PPE Reading Groups
Since the fall of 2016, student reading groups have been established to discuss classic texts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, under the auspices of our Millennial Classics initiative. Information about the organization and the reading program of the groups can be found through the links below. Details about the groups’ meetings are coordinated among members.
2023-24 Reading Groups
This fall we return to some of our original readings: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Books will be purchased by the Institute: Your task is to read and discuss!
FALL Organizational Meeting in Stubbs 216 — Wednesday, August 30, 4:30 pm
2021-22 Reading Groups
This year we return to our original set of readings: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Books will be purchased by the Institute: Your task is to read and discuss!
SPRING Organizational Meeting in Stubbs 216 or on Zoom — Wednesday, February 23, 5:30 pm
Organizational Meeting in Stubbs 216 or on Zoom — Wednesday, October 27, 5:30 pm
Protocol and Reading Suggestions
2020-21 Reading Groups
This year we continue with the theme “Revolution,” since the pandemic forced an abbreviation of last year’s reading. Books will include Paine, Common Sense or Rights of Man; Tocqueville, The Ancient Regime and the French Revolution; Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon; and Arendt, On Revolution.
Organizational Meeting on Zoom — Friday, October 23, 2:30 pm
Spring 2021 – Arendt, On Revolution
Organizational Meeting in Person and Hybrid-Zoom — Monday, March 1, 5:30 pm, Stubbs 216 (or via Zoom)
2019-20 Reading Groups
The theme this year will be “Revolution.” Books will include Paine, Common Sense; Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women; and works by Tocqueville, Marx, Arendt, and Voegelin.
2018-19 Reading Groups
Books included Plato, Republic; Machiavelli, Prince; More, Utopia. Our spring conference was held on April 5-6, 2019, on the theme, “Realism and Idealism.”
First Spring Meeting — Tuesday, January 15, 4:30 pm (216 Stubbs)
Organizational meeting — Monday, August 27, 4:30 pm (216 Stubbs)
2017-18 Reading Groups
Books included Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise Of Government, and Rousseau’s Social Contract in the fall, and in the spring John Rawls, Justice as Fairness; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia; and John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness. Our spring conference was on the theme, “Is the Social Contract Broken?” and was held April 13-14, 2018.
2016-17 Reading Groups
Books included during our first year were Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations; Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto; John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. As a culmination of the year’s activities, a conference on the last was held at LSU on March 31-April 1, 2017.
Protocol for reading Mill and Aristotle