Great Books of the Western World


Great Books of the Western World


Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in 54 volumes.

The original editors had three criteria for including a book in the series drawn from Western Civilization: the book must be relevant to contemporary matters, and not only important in its historical context; it must be rewarding to re-read repeatedly with respect to liberal education; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas", relevant to at least 25 of the 102 "Great Ideas" as identified by the editor of the series's comprehensive index, the Syntopicon, to which they belonged. The books were chosen not on the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness (historical influence being seen as sufficient for inclusion), nor on whether the editors agreed with the authors' views.

A second edition was published in 1990, in 60 volumes. Some translations were updated; some works were removed; and there were additions from the 20th century, in six new volumes.

History

The project for the Great Books of the Western World began at the University of Chicago, where the president, Robert Hutchins, worked with Mortimer Adler to develop there a course of a type originated by John Erskine at Columbia University in 1921, with the innovation of a "round table" approach to reading and discussing great books among professors and undergraduates.—generally aimed at businessmen. The purposes they had in mind were for filling the gaps in their liberal education (including Hutchins' own, self-confessed gaps) and to render the reader an intellectually rounded man or woman familiar with the Great Books of the Western canon and knowledgeable of the Great Ideas visited in the "Great Conversation" over the course of three millennia.

An original student of the project was William Benton, who at the time was the chief executive officer of the Encyclopædia Britannica publishing company and later was a United States senator. In 1943, he proposed selecting the greatest books of the Western canon, and that Hutchins and Adler produce unabridged editions for publication by Encyclopædia Britannica. Hutchins was wary at first, fearing that commodifying the books would devalue them as cultural artifacts; but he agreed to the business deal and was paid $60,000 for his work on the project. Benton at first refused the deal on the basis that the set of works selected would be just that, artifacts, never to be read.

By chance, Adler was re-reading a source he was using for a book he was writing at the time, How to Think about War and Peace. He noted to the person who had provided the book for him that he had missed the instructive passage that this person was pointing out to him and wondered why that had happened. They realized that Adler had read the book focusing on one idea about war and peace. Adler struck on the idea of making an index for the whole set for Hutchins, so that readers could have "random access" to the works, with the desired result that they would develop a greater interest in the works.

Failure to come to terms

After deciding what subjects and authors to include, and how to present the materials, the indexing part of the project was begun, with a budget of another $60,000. Adler began compiling what his group called the "Greek index" bearing on the works selected from ancient Greece, expecting completion of the entire project within six months. After two years, the Greek index was declared to be a resounding failure. The inferior terms under the Great Ideas across the centuries in which the Greek-language works were written had shifted in their significance, and the preliminary index reflected that, the ideas presented not having "come to terms" with each other.

During those times, Adler had a flash of insight. He set his group re-reading each work preliminarily with a single assigned subordinate idea in mind in the form of a fairly elaborate phrase. If any instances of the idea appeared, they could collate them with co-ordinate ideas of a similar type collected the same way, use the material thus noted to better re-frame the larger idea structure and then finally start re-reading the work in its entirety with revised phrasing to do the complete indexing, of ideas.

Eventual popular success

In 1945, Adler began writing the initial forms of the essays for the Great Ideas and six years and $940,000 more later, on April 15, 1952, the Great Books of the Western World were presented at a publication party in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York City. In his speech, Hutchins said, "This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education. Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind." The first two sets of books were given to Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, and to Harry S. Truman, the incumbent U.S. President. Adler appeared on the cover of Time magazine for a story about the set of works and its idea index and inventory of Western topics of thought at large, of sorts.

The initial sales of the book sets were poor, with only 1,863 sets sold in 1952, and less than one-tenth of that number of book sets were sold in 1953. A financial debacle loomed until Encyclopædia Britannica altered the sales strategy, and sold the book set through experienced door-to-door encyclopædia-salesmen, as Hutchins had feared; but, through that method, 50,000 sets were sold in 1961. In 1963 the editors published Gateway to the Great Books, a ten-volume set of readings meant to introduce the authors and the subjects of the Great Books. Each year, from 1961 to 1998, the editors published The Great Ideas Today, an annual updating about the applicability of the Great Books to contemporary life. According to Alex Beam, Great Books of the Western World eventually sold a million sets. The Internet and the E-book reader have made available some of the Great Books of the Western World in an on-line format.

Volumes

Originally published in 54 volumes, The Great Books of the Western World covers categories including fiction, history, poetry, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, drama, politics, religion, economics, and ethics. Hutchins wrote the first volume, titled The Great Conversation, as an introduction and discourse on liberal education. Adler sponsored the next two volumes, "The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon", as a way of emphasizing the unity of the set and, by extension, of Western thought in general. A team of indexers spent months compiling references to such topics as "Man's freedom in relation to the will of God" and "The denial of void or vacuum in favor of a plenum". They grouped the topics into 102 chapters, for which Adler wrote the 102 introductions. Four colors identify each volume by subject area—Imaginative Literature, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, History and Social Science, and Philosophy and Theology. The volumes contained the following works:

Volume 1

  • The Great Conversation

Volume 2

  • Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love

Volume 3

  • Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World

Volume 4

  • Homer (rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler)
    • The Iliad
    • The Odyssey

Volume 5

  • Aeschylus (translated into English verse by G.M. Cookson)
    • The Suppliant Maidens
    • The Persians
    • Seven Against Thebes
    • Prometheus Bound
    • The Oresteia
      • Agamemnon
      • Choephoroe
      • The Eumenides
  • Sophocles (translated into English prose by Sir Richard C. Jebb)
    • The Oedipus Cycle
      • Oedipus the King
      • Oedipus at Colonus
      • Antigone
    • Ajax
    • Electra
    • The Trachiniae
    • Philoctetes
  • Euripides (translated into English prose by Edward P. Coleridge)
    • Rhesus
    • Medea
    • Hippolytus
    • Alcestis
    • Heracleidae
    • The Suppliants
    • The Trojan Women
    • Ion
    • Helen
    • Andromache
    • Electra
    • Bacchantes
    • Hecuba
    • Heracles Mad
    • The Phoenician Women
    • Orestes
    • Iphigenia in Tauris
    • Iphigenia in Aulis
    • Cyclops
  • Aristophanes (translated into English verse by Benjamin Bickley Rogers)
    • The Acharnians
    • The Knights
    • The Clouds
    • The Wasps
    • Peace
    • The Birds
    • The Frogs
    • Lysistrata
    • Thesmophoriazusae
    • Ecclesiazousae
    • Plutus

Volume 6

  • Herodotus
    • The History (translated by George Rawlinson)
  • Thucydides
    • History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Richard Crawley and revised by R. Feetham)

Volume 7

  • Plato
    • The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin Jowett)
      • Charmides
      • Lysis
      • Laches
      • Protagoras
      • Euthydemus
      • Cratylus
      • Phaedrus
      • Ion
      • Symposium
      • Meno
      • Euthyphro
      • Apology
      • Crito
      • Phaedo
      • Gorgias
      • The Republic
      • Timaeus
      • Critias
      • Parmenides
      • Theaetetus
      • Sophist
      • Statesman
      • Philebus
      • Laws
    • The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Volume 8

  • Aristotle
    • Categories
    • On Interpretation
    • Prior Analytics
    • Posterior Analytics
    • Topics
    • Sophistical Refutations
    • Physics
    • On the Heavens
    • On Generation and Corruption
    • Meteorology
    • Metaphysics
    • On the Soul
    • Minor biological works
      • On Sense and the Sensible
      • On Memory and Reminisence
      • On Sleep and Sleeplessness
      • On Dreams
      • On Prophesying by Dreams
      • On Longevity and Shortness of Life
      • On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing

Volume 9

  • Aristotle
    • History of Animals
    • Parts of Animals
    • On the Motion of Animals
    • On the Gait of Animals
    • On the Generation of Animals
    • Nicomachean Ethics
    • Politics
    • The Athenian Constitution
    • Rhetoric
    • Poetics

Volume 10

  • Hippocrates
    • Works
      • The Hippocratic Oath
      • On Ancient Medicine
      • On Airs, Water, and Places
      • The Book of Prognostics
      • On Regimen in Acute Diseases
      • Of the Epidemics
      • On Injuries of the Head
      • On the Surgery
      • On Fractures
      • On the Articulations
      • Instruments of Reduction
      • Aphorisms
      • The Law
      • The Ulcer
      • On Fistulae
      • On Hemorrhoids
      • On the Sacred Disease
  • Galen
    • On the Natural Faculties

Volume 11

  • Euclid
    • The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
  • Archimedes
    • On the Sphere and Cylinder
    • Measurement of a Circle
    • On Conoids and Spheroids
    • On Spirals
    • On the Equilibrium of Planes
    • The Sand Reckoner
    • The Quadrature of the Parabola
    • On Floating Bodies
    • Book of Lemmas
    • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
  • Apollonius of Perga
    • On Conic Sections
  • Nicomachus of Gerasa
    • Introduction to Arithmetic

Volume 12

  • Lucretius
    • On the Nature of Things (translated by H.A.J. Munro)
  • Epictetus
    • The Discourses (translated by George Long)
  • Marcus Aurelius
    • The Meditations (translated by George Long)

Volume 13

  • Virgil (translated into English verse by James Rhoades)
    • Eclogues
    • Georgics
    • Aeneid

Volume 14

  • Plutarch
    • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (translated by John Dryden)

Volume 15

  • P. Cornelius Tacitus (translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
    • The Annals
    • The Histories

Volume 16

  • Ptolemy
    • Almagest, (translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro)
  • Nicolaus Copernicus
    • On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
  • Johannes Kepler (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
    • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV–V)
    • The Harmonies of the World (Book V)

Volume 17

  • Plotinus
    • The Six Enneads (translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page)

Volume 18

  • Augustine of Hippo
    • The Confessions
    • The City of God
    • On Christian Doctrine

Volume 19

  • Thomas Aquinas
    • Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)

Volume 20

  • Thomas Aquinas
    • Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)

Volume 21

  • Dante Alighieri
    • Divine Comedy (Translated by Charles Eliot Norton)

Volume 22

  • Geoffrey Chaucer
    • Troilus and Criseyde
    • The Canterbury Tales

Volume 23

  • Niccolò Machiavelli
    • The Prince
  • Thomas Hobbes
    • Leviathan

Volume 24

  • François Rabelais
    • Gargantua and Pantagruel, but only up to book 4.

Volume 25

  • Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
    • Essays

Volume 26

  • William Shakespeare
    • The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
    • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
    • The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
    • The Tragedy of Richard the Third
    • The Comedy of Errors
    • Titus Andronicus
    • The Taming of the Shrew
    • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    • Love's Labour's Lost
    • Romeo and Juliet
    • The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
    • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • The Life and Death of King John
    • The Merchant of Venice
    • The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
    • The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
    • Much Ado About Nothing
    • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
    • Julius Caesar
    • As You Like It

Volume 27

  • William Shakespeare
    • Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
    • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
    • The Merry Wives of Windsor
    • Troilus and Cressida
    • All's Well That Ends Well
    • Measure for Measure
    • Othello, the Moor of Venice
    • King Lear
    • Macbeth
    • Antony and Cleopatra
    • Coriolanus
    • Timon of Athens
    • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
    • Cymbeline
    • The Winter's Tale
    • The Tempest
    • The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
    • Sonnets

Volume 28

  • William Gilbert
    • On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
  • Galileo Galilei
    • Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
  • William Harvey
    • On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
    • On the Circulation of Blood
    • On the Generation of Animals

Volume 29

  • Miguel de Cervantes
    • The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha (translated by John Ormsby)

Volume 30

  • Sir Francis Bacon
    • The Advancement of Learning
    • Novum Organum
    • New Atlantis

Volume 31

  • René Descartes
    • Rules for the Direction of the Mind
    • Discourse on the Method
    • Meditations on First Philosophy
    • Objections Against the Meditations and Replies
    • The Geometry
  • Benedict de Spinoza
    • Ethics

Volume 32

  • John Milton
    • English Minor Poems
      • On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
      • A Paraphrase on Psalm 114
      • Psalm 136
      • The Passion
      • On Time
      • Upon the Circumcision
      • At a Solemn Musick
      • An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester
      • Song on May Morning
      • On Shakespeare
      • On the University Carrier
      • Another on the same
      • L'Allegro
      • Il Penseroso
      • Arcades
      • Lycida
      • Comus
      • On the Death of a Fair Infant
      • At a Vacation Exercise
      • The Fifth Ode of Horace
      • Sonnets (I, and VII—XIX)
      • On the New Forcers of Conscience
      • On the Lord General Fairfax at the Siege of Colchester
      • To the Lord General Cromwell
      • To Sir Henry Vane the Younger
      • To Mister Cyriack the Skinner upon his Blindness
      • Psalms (I—VIII & LXXX—LXXXVIII)
    • Paradise Lost
    • Samson Agonistes
    • Areopagitica

Volume 33

  • Blaise Pascal
    • The Provincial Letters
    • Pensées
    • Scientific and mathematical essays

Volume 34

  • Sir Isaac Newton
    • Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
    • Optics
  • Christiaan Huygens
    • Treatise on Light

Volume 35

  • John Locke
    • A Letter Concerning Toleration
    • Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
    • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • George Berkeley
    • The Principles of Human Knowledge
  • David Hume
    • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Volume 36

  • Jonathan Swift
    • Gulliver's Travels
  • Laurence Sterne
    • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Volume 37

  • Henry Fielding
    • The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Volume 38

  • Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
    • The Spirit of the Laws
  • Jean Jacques Rousseau
    • A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
    • A Discourse on Political Economy
    • The Social Contract

Volume 39

  • Adam Smith
    • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Volume 40

  • Edward Gibbon
    • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 1)

Volume 41

  • Edward Gibbon
    • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2)

Volume 42

  • Immanuel Kant
    • Critique of Pure Reason
    • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
    • Critique of Practical Reason
    • Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals
      • Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Conscience
      • General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
      • The Science of Right
    • The Critique of Judgement

Volume 43

  • American State Papers
    • Declaration of Independence
    • Articles of Confederation
    • The Constitution of the United States of America
  • Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
    • The Federalist
  • John Stuart Mill
    • On Liberty
    • Considerations on Representative Government
    • Utilitarianism

Volume 44

  • James Boswell
    • The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Volume 45

  • Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
    • Elements of Chemistry
  • Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
    • Analytical Theory of Heat
  • Michael Faraday
    • Experimental Researches in Electricity

Volume 46

  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
    • The Philosophy of Right
    • The Philosophy of History

Volume 47

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    • Faust

Volume 48

  • Herman Melville
    • Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Volume 49

  • Charles Darwin
    • The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
    • The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Volume 50

  • Karl Marx
    • Capital
  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
    • Manifesto of the Communist Party

Volume 51

  • Count Leo Tolstoy
    • War and Peace

Volume 52

  • Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
    • The Brothers Karamazov

Volume 53

  • William James
    • The Principles of Psychology

Volume 54

  • Sigmund Freud
    • The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
    • Selected Papers on Hysteria
    • The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
    • The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
    • Observations on "Wild" Psycho-Analysis
    • The Interpretation of Dreams
    • On Narcissism
    • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
    • Repression
    • The Unconscious
    • A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
    • Beyond the Pleasure Principle
    • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
    • The Ego and the Id
    • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
    • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
    • Civilization and Its Discontents
    • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

Second edition

The second edition of Great Books of the Western World, 1990, saw an increase from 54 to 60 volumes, with updated translations. The six new volumes concerned the 20th century, an era of which the first edition's sole representative was Freud. Some of the other volumes were re-arranged, with even more pre-20th century material added but with four texts deleted: Apollonius' On Conic Sections, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Joseph Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler later expressed regret about dropping On Conic Sections and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the addition of Voltaire's Candide, and said that the Syntopicon should have included references to the Koran. He addressed criticisms that the set was too heavily Western European and did not adequately represent women and minority authors. Four women authors were included, where previously there were none.

The added pre-20th century texts appear in these volumes (some of the accompanying content of these volumes differs from the first edition volume of that number):

Volume 20

  • John Calvin
    • Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)

Volume 23

  • Erasmus
    • The Praise of Folly

Volume 31

  • Molière
    • The School for Wives
    • The Critique of the School for Wives
    • Tartuffe
    • Don Juan
    • The Miser
    • The Would-Be Gentleman
    • The Imaginary Invalid
  • Jean Racine
    • Bérénice
    • Phèdre

Volume 34

  • Voltaire
    • Candide
  • Denis Diderot
    • Rameau's Nephew

Volume 43

  • Søren Kierkegaard
    • Fear and Trembling
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Beyond Good and Evil

Volume 44

  • Alexis de Tocqueville
    • Democracy in America

Volume 45

  • Honoré de Balzac
    • Cousin Bette

Volume 46

  • Jane Austen
    • Emma
  • George Eliot
    • Middlemarch

Volume 47

  • Charles Dickens
    • Little Dorrit

Volume 48

  • Mark Twain
    • Huckleberry Finn

Volume 52

  • Henrik Ibsen
    • A Doll's House
    • The Wild Duck
    • Hedda Gabler
    • The Master Builder

The contents of the six volumes of added 20th-century material:

Volume 55

  • William James
    • Pragmatism
  • Henri Bergson
    • "An Introduction to Metaphysics"
  • John Dewey
    • Experience and Education
  • Alfred North Whitehead
    • Science and the Modern World
  • Bertrand Russell
    • The Problems of Philosophy
  • Martin Heidegger
    • What Is Metaphysics?
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    • Philosophical Investigations
  • Karl Barth
    • The Word of God and the Word of Man

Volume 56

  • Henri Poincaré
    • Science and Hypothesis
  • Max Planck
    • Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
  • Alfred North Whitehead
    • An Introduction to Mathematics
  • Albert Einstein
    • Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
  • Arthur Eddington
    • The Expanding Universe
  • Niels Bohr
    • Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections)
    • Discussion with Einstein on Epistemology
  • G. H. Hardy
    • A Mathematician's Apology
  • Werner Heisenberg
    • Physics and Philosophy
  • Erwin Schrödinger
    • What Is Life?
  • Theodosius Dobzhansky
    • Genetics and the Origin of Species
  • C. H. Waddington
    • The Nature of Life

Volume 57

  • Thorstein Veblen
    • The Theory of the Leisure Class
  • R. H. Tawney
    • The Acquisitive Society
  • John Maynard Keynes
    • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Volume 58

  • Sir James George Frazer
    • The Golden Bough (selections)
  • Max Weber
    • Essays in Sociology (selections)
  • Johan Huizinga
    • The Autumn of the Middle Ages
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss
    • Structural Anthropology (selections)

Volume 59

  • Henry James
    • The Beast in the Jungle
  • George Bernard Shaw
    • Saint Joan
  • Joseph Conrad
    • Heart of Darkness
  • Anton Chekhov
    • Uncle Vanya
  • Luigi Pirandello
    • Six Characters in Search of an Author
  • Marcel Proust
    • Remembrance of Things Past: "Swann in Love"
  • Willa Cather
    • A Lost Lady
  • Thomas Mann
    • Death in Venice
  • James Joyce
    • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Volume 60

  • Virginia Woolf
    • To the Lighthouse
  • Franz Kafka
    • The Metamorphosis
  • D. H. Lawrence
    • The Prussian Officer
  • T. S. Eliot
    • The Waste Land
  • Eugene O'Neill
    • Mourning Becomes Electra
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
    • The Great Gatsby
  • William Faulkner
    • A Rose for Emily
  • Bertolt Brecht
    • Mother Courage and Her Children
  • Ernest Hemingway
    • The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
  • George Orwell
    • Animal Farm
  • Samuel Beckett
    • Waiting for Godot

Criticisms and responses

Authors

The choice of authors has come under attack, with some dismissing the project as a celebration of European men, ignoring contributions of women and non-European authors. The criticism swelled in tandem with the feminist and civil rights movements. Similarly, in his Europe: A History, Norman Davies criticizes the compilation for overrepresenting selected parts of the western world, especially Britain and the U.S., while ignoring the other, particularly Central and Eastern Europe. According to his calculation, in 151 authors included in both editions, there are 49 English or American authors, 27 Frenchmen, 20 Germans, 15 ancient Greeks, 9 ancient Romans, 4 Russians, 4 Scandinavians, 3 Spaniards, 3 Italians, 3 Irishmen, 3 Scots, and 3 Eastern Europeans. Prejudices and preferences, he concludes, are self-evident.

In response, such criticisms have been derided as ad hominem and biased in themselves. The counter-argument maintains that such criticisms discount the importance of books solely because of generic, imprecise and possibly irrelevant characteristics of the books' authors, rather than because of the content of the books themselves.

Works

Others thought that while the selected authors were worthy, too much emphasis was placed on the complete works of a single author rather than a wider selection of authors and representative works (for instance, all of Shakespeare's plays are included). The second edition of the set already contained 130 authors and 517 individual works. The editors point out that the guides to additional reading for each topic in the Syntopicon refer the interested reader to many more authors.

Difficulty

The scientific and mathematical selections came under criticism for being incomprehensible to the average reader, especially with the absence of any sort of critical apparatus. The second edition did drop two scientific works, by Apollonius and Fourier, in part because of their perceived difficulty for the average reader. Nevertheless, the editors steadfastly maintain that average readers are capable of understanding far more than the critics deem possible. Robert Hutchins stated this view in the introduction to the first edition:

Because the great bulk of mankind have never had the chance to get a liberal education, it cannot be "proved" that they can get it. Neither can it be "proved" that they cannot. The statement of the ideal, however, is of value in indicating the direction that education should take.

Rationale

Since the great majority of the works were still in print, one critic noted that the company could have saved two million dollars and simply written a list. Dense formatting also did not help readability. Nonetheless, Encyclopædia Britannica's aggressive promotion produced solid sales.

The second edition selected translations that were generally considered an improvement, though the cramped typography remained. Through reading plans and the Syntopicon, the editors attempted to guide readers through the set.

Response to criticisms

The editors responded that the set contains wide-ranging debates representing many viewpoints on significant issues, not a monolithic school of thought. Mortimer Adler argued in the introduction to the second edition:

Presenting a wide variety and divergence of views or opinions, among which there is likely to be some truth but also much more error, the Syntopicon [and by extension the larger set itself] invites readers to think for themselves and make up their own minds on every topic under consideration.

See also

  • Gateway to the Great Books
  • Syntopicon
  • Other series of classics:
    • Ancient Classics for English Readers
    • Great Illustrated Classics
    • Harvard Classics
    • Loeb Classical Library
    • Modern Library
    • Oxford World's Classics
    • Penguin classics (several articles)
    • Sacred Books of the East
  • Educational perennialism
Collection James Bond 007

References

External links

  • Center for the Study of the Great Ideas Archived 2021-02-14 at the Wayback Machine Mortimer Adler web pages with extensive discussion of the Great Books
  • Greater Books – a site documenting lists of "great books," classics, canons, including the Great Books of the Western World
  • "Encyclopædia Britannica - Great Books Of The Western World". Internet Archive. (54 volumes.)

Text submitted to CC-BY-SA license. Source: Great Books of the Western World by Wikipedia (Historical)



 

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