competence will ordinarily require two years (that is, one year beyond the College general education requirement) of formal language instruction (with an average grade of B- or better) or its equivalent. In addition, each student must show that he has in fact used foreign language skills in studying one of the fundamental texts. In some cases, a student who has successfully completed at least one year of formal language instruction may arrange to study his chosen text in a tutorial or reading course with a member of the faculty, thereby concurrently developing further his language competence and may petition to have such work count toward the fulfillment of the foreign language requirement.

4. Elected Supporting Courses (4). Appropriate courses in relevant disciplines and subject matters will be selected with the help of the advisers.

5. Electives. Please refer to the Four-Year Curriculum section, under the Sample Programs heading (see below).

B. The Junior Paper. The junior paper occupies a unique and highly important place in the program because it provides the only opportunity for the student to originate and formulate a serious inquiry into an important issue arising out of his work and to pursue the inquiry extensively and in depth in a paper of about twenty to twenty-five pages. At every stage in the preparation of the paper, the student is expected to work closely with his faculty adviser. Normally, students elect to register for one course of independent study in the quarter in which they write and rewrite the paper. Acceptance of a successful junior paper is a prerequisite for admission to the senior year of the program.

C. Fundamentals Examination. Sometime in the spring quarter of the senior year, each student will be examined on the six fundamental texts he has chosen. Preparation for this examination will allow students to review and integrate their full course of study. During a three-day period, students will write two substantial essays on questions designed for them by the associated faculty. The examination has a pedagogical intention, more than a qualifying one. Its purpose is to allow students to demonstrate how they have related and integrated their questions, texts, and disciplinary studies.

Summary of Requirements

	2	introductory sequence
	6	elected text courses
	2-3	second year of a foreign language
	4	elected supporting courses
	-	junior paper
	-	Fundamentals examination
	14-15 (total)

Grading, Transcripts, and Recommendations. The independent study leading to the junior paper (New Collegiate Division 299) is best evaluated in faculty statements on the nature and the quality of the work. In support of the independent study grade of Pass, both the faculty supervisor and the second reader of the paper are asked to submit such statements to student files maintained in the Office of the New Collegiate Division. Other independent study courses may be taken on a Pass/No Pass basis (New Collegiate Division 299) or for a "quality grade" (New Collegiate Division 297); students must write a term paper for any independent study courses taken for a "quality grade." Students should request statements of reference from faculty with whom they have worked in all their independent study courses.

At the student's request, the registrar will include the following statement with each transcript:

The New Collegiate Division works with a small, selected group of students. There is less emphasis on letter grades than in other Collegiate Divisions and greater emphasis on independent work (New Collegiate Division 299), including substantial papers submitted at the end of the junior and senior years. Students do some substantial portion of their work in close association with a tutor or tutors, and this work is graded Pass/No Pass only. Grades are supplemented with qualitative statements available from the Master, New Collegiate Division, The University of Chicago, 5811 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637.

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Honors. Honors are awarded by the Fundamentals faculty to students who have performed with distinction in the program. Special attention is paid to both the junior paper and the senior examination. In addition, honors depend on the student's grades, especially in the concentration; 3.25 is roughly the floor, but because some course work may be ungraded, the grade point standard cannot be stated precisely.

Advising. Each student will have his own faculty adviser, a member in the program chosen from those with whom the student works most closely. The adviser will closely monitor the student's choice of texts, courses, and language studies, allowing for the gradual development of a fitting and coherent program. The faculty adviser will supervise and will be one of the readers of the junior paper and will be responsible for approving the final list of texts for the Fundamentals examination. The program coordinator is available for advice and consultation on all aspects of every student's program.

Sample Programs. The following sample programs show, first, a plan of a four-year curriculum, locating the concentration in the context of Collegiate requirements, and, second, illustrative courses of study within the concentration itself, indicating possible ways of connecting fundamental questions and interests to both basic texts and standard courses. These programs are merely for the purpose of illustration; many, many other variations would be possible.

Four-Year Sample Curriculum. Courses that meet College requirements are labeled (C). Courses that are underlined fulfill requirements of the Fundamentals concentration. It will be observed that the Fundamentals concentration program comprises from fourteen to fifteen courses, over and above the twenty-one courses constituting the College-wide general education requirement. Yet of these fifteen courses, only five are true requirements, that is, fixed courses that must be taken and, usually, at a prescribed time: the two-quarter introductory sequence is strictly required and prescribed for the student's first year in the program and, in most cases, a second year of foreign language study (in the language of one's choice) is also prescribed. All the remaining ten courses--text and supporting courses--are truly elective, and are freely chosen by the student with advice from his faculty adviser. Students interested in Fundamentals are well advised to take the Humanities Common Core and foreign languages in their freshman year.

First year

Humanities Common Core (C): 3

Social Sciences Common Core (C): 3 Physical Sciences or Biological Sciences Common Core or Mathematics (C): 3 Foreign Language I (C): 3

Subtotal: 12

Second year

Introductory Fundamentals Sequence: 2

Physical Sciences or Biological Sciences Common Core or Mathematics (C): 3

Foreign Language II: 3

Civilization Sequence (C): 3

Text Course: 1

Subtotal: 12

Third year

Text Courses: 3

Supporting Courses: 2

Physical Sciences or Biological Sciences Common Core or Mathematics (C): 2

Electives*: 2

Subtotal: 9

Fourth year

Text Courses: 2

Supporting Courses: 2

Musical or Visual Arts (C): 1

Electives*: 4

Subtotal: 9

Total: 42

*Normally students take one unit of independent study to write the junior paper and another to prepare for the Fundamentals examination.

Questions, Texts, and Supporting Courses. All Fundamentals students, working with their advisers, develop their own program of study. Since students come to Fundamentals with diverse questions, they naturally have diverse programs. The following programs completed by Fundamentals students may serve as examples of study in the concentration.

One student asked the question, "How does telling a story shape a life?" She studied Homer's Odyssey, Augustine's Confessions, Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, Goethe's Autobiography, Saint Teresa's Life, the Bhagavad-Gita, and studied in supporting courses, Reading and Writing Poetry (Fundamentals), Myth and Literature (German), Autobiography and Confession (Divinity School), and Comparative Approaches to Psychotherapy (Psychology).

A second student asked a question about the ethics of violence, "Is there a just war?" He read Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, Aristotle's Ethics, the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew, the Bhagavad-Gita, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Weber's "Politics as a Vocation," and studied in supporting courses, World War II (History), The Military and Militarism (sociology), Introduction to Indian Philosophical Thought (South Asian Languages and Civilizations), and Introduction to the New Testament (Early Christian Literature).

A third Fundamentals student investigated the question, "Is the family a natural or a cultural institution?" His texts were Genesis, Homer's Odyssey, Aristotle's Politics, Aristophanes' Clouds, Sophocles' Antigone, and Rousseau's Emile. In supporting courses, he studied The Family (Sociology), Men and Women: A Literary Perspective (Fundamentals), Political Philosophy of Locke (Political Science), and Sophocles (Greek).

A fourth student, interested in natural right and natural law, read Genesis, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Ethics, Rousseau's Second Discourse, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, and the Federalist Papers. In supporting courses, he studied Machiavelli to Locke, Rousseau to Weber, and the Political Philosophy of Plato (all Political Science).

A fifth asked the question, "What is marriage?" and concentrated on these texts: Genesis, Homer's Odyssey, Sophocles' Antigone, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Goethe's Elective Affinities, and took, as supporting courses, Contemporary Ethical Theory (Philosophy), History of American Women (History), The Family (Sociology), and Sex Roles and Society (Psychology).

These programs indicate the diversity of issues and books Fundamentals represents. They are intended to suggest the cohesion of the individual program's texts and supporting courses within the context of a broad question. Obviously, many, many other programs could be devised.

Faculty

BERTRAM COHLER, William Rainey Harper Professor in the College; Professor, Departments of Psychology (Human Development), Education, and Psychiatry, and the Divinity School

WENDY DONIGER, Mircea Eliade Professor, the Divinity School, Department of South Asian Languages & Civilizations, Committee on Social Thought, and the College

CHARLES M. GRAY, Professor, Department of History and the College; Lecturer, the Law School

DAVID GRENE, Professor, Committee on Social Thought

W. R. JOHNSON, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Classical Languages & Literatures, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the College

AMY A. KASS, Senior Lecturer, Humanities Collegiate Division

LEON R. KASS, Addie Clark Harding Professor, Committee on Social Thought and the College

JOHN MACALOON, Associate Professor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division

STEPHEN C. MEREDITH, Associate Professor, Department of Pathology

WENDY RAUDENBUSH OLMSTED, Associate Professor, Division of the Humanities and the College

JAMES M. REDFIELD, Professor, Department of Classical Languages & Literatures and Committee on Social Thought; Associate Chairman, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World

WILLIAM SCHWEIKER, Assistant Professor, the Divinity School and the College

NATHAN TARCOV, Professor, Department of Political Science, Committee on Social Thought, and the College; Director, John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory & Practice of Democracy

KARL JOACHIM WEINTRAUB, Thomas E. Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Department of History, Committee on Social Thought, Committee on the History of Culture, and the College

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