some of them are funded, some are voluntary. every week, everyone who teaches a kind of class meet with everyone else who is teaching it to talk about problems. we know each other well, we irritate a few. we know our eccentricities. when push comes to shove, people are reasonable, this is a great community. that is how it looked in the beginning, that is how it looks now, we have one campus in annapolis, another one in santa fe. it is a college like no other college. all colleges say that of themselves but this one truly is. we have and all required

program, years. the teachers have to do the program, whatever their specialty was, they have to do everything that includes mathematics, laboratory science, music, language and at the center of the program, great books seminars. all of the students know what each of them is doing every morning and every evening, and they all talk to each other about it and we talked to them. >> i took a look at the reading list, there is a reading list for each year. the freshman reading list, top of the list, homer. why homer? >> this is an interesting question. i will change it a little. why homer first? it has got to be homer because

the principle i never understood, i often talk to my colleagues, why is what comes first is often so superlative, much better than thing that come after. i don't know why that should be. they do in mathematics and science, but in the arts, in literature particularly, doesn't work this way. i think anyone who has actually read homer thinks it is unsurpassed rubble. why do it first? you may have noticed the reading list is part the chronological. but that is a kind of null hypothesis, least intrusive way

of arranging books. it is not meant to show that things develop. we have some arrangements. so homer is the first written document. written home that we have. we don't even know what is written at the time. so we do it first. that is part of it. the other thing is we want to protect our students and do something strange and wonderful. get rid of all the prejudices called a formulas, say something that seems very human, but doesn't really address -- they don't look any stranger than football, the halfback.

>> homer's odyssey. what is it about? >> it is about a man who is an inspired liar, an irresistible man who is, at heart, the same kind of poet that homer himself is. in the odyssey, it is largely a recital of his affections. those are not things that actually happened. we have interpretations of things that actually happened. he is a pirate, he is a trader, he goes to many strange ports, sees strange people, and he sees them in the way poet sees them.

so homer actually turns the odyssey over to odysseus who makes it up and tells it. >> you said before that some people say it is insert passable, something that was written -- when was it written and how could it be -- >> no one really knows. the eighth century bc is what people agree on. >> how is someone in the eighth century bc able to achieve an insert passable book at that time? >> interesting question to witch there are two very divergent answers. one is that he had a great tradition, and that much of the two epics is in fact traditional and inherited, and put together from old stories and tales and so on with a lot of formulated

vocabulary. and the other answer is this is the kind of thing no one could explain. >> as i came into your house you have booked in almost every room. >> i used to spend the first week of every summer vacation building bookcases. partly, it is what we call historical, and accumulated mass. there is a rough organization, philosophy of books. these are the mathematics books, science. on the left is american history, then we have the classics. >> what about the physical way that you read?

the time of day and how you do it? is that important to you? how do you do that? >> actually, i am in this chair, i will commit an indiscretion and say very often i am in the back. incidentally -- in may look like an ordinary bathtub to me. it was done by students, it was done 40 years ago when i moved in here. not a tile has ever come loose. those are my dolphins. >> you do a lot of reading and writing here. how did that start? why do you do that? >> it is nice to levitate here.

the mind gets to work more easily when the body is floating. >> what about these -- here you are -- what was that occasion? >> that was the national a humanities of metal. here we are. a big ugly metal around my neck. >> what books do you keep in all a year? >> some of it is overflow. mostly it is psychology, cognitive science, phenomenology, philosophy, after

a while they accumulate. here they are. i can find them. the day i can't find them anymore is the day i will retire. >> so this is your first book. >> that is my first book. that is seventh century, early seventh century drinking cup, and you see a little rabbit chasing the dog. of all the books i have ever written, one of the most beautifully bound to, blue linen with gold letters, i never achieved that again. and it was a report of a certain period that i was assigned when

i was a young archaeologists in the marketplace excavations in athens. that those of great experience. i waswas of great experience. i wasa great experience. i was totally immersed in that. >> what year was that publish? >> 62. >> this is a stack of books you have written. could we maybe go down through the stack and have you briefly give a little description? >> of day. a quotation taken from augustine, to my mind, the greatest writer on time. the question that began to

preoccupying the ones weather time -- whether there is such a thing is time, because people tend to talk that way. we have to work with time as if there's something called the times. i began to be authors who wrote about time and came to the conclusion that it isn't real, it is the psychic phenomenon of memory that is involved. without memory there would be no time. there is movement. that was that book. this was a collection some friends made of essays. they are about everything. one of them is about talking

about madison's memorial, there's one on the declaration of independence. so it is a collection of various things. this one was the first book in what i thought of as a series. it is the description of life beginning with the imagination. this consists of two parts. one his reviews of what people think of the imagination. great battles about everything, the battle of the imagination, whether we have mental pictures, mental images, or whether these are phenomena ended is really

words, so i reviewed those investigations. cognitive science. then i began to think about it on my own, and have chapters on the importance of the imagination, how it helps us get through life, then i became interested in what it means to say no and talk about nothing. and what does it mean to say x does not exist? what are talking about when i say x does not exist? what is that aspect? how can i talk about it? that is the great question here. i want to go and say something about the time book.

>> the blue angels. >> this sentence that got me going was a marvelous saying by yogi berra, i don't know if you have ever heard us, he was asked what time is it? he said, you mean now? i began to think about the meaning of that. that inspired the time book, yet he there who i love. i have a whole book of things of his. i was interested in what it means to talk about what ways there are of saying no, why -- why each question can usually be answered as yes and no.

that was an earlier book on american education, everything from jefferson to do e,ewey, i proud of myself. this is about the odyssey, particularly odysseus as a poet of that epoch. the main thought is that each of those fantastic adventures he tells about is really an imaginative poetic rendering of some ordinary tourists experiences. to give an example, the lotus

eaters, some in africa, and his crew, some of them are clearly given drugs of some sort and they don't want to go away, they want to stay and indulge. he makes of that, the story of the lotus eaters, so everything is poet the-that is a collection of essays, the central one of úich is the public. >> why read plato? úy read a republican in 2009? >> the republic turns out to be úe mother of all books. you name it, psychology, politics, education, even

sociology, anthropology, that is one reason why we read it, great questions are broached, all the questions are of greatest interest. i would challenge someone to name an important question that one does not find the beginning consideration in the republic. but one reason among a number of others, it contains at its very center, a description of a mode of education that our students are themselves engaged in. the whys and where 4s of it, that is a good reason. they read it more than any other book in the freshman year and a description is interesting. they face something they have

never thought of before, the moment they face and they see they ought to have thought of it. >> what is it they are facing? >> just to give an example. the human soul, whatever it is that makes us conscious, have parts, and what are the relations of those parts? for instance, why is it that the passions and the recent struggle, what does it mean to have courage? where does that come from? if courage and pride, more on the side of reason, or more on the side of passion? those are things that are directly raised in the republic. >> how do you approach writing

your own books? >> we are not required to publish. i never thought to myself i really have to get a book done in order to achieve this or that increase in stages. we don't have any ranks, we are tutored. it is never done for professional reasons. but sometimes there are questions or books that just occupy your mind and you begin -- you see something wonderful, when you see one wonderful thing, you usually see two wonderful things, then three and four. then i begin to mall it over,

start making notes. things like this, these are all notes of things that might happen one day. then, one fine day, you lie in the bathtub, and a table of contents presents itself and you are ready to go. i think the first book, the first book i ever read for myself was robinson crusoe. european children are brought up on the robinson crusoe, it is normal. i was 6 or 7, my parents made me take a nap. i hated that. there was a college and drywall, and i was reading, i vividly remember reading robinson crusoe, the lessons of self-help, trying to borrow hole into that dry wall so that i

might have eventually escaped. i was born in berlin in 1929, and i had what i would describe as an idyllic childhood. we lived on the outskirts of the lamb. it was full of wonderful books and crannies for children to high in -- high in, play in, my parents were wonderful with us. by mother was -- she was a mother. i loved her and she loved me. my father used to take me out in the woods. he was a medical man, he was a physician, he had a clinic for diseases of legs. and we went for sunday morning

walks. he was taking private lessons from one of the great scholars of the time. they have a counselor. >> who is that? >> man well -- kant -- the most warn book in the library, see what it looks like? he wrote something called the critique of pure reason, which worked for teams of copernican revolution and philosophy. but it amounted to was the thought of as being outside, was thought to be our own construction by means of our

thinking and imagination, he is probably, i think, the most influential of the modernists. maybe descartes too. he is a great discoverer, or perhaps in vendor ventor of mod of seeing things particularly in that we see and understand is a function of our own mental apparatus. my father was interested, a very good physician, an international group of patients, he was fascinated by philosophical matters, and we would go out sunday mornings and he would

tell me what he learned. i didn't understand it all, but it stuck with me. >> your family had to leave germany. >> my father left first to go to brooklyn where he had an internship. he was an intern. we came two years later, as late as one could possibly leave. we were transported on field trains from berlin to lisbon. then at the jewish committee, chartered boats that took us across and we landed in new york within sight of the statue of liberty, went to brooklyn, and i went to grammar school, high school and college, i went to

brooklyn college for undergraduate work. >> what about aristotle? we haven't talked about that? >> yes, then become the key an ethics, very central to the meetings, students reading in college. >> i have read it often. my colleague, eric salem, the, quote, translator, has finished a book on it. that is a major influence those in studies for our students, they are required to read it but they influence our life too. >> how can a book about ethics in form somebody on how they should live today? >> something about aristotle makes him helpful to begin with. he is very sensible. there is nothing highfalutin

about him. he is sensible. that famous theory of the means of virtue, accidents, between extremes of courage, finding the right middle between being free kingly afraid and being rashly rash and somewhere in the middle and you are the way you are supposed to be, which is courageous. it is helpful, it works. you think of it at a crucial moment, it might help. >> when you follow american politics and what is happening now or in the last 20 years in our country, do you find yourself thinking about greek politics or roman politics? >> very much.

especially the question of diversity. that is a central question which is preoccupying this college like all other places. and what it means to live in a country in which not all people are of the same race or family or origin. so, in a way, when one thinks about those who tell of the great war that really destroyed athens, the question arises, it has something to do with not being inclusive enough or finding a way to deal with others. they have many detailed ways in

which, referring to the ancient self, from the point of view of american politics, what helps us most are the american readings which take place emotionally in the last year. >> what kinds of things do you read? >> all kinds of things, supreme court cases, declaration, constitution, and huckleberry finn, which is a great comment not only on race relations but also what it means to be civilized and uncivilized. all of those readings go into a kind of hot and stew, then you have something to refer to.

something to give things background against which you act. i find it works that way for me. >> what is the state of classics and reading now in our culture today? how would you describe it? run en >> it looks dismal. here is a very encouraging way to look at it. if you -- in percentages, probably fewer people study great books, classical books, classical -- certainly fewer people studying for, if you take in absolute numbers, we must exceed the renaissance by a factor of 100. so actually, there are more people now in