Course Description 

Freshman Studies has been a Lawrence hallmark since 1945. President Nathan  
Pusey, a classicist who later headed Harvard University, designed it to introduce  
freshmen to a way of learning based upon personal inquiry and informed discussion.  
Its aim has always been to cultivate an intellectual approach rather than to impart  
specific subject matter. Heeding Immanuel Kant’s famous cry of the Enlightenment,  
“dare to think,” it challenges students to confront major intellectual works and their  
ideas at first hand.  

It is a challenge basic to liberal education, for it seeks to liberate the mind through  
critical thinking. And its chief mode is individual questioning. For as Socrates once  
said: "The unexamined life is not worth living."  

But this approach demands discipline and skill. So Freshman Studies has a practical  
side, too, conveying methods of careful thought and expression. Stressing the critical  
reading and analysis of individual works, the first term focuses on explicating key ideas,  
summarizing main arguments, and interpreting major passages. The second term  
continues this effort, but broadens it by stressing comparisons between works. Besides  
comparing elements between works read in the course, students must also evaluate  
interpretations or assessments of one of them.  

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revised January 24, 2000 
Franklin.M.Doeringer@Lawrence.edu