The Fundamentals program is designed to enable interested students to concentrate on certain fundamental questions of human existence and certain fundamental books that articulate and speak to these questions. It seeks to foster precise and thoughtful pursuit of basic questions by means of (1) rigorous training in the interpretation of important texts, supported by (2) extensive training in at least one foreign language, and by (3) the acquisition of the knowledge, approaches, and skills of conventional disciplines: historical, religious, literary, scientific, political, and philosophical. By focusing on basic issues and texts, it offers an alternative to the more disciplinary and methodological emphases of other undergraduate programs.

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 general education courses, 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 is not 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 is 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 is 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 is interviewed and counseled in order to discover those students whose interests and intellectual commitments would seem to be best served by this program. Students are admitted on the basis of the application statement, interviews, and previous performance.

1. Required Introductory Sequence (2). A two-quarter sequence, open to second- and third-year students, serves as the introduction to the concentration. It sets 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 is taught by a different faculty member; each course is 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 is the study and learning of six classic texts. Late in the second year, each student, with the help of a faculty adviser, begins to develop a list of six texts. The list grows 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 are usually 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 write term papers in each of their text courses. These are carefully and thoroughly criticized by the responsible faculty members. The books taught come from a variety of times and places, East and West, and the selections reflect both the judgments and preferences of the faculty and the different interests and concerns of the students. Normally, six text courses are required for the degree (in addition to the introductory sequence). At the end of the fourth year, students take a Fundamentals examination on the books they have selected (consult following section on Fundamentals Examination).

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 ordinarily requires two years (i.e., one year beyond the College language 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 are selected with the help of the advisers.

5. Electives. Please refer to the Four-Year Curriculum section, under the Sample Programs heading (consult following section on Sample Programs).

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 is examined on the six fundamental texts he has chosen. Preparation for this examination allows students to review and integrate their full course of study. During a three-day period, students 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.

General
Education

† Credit may be granted by examination.

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 can 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.

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; a 3.25 grade point average is roughly the floor, but because some course work may be ungraded, the grade point average standard cannot be stated precisely.

Advising. Each student has his own faculty adviser, a member in the program chosen from those with whom the student works most closely. The adviser closely monitors the student's choice of texts, courses, and language studies, allowing for the gradual development of a fitting and coherent program. The faculty adviser supervises and is one of the readers of the junior paper and is 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 general education requirements are labeled (GE). Courses that are underlined fulfill requirements of the Fundamentals concentration. The Fundamentals concentration program comprises fifteen courses, over and above the fifteen courses constituting the College-wide general education requirement. Yet of these fifteen concentration 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. A student interested in Fundamentals is well advised to take Humanities and a language (GE) in the freshman year.

First year
	Humanities Common Core (GE)	3
	Social Sciences Common Core (GE)	3
	Physical Sciences or Biological Sciences Common Core or Mathematics (GE)	3
	Foreign Language I (GE)	3
		12

Second year
	Introductory Fundamentals Sequence	2
	Physical Sciences or Biological Sciences Common Core or Mathematics (GE)	3
	Foreign Language II	3
	Civilization Sequence (GE)	3
	Text Course	1
		12

Third year
	Text Courses	3
	Supporting Courses	2
	Musical, Visual, or Dramatic Arts (GE)	2
	Electives*	2
		9

Fourth year
	Text Courses	2
	Supporting Courses	2
	Electives*	5
		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, and 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.

The faculty of the Fundamentals program comprises humanists and social scientists, representing interests and competencies in both the East and the West and scholarship in matters ancient and modern. This diversity and pluralism exists within a common agreement about the primacy of fundamental questions and the centrality of important books and reading them well. The intention is for the students to see a variety of serious men and women presenting their approach to and understanding of books which they love, which they know well, and which are central to their ongoing concerns. The members of the Fundamentals faculty are

204. Rousseau's Confessions (=Fndmtl 204, Hist 545, SocTh 552). PQ: Consent of instructor. A close reading of Rousseau's Confessions that investigates the conception of personality. K. Weintraub. Winter.

205. Goethe's Poetry and Truth (=Fndmtl 205, Hist 546, SocTh 553). PQ: Consent of instructor. A close reading of Goethe's From My Life (Aus meinem Leben: Dictung und Wahrheit) that investigates the conception of personality. K. Weintraub. Spring.

206. George Bernard Shaw: Man and Superman and St. Joan (=Eng 208, Fndmtl 206, Hum 206). This course focuses on witty and moving dramas among characters engaged in confusing contemporary problems of politics, society, money, war, religion, sex, and language. S. Tave. Winter.

207. Aquinas on God, Being, and Evil. This course considers sections from Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. Among the topics considered are whether God exists; the relationship between God, existence, and the real; and the origin and nature of evil. S. Meredith. Winter.

210. Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients (=Fndmtl 210, SocTh 342). A close reading of the text. R. Lerner. Autumn.

211. Augustine's Confessions: Ancient Autobiography and Contemporary Biography (=Fndmtl 211, Hum 227, RelHum 227, SocSci 207). A seminar class in which Augustine's Confessions and parts of Peter Brown's biography are read and discussed in depth. There are a few brief lectures, but our emphasis is on discussion of the readings. A. Carr. Winter.

213. James Joyce's Ulysses. Class limited to twenty students. In this course we consider James Joyce's Ulysses. Among the themes considered are the problems of exile, homelessness, and nationality; the mysteries of paternity; the mystery of maternity; the meaning of the Return; Joyce's epistemology and his use of dream, fantasy, and hallucination; and Joyce's experimentation and use of language. S. Meredith. Spring.

216. Augustine's City of God (=ClCiv 238/338, Fndmtl 216). The object of the course is to study, book by book, the argument Augustine unfolds about Rome and classical culture in City of God. Discussion of the text is supplemented by lectures and secondary readings concerning the establishment of Christianity, the condition of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, and Augustine's career as a Christian bishop and controversialist. Text in English. P. White. Spring.

219. Milton's Paradise Lost (=Fndmtl 219, Hum 208, Id/Met 319). This course is based on a close reading of Milton's Paradise Lost with emphasis on the poem's redefinition of heroic virtue and on the text's engagement with issues of family, politics, history, psychology, and theology. W. Olmsted. Autumn.

231. Short Stories: Fitzgerald and Hemingway (=Fndmtl 231, Hum 205). Many of the short stories of these two authors are gems: beautifully crafted, compactly expressive, and often profound in implication. We read a representative number of stories to see how they express the author's aesthetic and philosophical view of being. Among the stories we read are Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Rich Boy," "The Bridal Party," and "Babylon Revisited"; and Hemingway's "Indian Camp," "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," "The End of Something," "The Three-Day Blow," "Big Two-Hearted River," "A Clean and Well-Lighted Place," and "The Killers." E. Wasiolek. Autumn.

236. Selected Topics: The Kamasutra and the Laws of Manu (=DivHR 321, Fndmtl 236, GendSt 258, SoAsia 257). We discuss religion, sex, and politics in ancient India based on readings in the Kamasutra and The Laws of Manu. Texts in English. W. Doniger. Autumn.

241. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (=Fndmtl 241, Hum 210, Russ 246). Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov's modernist masterpiece, written at the height of the Stalinist terror in the 1930s, is much more than a satire or exposé of the absurdity and brutality of that era. It is also a dramatic love story, a comic fantasy, and a highly idiosyncratic work of theology. In interprojecting Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' death and Stalin's Moscow, the novel probes questions of truth, morality, and responsibility on every conceivable level: from the most mundane actions in our everyday lives to politics, metaphysics, the roles of Jesus and Satan in the cosmos (even the ethics of writing novels themselves). The Master and Margarita presents itself as a latter-day Gospel, even as it mocks its own pretensions. D. Powelstock. Autumn.

246. The Radicalism of Job and Ecclesiastes (=Fndmtl 246, Hum 235, JewStd 235). Both Job and Ecclesiastes dispute a central doctrine of the Hebrew Bible, namely, the doctrine of retributive justice. Each book argues that a person's fate is not a consequence of his or her religio-moral acts and thus the piety, whatever else it is, must be disinterested. In brief, the authors of Job and Ecclesiates, each in his own way, not only "de-mythologizes," but "de-moralizes" the world. Theological and philosophical implications are discussed. Texts in English. H. Moltz. Spring.

249. Gandhi (=Fndmtl 249, PolSci 245/359). Course readings deal with Gandhi's life (including his autobiography), texts that articulate his thought and practice, and critical and interpretative works that assess his meaning and influence. Topics include nonviolent collective action in pursuit of truth and justice, strategy for cooperation and conflict resolution, and alternatives to industrial society and centralized state. L. Rudolph. Not offered 1999-2000; will be offered 2000-2001.

*254. Shakespeare: King Lear. PQ: Completion of the general education requirement in humanities. Required of new Fundamentals concentrators; open to others by consent of instructor. A close reading and discussion of the play. Special attention is given to the nature of tragedy. A. Kass. Autumn.

255. Austen: Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion (=Fndmtl 255, GendSt 255, Hum 255, Id/Met 355). The course considers three novels by Jane Austen in terms of how they treat gender, class, socioeconomic circumstances, family structure, and geographical places as constraining and facilitating the agency of characters. In responding to change, Austen's characters bridge differences of class, gender, family history, and geographical place to form friendships and marriages that change their self-understandings and capacities for productive social and personal activities. We will discuss Austen's representations of evolving selves and how they develop or fail to develop growing powers of agency as they respond to historical and socioeconomic circumstances. W. Olmsted. Winter.

256. Aristotle's Politics (=Fndmtl 256, Hum 256, Id/Met 316, LL/Soc 278). Special attention is given to the problems Aristotle thought important to consider and why they continue to be problems which are worthy of attention. Of particular interest is the manner in which politics is distinct from but interrelated with many other enterprises and the shaping of the inquiry as a deliberation which is meant to eventuate in choices by the readers. D. Smigelskis. Autumn.

257. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (=Eng 155, Fndmtl 257). PQ: Knowledge of Middle English or of Chaucer's poetry not required. We examine Chaucer's art as revealed in selections from The Canterbury Tales. Our primary emphasis is on a close reading of individual tales, although we also pay attention to Chaucer's sources and to other medieval works providing relevant background. C. von Nolcken. Winter.

258. The Federalist Papers (=Fndmtl 258, Hum 258, Id/Met 372, LL/Soc 279). This text is the first sustained commentary on the U.S. Constitution. It assumes that the Constitution is not self-interpreting. As such it is read in its entirety as an introduction to the problems and possibilities of both the specifics talked about and the more generic features of a certain type of text. In addition, it is argued that much of what is provided, especially in the first fifty-one of the total eighty-four papers, is meant to be relevant to an appreciation of considerations appropriate to the making, more generally, of certain kinds of practical decisions. Context for these activities is provided as needed in the form of background data as well as some other texts of the same period which deal with the same kinds of problems and activities. D. Smigelskis. Spring.

259. George Eliot: Middlemarch (=Fndmtl 259, Hum 224). PQ: Completion of the general education requirement in humanities. Eliot's novel of early nineteenth-century life in and around the small English town of Middlemarch offers a panorama of the great variety of human types and aspirations. We proceed chronologically through the eight books of the novel, paying particular attention to the themes of human virtue and vice, courtship and marriage, science and politics, and service and heroism. A. Kass. Winter.

260. Livy's Second Punic War (=AncSt 247, ClCiv 247, Fndmtl 260). Close readings of Book 21 to 30, with emphasis on how Livy uses narrative technique to construct an imperial ideology suitable to his contemporary audiences; Barthes' Mythologies is studied concurrently. Texts in English. W. R. Johnson. Spring.

265. Zola and Dostoevsky on Crime and Retribution (=Fndmtl 265, Hum 246). This course consists of close reading and discussion of two European classics written independently from each other on a similar themes: Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1868) and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866). Both are, in a sense, precursors of the detective novel, except that the criminals rather than the detectives are the protagonists. Both are examples of extreme positions taken on transgression: Zola represents a materialistic, "scientific," and Dostoevsky a spiritual, Christian view of human behavior. Both represent thus fundamental texts in expressing these fundamentally opposed points of view. P. Dembowski. Spring.

270. The Brothers Karamazov (=Fndmtl 270, Hum 233, Russ 243). PQ: Knowledge of Russian not required. Close reading and discussion of the primary text: Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in English translation (Norton Critical Edition). Students are asked to prepare one background reading in advance: Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. Emphasis is on moral, intellectual, and religious issues and, to a lesser extent, on novelistic technique. Discussion, oral reports, papers. Text in English. N. Ingham. Winter.

*275. Required Introductory Sequence: On Love. Required of new Fundamentals concentrators; open to others by consent of instructor. In this course we examine the nature and significance of love as described in Dante's La Vita Nuova and in Marcel Proust's Swann's Way. S. Meredith. Winter.

282. Leadership: Ancient and Modern (=Fndmtl 282, PolSci 236/336). A reading of two of the classic treatments of political leadership: Machiavelli's The Prince and Xenophon's The Education of Cyrus. We consider such issues as the qualities needed to acquire, maintain, and increase political power; the relations between leaders and their followers; the relations between political and military leadership or, more broadly, between war and politics; the roles of morality and religion in politics; and the differences between legitimate and tyrannical rule. N. Tarcov. Autumn.

287. Henry James: The Wings of the Dove (=DivRL 222, Eng 206, Fndmtl 287, GS Hum 222). Class limited to twelve students. A close reading of the novel together with other materials by James (e.g., stories, essays, notebook entries, letters, and prefaces). The course involves inquiry into questions of selfishness and self-abnegation, and love and death. We also discuss the ethics of writing, interpretation, and intimate relations. M. Krupnick. Spring.

292. Political Philosophy: Aristotle (=Fndmtl 292, LL/Soc 292, PolSci 315). PQ: Consent of instructor. This course is a detailed study of Aristotle's Politics. J. Cropsey. Winter.