St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures

Greenfield Library

Recordings of lectures from St. John's College's Annapolis campus. The recordings include lectures in the Formal Lecture Series, Graduate Institute Wednesday Night Lecture Series, and the annual Erik S. Kristensen Memorial Lecture. The recordings are also available on the College's Digital Archives where you'll find many more lectures not yet available here.

  1. -3 J

    Between the Book of Nature and the Phenomena: regarding the Origins of Galileo’s Natural Philosophy (Joseph Macfarland)

    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."

    1 h 11 min

  2. 16 OCT.

    A Timely Untimely Education (Sarah Davis)

    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."

    50 min

  3. 25 SEPT.

    The Womb of Time: Drama as Pregnancy in Shakespeare and Elsewhere (Nicholas Bellinson)

    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."

    57 min

  4. 18 SEPT.

    Deception and Self-Deception in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (Thomas Merrill)

    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."

    1 h 7 min

  5. 8 SEPT.

    A Meditation on Multiplication (Suzy Paalman)

    Recording of a lecture delivered on August 22, 2025, by Annapolis President Suzy Paalman as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Ms. Paalman offers the following description: 'We learn as young children that multiplication is taking a number a certain number of times, to form the times tables. As we learn more, the meaning of multiplication subtly changes, even as the methods of doing actual problems don't really change much. For instance, we learn early on to multiply length by width to find the area of a rectangle. How is finding the area of a shape related to taking numbers a certain number of times? This naive question will lead us to ask about the relation between number and magnitude, using Euclid and Descartes for help. In the end, our inquiry will come to mathematics as a discipline. The question, "What is multiplication?" will lead us, in the end, to the question, "What is mathematics?"' Ms. Paalman's lecture is the first formal lecture of the academic year. Previously referred to as the Dean's Lecture, this lecture is now called the Christopher B. Nelson Lecture.

    58 min

  6. 25 AOÛT

    Madness/Enchantment: Don Quixote and the Contest of the Real (Nicholas Bellinson)

    Recording of a lecture delivered on August 30, 2024, by Annapolis tutor Nicholas Bellinson as part of the Formal Lecture Series.

    53 min

  7. 18 AOÛT

    Music: The Representative Liberal Art (Wye Allanbrook and Eva Brann)

    Recording of a lecture delivered on September 2, 1988, by Annapolis tutors Wye Allanbrook and Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. This lecture was the first for the 1988-1989 academic year, at the time called the Dean's Lecture. Note: The recording begins after the start of the lecture and the first sentence is cut off. A typescript of the complete lecture is available on the St. John's College Digital Archives.

    1 h 14 min

  8. 11 AOÛT

    Investigating Philosophical Investigations (Howard Zeiderman)

    Recording of a lecture delivered on May 19, 1978, by Howard Zeiderman as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Zeiderman is now a tutor emeritus at St. John's College.

    1 h 5 min
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Recordings of lectures from St. John's College's Annapolis campus. The recordings include lectures in the Formal Lecture Series, Graduate Institute Wednesday Night Lecture Series, and the annual Erik S. Kristensen Memorial Lecture. The recordings are also available on the College's Digital Archives where you'll find many more lectures not yet available here.

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