Twelve fortnightly walks-and-talks at the Plover Lyceum with Solomon Ardent. Plato to Hadot. Twenty-four primary works, three pages at a time, four dinners over the term.
A 90-minute walk on Nicomachean Ethics II, two pages read aloud, two questions walked with for an hour. Tea in the cloister at the start.
Each schole closes with a Lyceum dinner. The fourth closes with a single page each scholar writes on the question they cannot stop walking with.
Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and the Republic Book IV. We read three pages a session, walk, and return. By the end of week six the question 'what is justice' is yours to ruin.
The Nicomachean Ethics, books I, II, VIII, IX, and X. We sit with phronesis until it stops sounding clever and starts sounding like Wednesday afternoon.
Seneca's letters, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus's Discourses I and II. We do not turn the Stoics into self-help; we read them as the strange, demanding texts they are.
Pierre Hadot's two books read in full, alongside selected Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch. We close with each scholar writing a single page on the question they cannot stop walking with.
Read Plato for the first time as an adult; cites Walk II as the afternoon she stopped arguing with the Apology and started reading it. Returned for the alumni dinner two years later.
Wrote the closing essay on Aristotle and friendship; later expanded it for Field Notes Quarterly. The Schole III dinner was, in her words, the best three hours she had spent that year.
Returned to Hadot and Marcus Aurelius regularly in the years after; the Schole II reading list sits on his studio shelf in the order Solomon posted it.
I had read the Apology three times before and got out of it nothing I remember. We read it in a single sitting under the colonnade, slowly. It will be the most useful afternoon I spend this year.
Or write to solomon@plover-lyceum.org — replies between walks.
Fourteen scholars, twelve walks, twenty-four works. Applications open in late autumn.