Lex rex · the law is king
Reform College at PXD2
A complete Bachelor of Arts. Four years, 120 credits. Built to compete with the education John Witherspoon gave at Princeton — languages, Euclid, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, Scripture, and the American founding — not to counterfeit the later research university.
What this is. A finished undergraduate curriculum, reading list, examination standard, and lecture map. The lectures already live in this hall (Civics, Resistance, STEM) and in free courses we cite: Hillsdale, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Yale. Primary texts are public domain. A student who finishes the map, sits the examinations, and defends the thesis has done a BA’s work.
What this is not. A state-accredited diploma mill and not Princeton University. We do not sell a Princeton degree, use their seal, or pretend a bureau has blessed this. If PXD2 later charters a college, this catalog is the program. Until then it is an education, which is the thing Princeton was for when Witherspoon sat in Nassau Hall.
Why Princeton is the rival
From 1768 to 1794 Witherspoon’s College of New Jersey was not a graduate school with a souvenir undergraduate brand. It was a BA: Latin and Greek, mathematics, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy as the capstone — the same moral philosophy this hall already teaches from Knox, Rutherford, Craighead, and Witherspoon. That is the education we compete with.
The later university added departments, professional schools, and a different theory of man. Reform College does not chase that. It restores the BA as a single course of study in which a graduate can read a statute, a demonstration, a psalm, and a constitution without a translator from the current system.
“Civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.”
John Witherspoon — the Princeton we are answering, not the one that replaced him.
The degree
Bachelor of Arts in the Reformed Liberal Arts. 120 semester credits. Eight terms. One language sequence through Greek or Hebrew after Latin. One concentration. Senior thesis in public.
| Block | What | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Core | Required of every BA | 60 |
| Languages | Latin I–II, then Greek I–II or Hebrew I–II | 16 |
| Concentration | One of four | 36 |
| Thesis | THS 401–402, public defense, deposited in HOLD | 8 |
| 120 |
Credit means: one hour of lecture or demonstration plus two hours of primary-text study, weekly, for fifteen weeks, or the equivalent. Self-paced is allowed. The examination is not.
Core — required of every BA (60)
| No. | Course | Hall / text | Cr |
|---|---|---|---|
| LOG 101 | Term logic and demonstration | Aristotle Organon (sel.); Hillsdale Euclid course as the working logic | 3 |
| RHE 101 | Rhetoric and the compact | Aristotle Rhetoric; Federalist/Anti-Federalist speeches | 3 |
| MAT 101 | Euclid, Elements I–VI | STEM hall · Hillsdale Mathematics and Logic | 4 |
| MAT 102 | Euclid XI–XII and number | Elements; Hillsdale remainder | 4 |
| THE 101 | Scripture and covenant | Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Romans; Knox on covenant | 3 |
| PHL 101 | Moral philosophy I — nature and law | Aristotle Ethics; Aquinas I-II (sel.); Hillsdale Aristotle’s Ethics | 3 |
| PHL 102 | Plato — Apology, Crito, death of the magistrate’s student | The court, the law, the refusal | 4 |
| PHL 201 | Lex Rex | Rutherford, Lex Rex; Resistance class II | 3 |
| PHL 301 | Resistance theory | Knox, Craighead, Witherspoon; Classes I, III, IV | 3 |
| CIV 101 | Founding: two complete accounts | Fed / Anti-Fed record | 3 |
| CIV 201 | Constitution | Hillsdale Intro (12 films) + Constitution 101 | 3 |
| CIV 301 | Arms and the people | Heller, McDonald, Bruen, Reese, Lara, Cockerham on the resistance page | 3 |
| HIS 101 | West to 1688 | Hebrew Bible as history; Greece; Rome; Christendom; Reformation; English Civil War | 3 |
| HIS 102 | Reformation and covenant | Knox, Scots Confession, Westminster as history | 3 |
| HIS 201 | America 1763–1840 | Jacksonian hall; Declaration; conventions; Bank; Union | 3 |
| PHY 101 | Natural philosophy I — Newton | Shankar lectures 1–5; Principia defs. and laws; STEM · Physics | 4 |
| CHM 101 | Principles of chemistry | Hillsdale Great Principles of Chemistry | 3 |
| WRT 201 | Disputation and brief | Student writes; model: coalitions brief | 3 |
| PE 101 | The armed citizen as a form | Militia Act of 1792 as reading; marksmanship is local, not hosted here | 1 |
| COL 101 | How to read a book in this college | This catalog; Euclid proposition 1 as the first demonstration | 1 |
60 credits. Every name above is a course with a written examination, not a vibe.
Languages (16)
Princeton without Latin is a different school. So is this one.
| No. | Course | Cr |
|---|---|---|
| LAT 101–102 | Latin I–II. Wheelock or equivalent; Caesar or Vulgate by the second term. Required. | 8 |
| GRE 201–202 | Greek I–II. New Testament and a page of Plato. Default second language. | 8 |
| HEB 201–202 | Hebrew I–II. Genesis 1 and a psalm. May replace Greek. | 8 |
No modern-language substitution for this block. French or German may be an elective inside a concentration, not a replacement for the languages the BA is in.
Concentrations (36)
Choose one. Each is eight or nine courses. Mixes are not a concentration.
A. Moral philosophy, law, and arms
The Princeton capstone, rebuilt. For the student who will write briefs, sit on a jury, or teach this hall.
| PHL 202 | Aristotle Politics and the mixed regime | 4 |
| PHL 302 | Hooker and the Anglican restatement; then the American dissent | 3 |
| LAW 201 | Blackstone, rights of persons; then the Bill of Rights as condition of consent | 4 |
| LAW 301 | Text and history: Bruen method on a live statute | 4 |
| LAW 302 | Lincoln, Merryman, Milligan — Congress out; legalized after | 3 |
| CIV 401 | Seminar: lesser magistrates | 4 |
| CIV 402 | Seminar: the people aged 18–20 (Reese, Lara) | 4 |
| WRT 401 | Amicus practicum — one brief, public, on HOLD | 4 |
| PHL 401 | Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, entire | 6 |
B. Mathematics and natural philosophy
Euclid is already in the core. This concentration is the rest of a Princeton natural-philosophy BA, using MIT and Yale as the demonstrators, not as the religion.
| MAT 201 | Single-variable calculus — MIT 18.01 complete | 4 |
| MAT 202 | Linear algebra — Strang 18.06 complete | 4 |
| MAT 301 | Multivariable calculus — MIT 18.02 | 4 |
| PHY 201 | Mechanics complete — Shankar PHYS 200 or MIT 8.01SC | 4 |
| PHY 202 | Electricity and magnetism — Shankar PHYS 201 | 4 |
| PHY 301 | Newton, Principia (selected propositions) in Euclid’s manner | 4 |
| CHM 201 | MIT 5.111 or completion of Hillsdale chemistry plus problem set | 4 |
| BIO 201 | MIT 7.01SC — cell, gene, the living form | 4 |
| MAT 401 | Senior demonstration: one theorem taught, in writing, to the hall | 4 |
C. Divinity and biblical languages
Not a seminary M.Div. A BA concentration: the languages and the Reformed system Witherspoon assumed.
| HEB 201–202 | If Greek was the language block, Hebrew is here (or the reverse) | 8 |
| THE 201 | Pentateuch and covenant | 4 |
| THE 202 | Psalms and prophets | 4 |
| THE 301 | Gospels and Paul | 4 |
| THE 302 | Augustine, City of God (sel.); Calvin, Institutes II–IV (sel.) | 4 |
| THE 401 | Knox, the Scots Confession, the Westminster standards | 4 |
| THE 402 | Craighead and the American covenanters | 4 |
| PHL 401 | Witherspoon lectures (shared with A) | 4 |
D. History, letters, and statesmanship
The narrative BA: how a people tells the truth about itself without the later university’s substitutions.
| HIS 202 | English constitution to 1688 | 4 |
| HIS 301 | The conventions, 1787–1791, including North Carolina withheld | 4 |
| HIS 302 | Jacksonian America — suffrage, Bank, Union, Removal | 4 |
| HIS 303 | Lincoln and the vacant Congress (founding record, § V) | 4 |
| LET 201 | Homer or Virgil in translation with the Greek/Latin facing | 4 |
| LET 301 | Shakespeare, history plays; Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates | 4 |
| LET 302 | The Federalist and Brutus as literature of office | 4 |
| STA 401 | Statesmanship seminar: energy and consent | 4 |
| STA 402 | One state, one statute, one brief | 4 |
Four-year map
Year I — grammar and demonstration
Fall: COL 101, LAT 101, LOG 101, MAT 101, THE 101, CIV 101. Spring: LAT 102, RHE 101, MAT 102, PHL 101, HIS 101. ~32 credits. Or the Lincoln intensives LYC 01–06 if you will copy and recite.
Year II — the laws of nature and of nations
Fall: GRE 201 (or HEB), PHY 101, PHL 201, CIV 201, WRT 201. Spring: GRE 202, CHM 101, HIS 201, concentration 1–2. ~32 credits.
Year III — office
PHL 301, CIV 301, PE 101, concentration 3–6. The resistance classes and the arms cases are this year, not a freshman slogan. ~30 credits.
Year IV — thesis
Concentration 7–9, THS 401 (research) and THS 402 (defense). The thesis is deposited as an HTML or PDF in HOLD under /public_html/college/theses/. Public. ~26 credits.
Examinations and thesis
- Every course: one closed-book written examination on the primary text, and one demonstration (a Euclid proposition, a brief page, a translation, a problem set).
- No course is passed by watching the films. The films are lecturers. The book is the course.
- Thesis: 8,000–12,000 words, or a mathematical memoir of equivalent labor, defended in writing in the hall. Topic must sit in the concentration and cite at least one primary text from the core.
- Honors: thesis distinguished by the examiners you name (two readers). We do not invent a Phi Beta Kappa chapter.
Until a charter exists, the “diploma” is the public thesis plus a signed transcript of examinations you actually sat. That is more honest than a purchased credential, and it is how a college begins.
Faculty of record
The faculty are the authors. Lecturers are cited, not employed as ornaments.
- Moral philosophy: Aristotle, Rutherford, Knox, Witherspoon, Craighead — PxD2 resistance classes.
- Founding: Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Brutus, Mason — two complete accounts.
- Constitution: Hillsdale College free courses, enrolled by the student.
- Mathematics: Euclid; Jerison (MIT 18.01); Strang (18.06); Hillsdale Euclid course.
- Natural philosophy: Newton; Shankar (Yale); MIT 8.01 / 5.111 / 7.01.
- Law: Blackstone; the cases on the resistance page; the coalitions brief as a worked example.
PxD2 hosts the college, the halls, and the FTP volume. It does not replace Euclid.
Doors: Octavo (print) · Accelerated — Hamilton pace, Lincoln method · Hillsdale dossier · Work I · Work VI · Euclid · Work VII · Witherspoon · Civics · STEM
Reform College at PXD2. Catalog I. 120-credit B.A. Civic and scientific education. Not Princeton University. Not legal advice. Not an accredited credential until a charter says otherwise.