St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures

Recording of a lecture delivered on February 6, 2026, by Annapolis tutor Janet Dougherty, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Ms. Dougherty offers the following description of her lecture: "Usbek, the most prolific writer in Montesquieu’s epistolary novel The Persian Letters, is in voluntary exile from his homeland and his harem. During his sojourn in Europe his perspective as a stranger provides the freedom he needs to develop an understanding of good government completely different from Persian despotic rule. His ideas cohere into a sort of Cartesian political science. But while these ideas diverge continually from an endorsement of despotism, he feels more and more compelled to impose his will on his wives and their guards. Usbek’s hope to be loved by the women he oppresses endures alongside his enlightened views of law and government. Eventually his wives openly rebel; the collapse of the seraglio leads to Usbek’s collapse. I will argue that Usbek’s blindness to his despotic authority derives from his Cartesian method of inquiry. His enlightenment is linked by ‘a secret chain’ to his deepest prejudice. Montesquieu is pointing to a more thorough science of human, i.e. erotic, beings."

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 18, 1992, by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Recording of a lecture delivered on December 9, 2026, by Annapolis Assistant Dean Ron Haflidson, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Haflidson offers the following description of his lecture: "In Genesis, when the Man first meets the Woman, he says: 'This one at last, bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh…'. Then, the narrator adds, 'Therefore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they become one flesh.' In The Symposium, Aristophanes offers this pithy summary of the origin of love: 'Before…we were one, but now, because of our injustice, we have been split up and scattered by the god…We were whole, and the name for our yearning for and pursuit of wholeness is Love.' Both stories identify three moments in eros. First, in the present, there is an encounter with another with whom one feels an immediate and intense unity. Second, that experience of unity is partially explained by a strange, forgotten past. And then, third, that experience becomes a task for the future, as the lovers labor to make it an ongoing, sustained reality. Despite this cluster of similarities, there is also a difference with much at stake: in Genesis, the erotic heroes are a married man and woman, while Aristophanes most praises the intergenerational male couple. In terms of what it’s like to be in love, these two stories share much in common, but when it comes to judging which couple best fulfills the potential of eros, they diverge. A guiding question of this inquiry, then, is what criteria are at work in making these judgments?"

Recording of a lecture delivered on November 14, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Matthew Linck, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Professor Shiffman offers the following description of his lecture: "Our encounter with Matisse will be an occasion to think about learning. Paintings look like themselves, but they can remind us of other things (for example, other paintings). Aristotle says that when we see this as that, we learn. The “this is that” moment happens spontaneously; but we can also seek it out—seek learning—and ask, “What does this look like?” This requires looking around, searching for likenesses and making connections. But even if one painting reminds us of others, by looking like many others, that which a painting most looks like is itself. And so this requires us to think about what it means to see one painting by itself and what that would mean for learning. Matisse will help us with this question, and thus help us with a question about contemplation."

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 24, 2025, by Professor Mark Shiffman, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.Mark Shiffman (A89) is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at Saint Patrick’s Seminary in California and Director of the Institute for Philosophy, Technology, and Politics. He is the author of What is Ideology, with scholarly work spanning the fields of ancient philosophy, political theory, and the Catholic tradition. 

Professor Shiffman offers the following introduction to his lecture: "Ambition, competition, dignity, and pride are phenomena central to an adequate political psychology. Plato calls the root source of these passions thumos and Rousseau calls it amour-propre. Can both the commonalities and the differences between what the two authors mean by these words help illuminate the political developments of our time?"

Recording of a lecture delivered on October 10, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Khafiz Kerimov, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Kerimov offers the following description: The final lines of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are not his own. Hegel ends the book with a quotation from Friedrich Schiller’s poem "Friendship" ("Freundschaft")—and misquotes it in a number of ways. Hegel's closing gesture invites a range of questions: why conclude with a quotation at all? Why a poetic one, and why Schiller’s "Friendship" in particular? Why misquote Schiller's poem? While I will touch on all of these questions in my lecture, my chief goal is to examine how this misquotation operates as the culminating moment of the Phenomenology and how it fulfills the book’s overarching project.

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 26, 2025, by Annapolis Dean Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Macfarland offers the following description: "According to Galileo, the grand book of the universe standing before our eyes is written in the language of mathematics, in the characters of geometrical figures. On account of this conception of nature as fundamentally mathematical, he is taken to be a sort of founder of modern science and philosophy. By one account, the subsequent rapid progress of mathematical methods entails a forgetfulness of, or distrust of, mere appearances. The things known objectively, that is, mathematically, are not what they seem. This way of thinking seems fitting to the replacement of the Ptolemaic system by the Copernican one. The lecture will consider a few examples of how Galileo takes in what is before his eyes and thinks about it, and it will consider some limits to his efforts to account for phenomena mathematically. These characteristics of his natural philosophy will be viewed within the context of his attempt to secure a freedom to philosophize. The lecture will focus on his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, with attention to his letter to Christina of Lorraine. No familiarity with either text will be presupposed."

Video recording of a lecture delivered on September 19, 2025, by Santa Fe Dean Sarah Davis.

Ms. Davis offers the following description: "I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.” Nietzsche opens The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life with this quote from Goethe.  It appropriately frames Nietzsche’s own meditation, which does not just walk us through different ways to relate to the past, giving us a schema for making sense of history, but invigorates and leads to a quickening within us. But how?  This lecture investigates Nietzsche's claim that the "excess of history" in modern times compromises the health and vitality of human life. It then considers The Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life itself as presenting an alternative way to relate to history. Finally, it asks how, if at all, this alternative informs a St. John's education."

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 12, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Nicholas Bellinson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

Mr. Bellinson offers the following description of his lecture: "What kind of relationship to time underlies the urge to attend the theater? Shakespeare points to this question in various plays through the metaphor of time's pregnancy. Over and over, his characters stage this very relationship to time, as we will see in four plays: Othello, Hamlet, As You Like It, and Love's Labour's Lost. We will then ask what philosophical attitudes arise when we consider time to have or not to have the metaphorical capacity for pregnancy."

Recording of a lecture delivered on September 5, 2025, by Professor Thomas Merrill as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Thomas Merrill is an associate professor for American University’s School of Public Affairs, and the associate director for the university’s Political Theory Institute, with research interests in political science and governance. He previously served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, and his most recent book, Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment, was the winner of the Delba Winthrop Award for Best Recent Work in Political Philosophy.

Professor Merrill offers the following introduction to his lecture: "Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments seems to offer a morality perfectly suited for bourgeois modernity: secular, sympathetic, and based on our transparency to each other. Yet upon examination, Smith’s moral world is shot through with deception and self-deception on several levels. This lecture uses Smith’s treatment of deception and self-deception to uncover the narrative structure of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and highlights the idea of generative errors—mistakes and deceptions that have unintended but positive consequences—as a key theme of Smith’s thought."