Great Books of the Western World

February 22, 2022

Former president of Harvard University, Charles Eliot, claimed people could receive a liberal education by reading 15 minutes a day. So he decided to make a serialized list of works for those interested to learn. He compiled The Harvard Classics and advertised the anthology with great success. This directly inspired Mortimer J Adler and John Erskine at Columbia University to make an improved collection called The Great Books of the Western World (GBWW). Although there are issues worthy of critique for the GBWW, it is an invaluable resource worthy to explore for continuing education.

Although the GBWW made similar claims to the Harvard Classics it introduced a focus on two ideas: The Great Conversation and The Great Ideas. Both could be described as a ‘dialogue’ between timeless works as minds helped shape thought and social consciousness. A major difference between the two collections is the difficulty of texts. A perquisite of advanced reading strategies and at least a high school reading level are a necessity to benefit from the GBWW. Which instead of a fault, is a boon as it challenges the readers to rise to the occasion and develop their analytical skills and critical thinking. In that vein both the volume of text and difficulty of reading increases each year. Mortimer expected the studier to rise to the occasion and grow. Despite all of its virtues it is not worthwhile purchasing anymore.

There are many reasons to not purchase the collections other than having decorative books on the shelves. The collections are no longer published and the works are largely within the public domain. So although they are widely available, the printed format is not recommend. The cost of the books is a major deterrent for study, damaging the pages via highlighting or margin notes. Further it is evident that they almost exclusively feature white, especially male, authors. Since the GBWW claims to be a ‘Western canon’ and it comprises the core works of the Great Conversation, its disclusion of others quietly says everyone not white nor male has not made a meaningful contribution to progression of Western thought.

Although the reading plan for the GBWW is flawed and the collection is direly missing important contributors to the Great Conversation, the collection is useful as a starting template to later tweak, add, and mold into a well rounded self-education. The individual works are not the issue of concern, just the limitations of the collection itself. This collection helped fuel my love of the liberal arts and piqued my interest in academia at a young age. It very well could benefit others.

The best versions are found on sites like Amazon or Libby (a free online library). Most of the texts are in the public domain so in order to acquire them in Shadow Libraries or Gutenberg is an option if money or access to Libby is an issue.

Homer

Aeschylus (C. 525-456 BCE)

Sophocles (C. 495-406 BCE)

Euripides (C. 480-406 BCE)

Aristophanes (C. 455-380 BCE)

Herodotus (C. 484-425 BCE)

Thucydides (C. 460-400 BCE)

Plato (C. 428-348 BCE)

Aristotle (C. 384-322 BCE)

Hippocrates (FL. 400 BCE)

Galen (C. AD 130-200)

Euclid (FL. C. 300 BCE)

Archimedes (C. 287-212 BCE)

Lucretius (C. 98-55 BCE)

Epictetus (C. 60-138 ACE)

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 ACE)

Plotinus (205-270 AD)

Virgil (70-19 BCE)

Plutarch (C. 46-120)

Plutarch (C. 46-120)

Tacitus (C. 55-117)

Ptolemy (C. 100-178)

Copernicus (1473-1543)

Kepler (1571-1630)

Augustine (354-430)

Aquinas (c. 1225-1724)

Dante (1265-1321)

Chaucer (C. 1340-1400)

Calvin (1509-1564)

Machiavelli (1469-1527)

Hobbes (1588-1679)

Rabelais (C. 1495-1553)

Erasmus (1467-1536)

Montaigne (1533-1592)

Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Gilbert (1540-1603)

Galilei (1564-1642)

Harvey (1578-1657)

Cervantes (1547-1616)

Bacon (1561-1626)

Decartes (1596-1650)

Spinoza (1632-1677)

Milton (1608-1674)

Pascal (1623-1662)

Moliere (1622-1673)

Racine (1639-1699)

Newton (1642-1727)

Huygens (1629-1695)

Locke (1632-1704)

Berkeley (1685-1763)

Hume (1711-1776)

Swift (1667-1745)

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Diderot (1713-1784)

Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Rousseau (1712-1778)

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

Gibbon (1737-1794)

Kant (1724-1804)

American State Papers

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

James Boswell (1740-1795)

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)

Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900)

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

Honore De Balzac (1799-1850)

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

George Eliot (1819-1880)

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Herman Milville (1819-1891)

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Wiliam James (1842-1910)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

20th Century Philosophy and Religion

20th Century Science

20th Century Social Science

20th Century Literature

10 Year Reading Plan

The original reading plan: Link