The Great Books

The idea of a solid classical education is staging a comeback recently, as it periodically does. Most such programs are based on the Encyclopedia Britannica “Great Books” series, originally published in the 1950s and revised in the 1990s.

The notion is an excellent one: a foundation in the greatest thoughts of past times. That is exactly what an education ought to be, isn't it? You don't throw over two thousand years of human thought casually. Or at least you surely shouldn't.

But the Encyclopedia Britannica's list is of course not the first. The Harvard Classics were widly popular at the beginning of thr 20th century, compiled by a Harvard president on the premise that reading them all would be the equivalent of a Harvard liberal education.

Some of the Harvard selections, though, now seem quirky. John Woolman's Journal? Lord Byron's play Manfred? Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi?

So do those of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It, unfortunately, confines itself to “Western Civilization.” It also seems to scrupulously avoid anything of religious significance. Which leaves a vast hole in human experience. Both sets also include a wide selection of scientific materials, which I do not see as very useful. Science is of its essence not based on appeal to past authority. It is against the scientific spirit to still read Boyle's laboratory journals—you should be doing your own experiments.

What we think of as the canon of great books, then, changes with time.

For my part, while I find the Harvard selection often odd, I have a bigger problem with giving a student a foundation only in Western civilization, and indeed largely only in the Graeco-Roman tradition. This severely, and cruelly, limits the education it produces, and the world view it fosters, to something old and out of touch with the modern world. Most of human thought has not occurred in Western Europe. In order to actually come into contact with the Asian classics, something I very much wanted to do to complete my own education, I had to take a major in Religious Studies. No other faculty seemed to recognize Asia's existence. They still don't beyond the most superficial and modern political considerations. This is a huge problem, to my mind.

Here is a list of further volumes any truly educated person should have read, which are missing from the Encyclopedia Britannica's set. They could probably be included without expanding the set, by removing some of the scientific writing.

The Bible—although I can see limiting it to the selections one can fit into 450 pages or so. Priority to the New Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Job, Canticles, Proverbs, Isaiah.

Selections from the Talmud—the great compendium of Jewish knowledge. Cull what you can put in 450 pages, in any case.

The Code of Hammurabi

The five great Confucian classics, the core of a Chinese classical education:

The Book of Changes (I Ching)
The Book of History
The Book of Songs
The Book of Rites
Annals of Spring and Autumn

Other essential bits of Chinese culture:

Analects of Confucius
The Great Learning
The Doctrine of the Mean
Mencius
Tao-Te-Ching
The Art of War
poetry of Li Bai
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

From India:
Selections from the Vedas
The Krishna Gopala cycle, as culled from the Brahmanas
The Ramayana
The Bhagavad Gita
A Life of the Buddha

From Muslim civilization:
1001 Arabian Nights—already included in the Harvard set
poetry of Rumi
The Hanged Poems
Ibn Khaldun's History
(Note that I do not include the Qur'an, on the grounds that Muslims feel it cannot be read properly in translation)

Readers probably have their own opinions. What have I missed?