Socratic Paths with Jason Happel

Sundays, June 7-August 30, 9:30-10:45 am

Register here

Socratic Paths is a series of summer reading sessions. Careful reading and conversing is an enjoyable way to cultivate thoughtful communication, placing responsibility on learners to be in dialogue with the text and with each other. “Paths” implies a pluralistic reading agenda, that is at once aware of the variety of guides to perplexity and that honors the horizon within which we live. Socrates did not write books, but he read books: he said "just as another is pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even greater degree by good friends... And reading together [we] go through the treasures of the wise of old which they left behind written in books; and if we see something good, we pick it out, and hold it as a great gain…" There’s no mystical or esoteric formula for enlightenment here; just the recognition that reading and conversing is good for the soul. It’s even better than chicken soup.

Please register for any one, or all of the three, shared inquiry groups that begin each month.

Click HERE for more information. Questions? Contact Jason Happel.

June 7, 14, 21, 28, July 5, 12, 19 - "Socratic Paths: Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker.” Participants are invited to walk daily, reflect on solitude, and read the assigned promenade during the week. July 26 "Socratic Paths: Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.” How can our solitude (reading, thinking, walking in nature, à la Rousseau and Thoreau) be a source of social justice? August 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 "Socratic Paths: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice” One act per week over five weeks.