Tagged: modern

Machiavelli: still shocks 5 centuries later

CC201 has started off the semester by dabbling, among other things, in Machiavelli’s The Prince. Many were acquainted with the work from their high school years, and many were not – all admit it remains potent and relevant today. This post for The National Interest highlights the way in which The Prince still shocks today. A sample: […]

Nabokov & His Literature Class

In his article titled ‘An A from Nabokov’, Edward Jay Epstein recounts his experience from Lit 311 at Cornell University, where he studied many of the works that the Core explores in CC202. Here is an extract: The professor was Vladimir Nabokov, an émigré from tsarist Russia. About six feet tall and balding, he stood, with […]

The Essay as Reality Television

Adam Kirsch discusses whether or not essays are “extinct” as a form of writing, and references Michel e Montaigne, whose work is studied in CC201. Here is a sample: The essay, traditionally, was defined by its freedom and its empiricism—qualities that it inherited from its modern inventor, Montaigne. “What do I know?” Montaigne asked, and […]

Applying Confucian Ethics to International Relations

In view of CC102’s study of the Analects of Confucius, the Core presents an interesting discussion of Confucian ethics when applied to international relations. Here is a sample: Chinese ethics is a deontological system that has a continuity spanning a range from personal to public concerns, without differentiation. A good society, a good state, and […]