THE EVENT

This the twenty-eighth annual edition of the Hickory Humanities Forum, is an offering of Lenoir-Rhyne College and its Lineberger Center for Cultural and Educational Renewal.  It was begun in 1981 under the overall guidance of the late Sydney Harris, syndicated columnist and Great Books advocate, as an experience on the order of the Aspen Institutes.

The Hickory Humanities Forum is designed to recapture a spirit of learning that first got expression in Greece some 2,500 years ago when Socrates sat in the market place and discussed important matters of life with his fellow Athenians.  The “new kind of learning” was continued by Aristotle as he strolled through the parks with his pupils –  adults, not youths.  They argued about the most “relevant” topics – justice and injustice, war and peace, happiness and unhappiness, how human affairs should be conducted.  These discussions mark the beginning of a conversation which has echoed down the corridors of history.

During the event, you will attend five study sessions and a plenary session – not "classes" in the conventional sense. Adults cannot & should not be taught like children.

Adult education, to be worthy of the name, should offer the chance to learn what was not readily available in school—the way the world goes, how things connect or fail to connect, where we seem to be going or where we come from.

THE TEXTS

Darwin, “The Moral Sense of Man and the Lower Animals” … from the The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.

Shakespeare, Othello                .

Georg Simmel, “Individual Freedom,” from The Philosophy of Money.

Sophocles, Antigone.

 Tocqueville, “The Power of the Majority,” from Democracy in America

George Anastaplo will address a topic emergent from the readings in a plenary address on Thursday evening, followed by a plenary discussion.

THE FACULTY

 

The Hickory Humanities Forum is fortunate to attract a faculty of nationally & regionally known teachers, authors, and Great Books leaders for this venture in independent thinking. We are inviting George Anastaplo of Chicago; Eva Brann and Laurence and Gisela Berns from Annapolis; Albert Anderson from Laporte, MN; Don Just from Blowing Rock; and Ed Lewis from Thomasville to work in concert with David Ratke, Marianne & Larry Yoder and Beverly Hefner from Lenoir-Rhyne.

 

 THE SITE

 

The 2008 Forum is for the 28^th consecutive year at lovely Wildacres Retreat Center near Little Switzerland, NC.  An easily readable map will be sent to each participant.

 

THE COST

 

The cost of $200 per participant includes tuition, text, room, and board.  Scholarship assistance is available upon request.  Checks should be made to Hickory Humanities Forum.  A registration form is enclosed.  For information, call Larry Yoder at Lenoir-Rhyne College (828) 328-7276. 

 

 THE HICKORY HUMANITIES FORUM

 

The Forum offers the opportunity to tone up thinking, providing basic ideas to chew on and digest, and this in the company of others who hunger for exchange of ideas and mutual wrestling.

 

The Forum also offers a concert on Friday evening.

 

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 “The education of adults is the most important task that is facing our nation today and tomorrow."

                         -- Robert Maynard Hutchins