St. John's alumni are welcome to audit Graduate Institute preceptorials on the Santa Fe campus this summer without reapplying to the college.

Classes meet from 1:30-3:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Weeks 2, 4, 6, and Tuesday and Thursday on Weeks 1, 3, 5 on the Santa Fe campus beginning June 12.

Cost is $1100. Contact: Casey Andersen Casey.Andersen@sjc.edu
 

The Problem of Technology: Heidegger’s Bremen Lectures (1949) and Borgmann’s Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (1984)
Tutor: Topi Heikkero

Modern technology shapes our lives in ways that we are well aware of and in ways that we are less aware of. In his Bremen Lectures (1949), Martin Heidegger addresses technology in a profound philosophical way in order to show the ontological role of technology and in its role in the human understanding of truth. These lectures were later published as shorter pieces, such as The Question Concerning Technology and The Thing. Albert Borgmann’s life’s work has been to develop further Heidegger’s insights and analyses. This has resulted in the notions “the device paradigm” and “focal things and practices” as well as a clear-sighted phenomenological analysis of everyday life in modern societies. Many see Borgmann as one of the few successful philosophers of technology.

In this precept we’ll have an occasion to question and consider technology with the help of these two thinkers. This will also help us to understand modern science better, since science appears to be tightly connected to technology.    

Books: 
Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN-10: ‎ 0226066290 ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0226066295

Martin Heidegger, Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Transl. Andrew J. Mitchell. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012. ISBN-10: ‎ 0253002311 ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0253002310

First assignment: Borgmann 1984, pp. 1-31.

Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones 
Tutor: Michael Wolfe

“My taste runs to hourglasses, maps, seventeenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson.” ― Jorge Luis Borges

In this preceptorial, we will read stories in Ficciones. These stories can be found in either Ficciones (published by Grove Press) or Collected Fictions (published by Penguin Books). Either edition is acceptable.

Session 1: Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths; “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Session 2: “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim”
Session 3: “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote”
Session 4: “The Circular Ruins”
Session 5: “The Babylon Lottery”
Session 6: “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain”
Session 7: “The Library of Babel”
Session 8: “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Session 9: Prologue/Forward to Artifices; “Funes, the Memorius”
Session 10: “The Form of the Sword”
Session 11: “Theme of the Traitor and Hero”
Session 12: “Death and the Compass”
Session 13: “The Sweet Miracle”
Session 14: “Three Versions of Judas”
Session 15: “The South"