Past Courses

  • John Stuart Mill: On Liberty
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke 6 Mondays, July 27 to August 31, 2010 Ever since its first appearance in 1859, Mill’s book has been generally considered the single most powerful ...
  • Foundations of Liberty or: The Intellectual Crisis of the Modern World
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke 2011-2012 The intellectual crisis of the modern world is the conflict between the physical sciences and the basic human values. Physics and chemistry, together with ...
  • The Ethical Foundations of the Market System
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Six Mondays, November 16 to December 21, 2009 The ethical foundation of the market system lies in the principle of mutual benefit. Any market transaction ...
  • An Introduction to Austrian Economics
    A Course with Patrick Barron October 1 through October 22, 2009 This course will review the tenets of classical, nineteenth-century, free market liberalism.  Starting with universally accepted laws of human action, such ...
  • The Philosophy of Aquinas
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Six Tuesdays, September 29 to November 3, 2009 After a general introduction to Aquinas, highlighting especially his relationship to Aristotle, this course will focus where ...
  • Aristotle’s Ethics
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Six Mondays, September 28 to November 2, 2009 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was the first systematic treatise on morality.  It has been the foundation of two ...
  • An Introduction to Classical Liberalism
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Six Wednesdays, Sept. 23 to Oct. 28, 2009 True or “classical” liberalism is the philosophy of the free society with free markets. This is what ...
  • Edmund Burke
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Six Sessions, July 8 through August 11, 2009 Unlike many thinkers of the Enlightenment, a movement that exalted scientific rationality, Edmund Burke saw that the ...
  • The Federalist Papers
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Tuesdays, June 2 to July 7 The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles published in 1787 and 1788, mainly in two New York ...
  • The Philosophical Basis of the Free Society: Friedrich Hayek
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke Thursdays, April 30 to June 4, Six Sessions, 2009 Does the free society, of which we are rightly so proud, rest ultimately only on its utility, ...
  • Plato’s Republic: The Right and the Good
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke Six Wednesdays, April 15 to May 20 The dialogues of Plato are the philosophical foundation of Western ethics. They have a depth both of thought and ...
  • The Foundations of Western Theology II: Aristotle
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke Tuesday evenings, March 17 to April 21, 2009 Aristotle’s distinctive conception of the nature of God and his arguments for the existence of God are great ...
  • The Real Adam Smith
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke Six Thursdays, February 26 to April 2, 2009 Adam Smith is renowned as the father of economics and also pilloried by some as the emblem of ...
  • The Foundations of Western Theology: Plato on God
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke Tuesday evenings, January 20 to February 24, 2009 The Wynnewood Institute is adding a new dimension to its work. Our previous courses have all had a ...
  • The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson
    A Course with Prof. Thomas Patrick Burke Seven Tuesdays, January 12 to February 23 “If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. ...
  • The Historical and Philosophical Origins of Social Justice
    A Course with Thomas Patrick Burke September 17 to October 22, 2008 “Social justice” has come to play a large role in our society. It produced the labor legislation of the 1930s ...
  • The East and the West
    A Course with Arthur Waldron April 24 to May 13, 2008 The Second World War taught us that Western civilization can be affected by what happens in the East.  Since the dawn ...
  • The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke April 16 to July 2, 2008 Thomas Hobbes is considered by some the greatest political philosopher to have written in the English language.  His work Leviathan, ...
  • Beauty and Its Modes 
    Spring 2007 What do we mean when we praise a landscape, a painting, a piece of music or a person as ‘beautiful’? Does this word have a single meaning, and does ...
  • Freedom and Society: Classical Liberalism in the Twentieth Century
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Spring 2007 Towards the close of the twentieth century the free society with free markets came to be accepted increasingly in the political life of ...
  • Freedom and Tradition: An Introduction to Classical Liberalism and Conservatism
    A Course with Professor Thomas Patrick Burke Fall 2006 Unlike most other countries, which owe their identity to accidents of history, the United States was founded on a definite philosophy. The philosophy reflected in ...
  • The Philosophy of Conservatism
    A Course with Professor Roger Scruton  for Philosophy and Politics Graduates at Princeton University Fall 2006 These notes summarize the material presented in a series of 12 three-hour classes. They are not scholarly, ...