I’m going to read all of the Great Books of the Western World series and the Gateway to the Great Books too.
It’s not impossible. Let’s do the math. The series is 60 volumes consisting of 37,000 pages and the 10 Gateway books are a mere 5,323 pages. Reading only 10 pages per day, it will take 10 years and 50 days to read the series, and 1 year and 168 days (rounding up) to read the Gateway series. That will be a total of 11 years and 218 days.
WTF. Never mind.
Just kidding, or “JK,” as my 11 yo used to say when he was 10. What’s life for, anyway? I only wish that I had better teachers who could have started me on this track when I was 18.
And I will write a little a bit about everything that I read, to edify you, dear reader.
Needless to say it’s a daunting task. Many have tried, many have failed. Daunting tasks tempt one toward procrastination. One has to get a handle on one’s thoughts and emotions. One needs to be organized and committed. One can’t be a perfectionist with the writing. One needs to keep the purposes in mind. What are the purposes?
For my own edification. I want to know what they say, not merely what someone else says they say. I have been doing plenty of the latter and been surprised several times when I read he original sources. I want to read the great minds and thus understand western culture more deeply, all the better to teach it better.
To help others. Many people would like to know what, exactly, is in these books, how did they shape us, and whether they have any usefulness for today. I intend to provide a precis of each, sew them together to show how they interrelate (I stand on the shoulders of giants here), and provide some of my own evaluative thoughts.
A brief history of the series
The first edition of the Great Books of the Western World was masterminded by Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, with the grunt work accomplished by the well-known Mortimer Adler, and a huge staff. It was published in 1952 in 54 volumes to much fanfare.
Here at last were, all in one beautiful, hard-bound set, the most important knowledge central to a liberal arts education, within the reach of every person in her or his leisure hours. These were the books that have shaped us–Europe, all of the western hemisphere, and many other parts of the world (after all, Darwin is in volume 49 and Marx’s Capital is in volume 50)–whether we realize it or not.
Disappointing sales and grumblings from the public led Hutchins and company to create and publish an easier-to-read, new series of books that would help “prime the pump” we might say. They were intended to help the common man get up to speed in his reading and affections for great stories and great thoughts. Hutchins wanted to show Common Man—and Woman—that such reading didn’t have to be daunting and could even be fun, by gosh. The ten volumes of Gateway to the Great Books was published in 1963.
Later, Mortimer Adler and company revised the original 54-book series, adding new works and translations, and adding six entirely new volumes at the end of the series for important works from the 20th century. The leaders judged that enough time had passed in the 20th century that, looking backwards, it was clear which books and essays were “Great,” that is high-quality and/or of significant influence on the present day. The new 60-volume set was published in 1990, accompanied by a revised introductory volume, The Great Conversation.
But the GBWW is more than a collection of tomes. It includes the Syntopicon, a two-volume, magisterial indexing of 102 of the most important ideas in the West and where the different thoughts on them may be found in the series and even in books outside the series. The 102 Great Ideas are arranged alphabetically, from Angel to World and include Beauty, God, Justice, Love, Pleasure and Pain, and War and Peace. I’ve never considered that pain and war were such great ideas, but you get the idea: “Great” has more than one sense.
I have reached more than 700 words, which is plenty for a blog, so, to quote the great Charlie Gordon, I wil clos for tuday.
Make It Real 