McDowell, Edwin (October 25, 1990). " 'Great Books' Takes In Moderns and Women". The New York Times . Retrieved October 3, 2019. The editor challenges the realists who insist that it’s just not feasible to give a liberal education to all the masses. The response is that it’s the ideal (p. 18) and it’s the journey toward it that’s important, not its immediate attainment. I've added the binding color for each volume of the 1952 edition. This tells you the basic category of the contents, according to this scheme: 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. [16] Works [ edit ] Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on the Method,Meditations on First Philosophy, Objections Against the Meditations

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: We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy. A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but they can be bamboozled. The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall a prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves.

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Mortimer J. Adler (1990). "Bibliography of Additional Readings". The Syntopicon: II. Great Books of the Western World, vol. 1–2 (2nded.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. pp. 909–996. ISBN 0-85229-531-6. Adler was smitten by these great books and the changes he saw in himself, and he ended up not graduating from Columbia because he had to take a physical ed requirement, and he refused to take swimming for physical ed and they didn’t give him the degree. He got one in the ’80s from there as honorary.

Adler, Mortimer Jerome (1988). Reforming Education, Geraldine Van Doren, ed. (New York: MacMillan), p. xx. Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class Tawney. The Acquisitive Society Keynes. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and MoneyLucretius The Way Things Are Epictetus. Discourses Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations Plotinus. The Six Enneads Montesquieu. The Spirit of Laws Rousseau. On the Origin of Inequality Rousseau. On Political Economy Rousseau. The Social Contract 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) I have watched Aeschylus’ play put on about the war of the Greeks against the Persians, and then I have gone with Herodotus to the famous battle of Thermopylae to see the brave 300 die (discounting the Persian perspective of the matter for the moment): The editor laments the demise of the liberal education. Compulsory schooling succeeds in keeping children off the streets and out of trouble, but fails in developing the mind (p. 26). Internal decay occurred as the great books became the private domain of scholars, not as a source of understanding. Industrialization made possible the trend to experimental methods, technology, and specialization (p. 29). Great books and liberal arts appeared increasingly irrelevant. The task of the future (p. 30) is the creation of community which overcomes specialization through a common tradition that all can communicate and relate to.

Comparing traveling to reading the Great Books is an imperfect analogy, though, as analogies usually are (and as I mentioned above, I think). One of the strengths of Adler's collection lies in its ability to bridge disciplines and facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue. By including works from diverse fields, the canon encourages readers to explore the interconnectedness of ideas, fostering a holistic understanding of Western thought. The interpretive essays accompanying each work provide valuable guidance, context, and insights, making complex texts more accessible to readers. Mortimer J. Adler (1990). "Section 1: The Great Books and the Great Ideas". The Great Conversation (2nded.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 27. ISBN 0-85229-531-6. This is what led me to the Great Books of the Western World. What does "Great" actually mean, though?Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of Britannica from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition. He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade-school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas. One of the things I’ve found is these guys have been grappling with these questions, like what is justice, what is courage. They’re still not getting it right. For me, it’s like, “Boy, these guys have had a hard time. They’re really smart. Maybe I should have fewer opinions, not be so certain.” It doesn’t mean you don’t have any certainties, but as you said, once you realize how hard it is to pin this stuff down, there’s a humility that comes with that. Blue: "History and Social Science" (including ethics, economics, politics, and jurisprudence) = Volumes 6, 14, 15, 23, 25, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 50 Vol. 1-3 contain introductory materials and The Syntopicon, an index to the " Great Ideas" found in the series.