Who should be bounced from The Great Books series?

bleak house: by far my favorite ‘non standard’ dickens…maybe even beats out some of the more well known volumes. fun to see that you liked it as well.

Diogo, I was joking with the scholar.google.com bit…I still think all of the developments you mention could have occurred without Plotinus…

I personally think the literature is the most dispensable part of the series.

If you view the ‘great books’ as a means to understanding our own intellectual and spiritual horizon, then Euclid and Marx are givens, while Dickens, for example, isn’t. Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky would be necessary, however.

people steal read marx lol

Looking over the lists, I’m surprised at the dearth of reformation literature. Calvin’s Institutes was a 1990 addition, good, but where’s Luther’s The Bondage of the Will? Or a selection of the (mostly pretty short) reformation creeds: The Heidelberg Catechism, The Westminster Confession of Faith, The Canons of Dort, The Belgic Confession? Or Luther’s 99 theses?

Though I was fortunate enough as a freshman and sophomore at a distinguished university to take a year-long and demanding course in the history of Western Civilization and then an equal-length and demanding course in a survey of Western literature, I have always thought that the The Great Books education concocted by Hutchins and Adler at the University of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s was something of a disaster . . . so much so that most departments at Chicago refused to recognize the undergrad degree for admittance to their Ph.D. programs. As for Adler’s and Van Doren’s book, How to Read a Book, it has a few intersting things to say about reading, but it says nothing in 300 or more pages than what Francis Bacon summarized in a couple.

…….

One problem: Adler hated almost all modern philosophy, and it was only in the later 1990 volume — when he had no control over it — that some 19th century philosophers were added, and not necessarily the most important. Then, too, he also had very little understanding of science and thought that science courses for undergrads should focus on the original texts . . . an approach that would have, say, chemists study the texts of alchemists in the middle ages.

He was also ignorant of the social sciences, as was Hutchins (whom I came to know when, as a new member of the faculty at UC Santa Barbara, I joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions — which he headed at the time, living the good life at a huge estate in Montecito a tad east of Santa Barbara on the coast.

…………

Nor is that all. Anyone whose education was limited to the Great Books project would come away knowing nothing important about non-Western civilizations — Arab, Chinese, Persian, Japanese, Aztec-Inca, and so on, including their religious traditions.

What the Great Books education did foster was a kind of insular outlook good for scoring points at cocktail parties, with limited knowledge of any subject in depth. Looking over the extended list of the 2nd edition (1990), I find that anyone whose knowledge is confined to those books would know nothing about modern philosophy, the scientific method and modern science, the modern social sciences, almost all important novels, poetry, and drama of the last 150 years, modern empire-building, the emergence of nation-states, the rise and fall of European power globally speaking, military history in the modern world, and anything in modern art and music and theater and movies beyond what philistines themselves are repelled by.

…………

Michael Gordon, aka the buggy professor: http://www.thebuggyprofessor.org

“To do without original texts implies an enormous amount of faith on your part in whomever you’re getting your ‘facts’ from.”

As sympathetic to the Great Books concept as I am, I would suggest that this is a true but unworkably impractical quibble. I would agree wholeheartedly that some degree of faith is required to accept certain sources. But consider the alternative: if individuals were required to understand and submit full proofs of every underlying fact before making an argument, we would be in our graves well before accomplishing anything of significance.

Obviously, I’m taking this to an extreme. But consider the example of a neurosurgeon friend of mine: he doesn’t need to read original medical texts nor to serve as an effective medical school department chair and research lead. Would he be a better physician or academic if he had read and understood those things? I’d say no – not in the slightest. Part of being able to advance is understanding what is trustworthy and what is not… the sum of human knowledge is simply too vast for any individual to fully grasp all of it. That’s why specialization is so common now.

In short, I think there’s intellectual value to a liberal arts or Great Books approach to learning – but it’s neither required nor even, in many cases, appropriate. That’s why in many cases I think the literature component of the Great Books list is actually the most worthwhile. Aesthetic projects have far more staying power and can’t be transmitted as effectively through Cliff’s Notes.

@ michael gordon at May 30, 2008 3:24:47 PM

A part of me partly agrees with the gist of what you say, in particular your criticism of Adler. But I think it rests on some faulty assumptions. You write:

“Nor is that all. Anyone whose education was limited to the Great Books project would come away knowing nothing important about non-Western civilizations — Arab, Chinese, Persian, Japanese, Aztec-Inca, and so on, including their religious traditions.†

A core-curriculum of the Great Books does not indeed teach such subjects. But in so much as all civilizations are rooted in certain universal laws of human nature, it seems to me a gross simplification to say that a student of the Great Books comes “away knowing nothing important about non-Western civilizations.† The value of such an education—or of any young person’s education, I’d argue—is not comprised of some sort of cumulative acquisition; it is not to become an encyclopedia by imbibing an encyclopedic list. I do not think we have time to discuss reading methodologies, but one of the principle values of such an education, of reading the Great Books, rests therein: It is meant to endow its readers with a critical mind, and prolonged exposure to the foremost critical (Western) minds of the last 2,000 years does facilitate that end. It also should—and in my experience, generally does—foster a deep love and appreciation for all critical and deep thought, Western or not.

But let’s pretend for a moment that the Great Book student might suffer from insularity, as you suggest, and that this approach is inferior to an alternative course of study: Who is this student of Arab, Chinese, Persian, Japanese, Aztec-Inca, (and so on) civilizations? What does he major in and how deep and broad is his knowledge, assuming it is not just to score points at cocktail parties? Does this student also study the Western canon? Does he study math, science, and so forth? Presumably he is broad-minded enough to also take on “modern philosophy, the scientific method and modern science, the modern social sciences, almost all important novels, poetry, and drama of the last 150 years, modern empire-building, the emergence of nation-states, the rise and fall of European power globally speaking, military history in the modern world, and anything in modern art and music and theater and movies†? It seems you are implicitly arguing for the generalist’s case (“with limited knowledge of any subject in depth.”) in one place and yet explicitly speaking out against him in others.
Modern civilization obviously needs students with a deeper and more specialized knowledge than the Great Books can offer. But I also believe the GBs are a solid foundation and can serve as a buoyant springboard for more specialized training. I don’t think the GBs foster insularity, at all, but rather just the opposite. Something like a core-curriculum for two years or so followed by specialized study may be the best course of undergraduate study. It’s not the only way, however. Read the following link which shows the top 10 institutions in the nation ranked by percentage of graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in selected disciplines: http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html

The Great Books college St. John’s College (in Annapolis and Santa Fe) scores as follows:

1st in English Literature
1st in the Humanities
3rd in Linguistics
4th in Area and Ethnic Studies
6th in Political Science
6th in Foreign Languages
9th in Math and Computer Sciences

They may not be for everybody, so to speak, but it seems the Great Books remain capable of preparing healthy young minds for study beyond the confines of Western or pre-modern thought contained in their pages.

“Reading books, however, even so-called “Western books,” in translation is a dubious proposition.”

No, it isn’t. Poetry in translation may sometimes be dubious, but the prose writings of Montaigne, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Flaubert, etc. are magnificent even in translation.

“Why shouldn’t an educated person aspire to know at least enough of one ancient and one other modern language to read great literature in that language?”

That’s exactly what the Great Books program at St. Johns College requires.

Euclid’s Elements is one of those broadly scientific works that have become one of the building blocks from which important modes of thought in the wider culture have been constructed. The Origin of Species might be another. So, for example, if you’ve encountered geometry in its Euclidean formulation it is easier to appreciate one of the motivations behind the Greek predeliction for the idea that true knowledge must deal with the eternal and immutable. It’s important if you want to understand the cast of Spinoza’s mind, or that of Hobbes. It’s important if you want to understand Kant’s view of mathematics. It’s a common reference point in the wider culture because for a long time many educated people knew the book itself.

1) Absalom, Absalom would ‘help cover race’? How about something by a Euro-American whose ancestry wasn’t socially constructed as white?

2) Also, while I personally find the Great Books curriculum as held here to be unsatisfying and incomplete, I take the point that it can be very helpful to concentrate fully on one area, in one geographically (and racially and gender-ly and class-ly, apparently) discrete unit, to get to know a culture, perspective, and history deeply. But the culture/history/body of knowledge chronicled here is not ‘Western,’ it is ‘European,’ and we need to start using appopriately descriptive words.

The word ‘Western’ is no longer helpful, descriptive, or accurate in the least, and if there’s one thing the European canon (and most canons) can offer it’s an appreciation for clarity and truthfulness in language. West of what? of who? If Euro-U.S. is Western in relation to the ‘Middle’ or ‘Far’ East, how do the intellectual contributions and geo-political activities of Africa and South America fit into the equation? Let’s stop trying to hold on to a language that celebrates the geographic orientation and narrow worldview of a century ago, and embrace language that describes how the cultures and polities of the world relate to one another now.

As Editor in Chief of GBWW’s second edition I worked with an editorial
board that consisted of the following persons: Douglas Allanbrook, Senior
tutor and Associate Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis, Mary land; Jacques
Barzun, Provost Emeritus, Columbia University, and literary adviser,
Charles Scribner’s Sons; Norman Cousins, Professor of Medicine, University
of California at Los Angeles; John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of
Economics, Harvard University; Heinz R. Pagels, Director, New York Academy
of Sciences; Lord Quinton, former Chairman, The British Library Board,
London, and also former President, Trinity College, Oxford. 1

In addition to these associates, we formed an international committee of
consultants to whom the nominations made by the editorial board would be
sent for approval or disapproval, as well as for comments and
recommendations.

When we had completed a second draft of the nominations for inclusion in
or omission from the second edition, the next and final step in
constituting the contents of the set involved submitting this second draft
for consideration to the Board of Editors and to the University Advisory
Committees.

The members had been provided in advance with various lists of nominees
for addition to the set, especially twentieth-century authors and titles. I
opened this meeting by stating the criteria for selection that Hutchins and
I had employed in the 1940s when we met with a similar editorial board to
decide on the authors and titles for inclusion in Great Books of the
Western World. Now as then, considerations of space played a critical role.
Some things had to be rejected or eliminated to prevent the set from
becoming economically unfeasible to produce, distribute, or purchase and
use.

At the end of a long and, on the whole, pleasantly harmonious session, we
came up with our first draft of authors and titles. Before this draft was
submitted to our international committee of consultants and other groups, a
footnote had to be added to it stating the authors and titles in the first
edition that we proposed to drop from the second. There were four: the
“Conics” of Apollonius of Perga; Joseph Fourier’s “Analytical Theory of
Heat”; Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”, and “Tristram Shandy” by Laurence
Sterne. The first two of these were thought to be mathematical treatises of
unusual difficulty for most readers to comprehend.

We then proceeded with submitting our first draft to our international
committee of consultants, to Britannica’s Board of Editors, and to our
University Advisory Committees. This process involved much discussion and
correspondence over many months, at the end of which we came up with a
final draft of the second edition’s table of contents, including a list of
the new and much better translations that we sought to acquire from their
publishers.

Before I state the three criteria that our editorial board employed for
its first draft selections and that we asked all the persons we consulted
to keep in mind in judging what we submitted to them, let me say that at no
point did we attain unanimity. One hundred percent agreement is too much to
expect in proceedings of this kind. However, where there were unresolved
disagreements, these did not exceed more than 10 percent; i.e., the items
about which such disagreement occurred were less than 10 percent of the
whole. That, it seems to me, is remarkable, and also sufficient to rely
upon.

When all these preliminaries were completed and after the work of
editorial production had begun, I found myself dissatisfied with three
decisions we had made (much less than 10 percent of the whole). I regretted
dropping the “Conics” of Apollonius, which was not much more difficult than
Euclid’s “Elements”, which we retained in the set. I thought we were wrong
in dropping Fielding’s “Tom Jones”, as the frequency in the Syntopicon of
references to its contents attested, indicating its substantial presence in
the great conversation. And I thought we were wrong in adding Voltaire’s
“Candide.” Voltaire is a great author and one of enormous influence, but by
our three criteria for selection, “Candide” is not a great book. 2

What were those three criteria of selection? The first was the book’s
contemporary significance–relevance to the problems and issues of the
twentieth century. The books were not to be regarded as archaeological
relics–monuments in our intellectual tradition. They should be works that
are as much of concern to us today as at the time they were written, even
if that was centuries ago. They are thus essentially timeless–always
contemporary, and not confined to interests that change from time to time
or from place to place.

The second criterion was their infinite rereadability or, in the case of
the more difficult mathematical and scientific works, their studiability
again and again. Most of the 400,000 books published each year are not
worth carefully reading even once; many fewer than 1,000 each year are
worth reading more than once. When, infrequently in any century, a great
book does appear, it is a book worth reading again and again and again. It
is inexhaustibly rereadable. It cannot be fully understood on one, two, or
three readings. More is to be found on all subsequent readings. This is an
exacting criterion, an ideal that is fully attained by only a small number
of the 511 works that we selected. It is approximated in varying degrees by
the rest.

The third criterion was the relevance of the work to a very large number
of great ideas and great issues that have occupied the minds of thinking
individuals for the last twenty-five centuries. The authors of these books
take part in the great conversation, not only by reading the works of many
of their predecessors, but also by discussing many of the 102 great ideas
treated in the “Syntopicon”. In other words, the great books are the books
in which the great conversation occurs about the great ideas. It is the set
of great ideas that determines the choice of the great books.

In a book entitled “The Great Conversation”, which is not a part of the
set’s second edition but which accompanies it as an introduction to the set
and as a guide to its use, we have demonstrated this point by two devices.
One is something that we called the Author-to-Author Index, which shows how
many of each author’s predecessors that author has cited in his work. The
other is the author-to-Idea Index, which shows in how many of the 102 great
ideas treated in the “Syntopicon” readers will find references to that
author’s work on one or more topics, usually many. These two indices, along
with the “Syntopicon” itself, are clear evidence of the reality of the
great conversation, in which the great authors and the great books have
participated.

By this criterion, the difference between great books and good books is
not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. There is not a
continuum that has poor books on the far left, average books in the middle,
good and very good books on the right, and a few Great Books on the far
right.

As I have recently written elsewhere, the adjective “great” in the phrase
“great books” derives its primary meaning from its use in the phrase “great
ideas.” There are many other criteria by which people make up diverse lists
of the books they wish to honor by calling them “great books.” But from the
primary significance of the adjustive “great” as applied to the great ideas
is derived the significance of that adjective as used in the phrase, “the
great conversation.”

In other words, we chose the great books on the basis of their relevance
to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas. Many of the great books are relevant
to a much larger number of the 102 great ideas, as many as 75 or more great
ideas, a few to all 102 great ideas. In sharp contrast are the good books
that are relevant to less than 10 or even as few as 4 or 5 great ideas. We
placed such books in the lists of Recommended Readings to be found in the
last section in each of the 102 chapters of the “Syntopicon.” Here readers
will find many twentieth-century female authors, black authors, and Latin
American authors whose works we recommended but did not include in the
second edition of the Great Books.

To complete the picture of the criteria that controlled our editorial
process of selection, it is necessary for me to mention a number of things
that we definitely excluded from our deliberations.

We did not base our selections on an author’s nationality, religion,
politics, or field of study; nor on an author’s race or gender. Great books
were not chosen to make up quotas of any kind; there was no “affirmative
action” in the process.

In the second place, we did not consider the influence exerted by an
author or a book on later developments in literature or society. That
factor alone did not suffice to merit inclusion. Scholars may point out the
extraordinary influence exerted by an author or a book, but if the three
criteria stated above were not met, that author or book was not to be
chosen. Many of the great books have exerted great influence upon later
generations, but that by itself was not the reason for their inclusion. 3

In the third place, a consideration not operative in the selection process
was the truth of an author’s opinions or views, or the truth to be found in
a particular work. This point is generally misunderstood; many persons
think that we regard the great books as a repository of mankind’s success
in its ever-continuing pursuit of the truth. “That is simply not the case”.
There is much more error in the great books than there is truth. By
anyone’s criteria of what is true or false, the great books will be found
to contain some truths, but many more mistakes and errors.

Mortimer Adler
Center for the Study of The Great Ideas
———————————-
Notes:
1. This editorial board, especially Jacques Barzun, made many
recommendations of authors and works to be included or eliminated.

2. One other omission that was probably a mistake on our part was not
including references to the Koran (qur’an) along with the Old and New
Testament in the Reference Section of the 102 chapters of the Syntopicon.

3. This negative consideration applies, in my judgment, to Voltaire and his
“Candide”. It also applies to the German philosopher Leibniz and his works.
Just think of the influence exerted by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin!”