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This transcript from 1952 outlines a "Common Course" at Bard College, designed as a "communicative education" to help students achieve self-determination and discover their fundamental creative capabilities. The course structure revolves around analyzing nine "arch-figures," including Laotse, Buddha, Zarathustra, Abraham, and Homer, each of whom provided a distinct answer to the ultimate threefold question concerning the meaning of being, the value of life, and the being of man. Through these figures, the course explores the origins of essential human powers—such as Laotse's creative benevolence, Buddha's self-assertion, Zarathustra's power of decision, Abraham's faith, and Homer's free artistic creativity—contrasting them with the destructive passivity of modern nihilism. The text delves into foundational concepts like selfhood, transcendence, time, and space, positioning human uniqueness as the basis for equality.

Publication Date

1952

02-II. Talk on the Common Course (1952)

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