The main texts used in the St. John's Program. They are sorted by class, and then by subject.
Photocopies, manuals, and lab materials are available for students and faculty only. If you are not enrolled in a class and attempt to purchase these materials, they will be cancelled and the funds will be returned to your credit card.
Banner Message
Please note: We are working on getting our inventory accurately represented on our site while we are in our temporary location. There might be items that appear online that are not currently accesible to us to ship to you. If you order these items, you will be refunded and the rest of your order will ship. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Program Books
key issues, and its influence on later thinkers. The book also includes notes, an up-to-date bibliography, a chronology, and an index. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, the fundamental and originating work of the modern era in Western philosophy, is presented here in Donald Cress's completely revised edition of his well-established translation, bringing this version even closer to Descartes's original, while maintaining its clear and accessible style.
This edition of Mencius' works contains the complete texts of his writings in Chinese, printed in large, clear characters. It also contains the revised version of the English translation prepared by the great Sinologist James Legge.
There is a wealth of critical and scholarly material for both the beginner and advanced student: a long historical introduction, providing both cultural and philosophical background; many quotations from Confucianist and anti-Confucianist writers, annotations for difficult sections, and many other useful features. It is the fullest edition of Mencius ever prepared in English, indispensable for any Sinologist who wants an accurate text, for the philosophy student, and even for the layman who wishes to meet the remarkably clear profundities of Mencius' thought.
Today the thought of Mencius is of importance beyond its circumstances of origin. Mencius proposed a humanitarian, common-sense philosophy which, paradoxically, stressed the rights of the individual against the state. Mencius created a sensation when he declared that unjust rulers could be deposed, and challenged the evil result of misused power.
Plato is a major figure in the history of Western philosophy, and these dialogues are an essential part of his work. Robin Waterfield is an acclaimed translator of Plato, Euripedes, Plutarch, and Aristotle. The introduction and notes explain the course of the four dialogues and analyze the philosophical importance of Socrates' questions and arguments, providing an invaluable aid to understanding for student and non-specialist alike. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Meno
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
COMPLETE ANCIENT CLASSICS
Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato.
This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias? 'O yes--nothing easier: there is the virtue of a man, of a woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and state of life, all of which may be easily described.'
Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues and not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a second attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to this, again, exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those who obey, as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other colours.
Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato's immediate audience.
Like Shakespeare, Molière was a true man of the theatre whose comedies blend sharp insight into human nature with an unerring sense of what would work on stage and make people laugh. All his greatest achievements are included here and in the accompanying Penguin Classics volume, The Miser and Other Plays.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The annotated, authorized edition of a great literary masterpiece of the twentieth century with commentary by Women's Studies professor Bonnie Kime Scott.
This brilliant novel explores the hidden springs of thought and action in one day of a woman's life and is one of the most "moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham).
Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past--the passionate loves of her carefree youth, her practical choice of husband, and the approach and retreat of war. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.
From the introspective Clarissa, to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection, to a war-ravaged stranger in the park, the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life and reshaped English literature as we know it.
This authorized edition from the Virginia Woolf library features:
Biographical PrefaceChronologyIntroduction to the textExtensive notesSuggestions for further readingThis annotated edition is the perfect companion to more fully understand Mrs. Dalloway, its importance in twentieth century literature, and Virginia Woolf's world.
Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance-infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life-Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925, Mrs. Dalloway is Woolf's first complete rendering of what she described as the "luminous envelope" of consciousness: a dazzling display of the mind's inside as it plays over the brilliant surface and darker depths of reality.
This edition uses the text of the original British publication of Mrs. Dalloway, which includes changes Woolf made that never appeared in the first or subsequent American editions.
The authorized, original edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece and one of the most "moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century" (Michael Cunningham), with a foreword by Maureen Howard.
In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman's life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past--the passionate loves of her carefree youth, her practical choice of husband, and the approach and retreat of war. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices that brought her there, hesitantly looking ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old.
From the introspective Clarissa, to the lover who never fully recovered from her rejection, to a war-ravaged stranger in the park, the characters and scope of Mrs. Dalloway reshape our sense of ordinary life and reshaped English literature as we know it.
"Perhaps her masterpiece...Exquisite and superbly constructed...Required like most writers to choose between the surface and the depths as the basis of her operations, she chooses the surface and then burrows in as far as she can." -E. M. Forster
Two-column format
Glossary with 200 key words and concepts
1,263 pp.
Richard Lattimore, among the most distinguished translators of the Greek classics, concluded late in his life one of his most ambitious projects - a complete translation of the New Testament. This New Testament is itself a classic of another kind - the words of the gospel and the apostles presented for the modern reader in fresh English by a writer without pretensions as a biblical scholar, who was an authority on the Greek language in which these texts have come down to us.
The Nicomachean Ethics is one of Aristotle's most widely read and influential works. Ideas central to ethics--that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence--found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called "the Philosopher." Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering.
Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary providing context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole. The Nicomachean Ethics has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations--of peoples ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish--and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.