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Great Books refers to a curriculum and a book list. Mortimer Adler lists three criteria for including a book on the list:
--''(Adler, "Second Look", pg 142)'' ORIGIN It came about as the result of a discussion among American academics and educators, starting in the 1920s and 1930s and begun by Prof. tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins , Mortimer Adler , Stringfellow Barr , Scott Buchanan , and Alexander Meiklejohn . The view among them was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of Higher Education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought. They were at odds both with much of the existing educational establishment and with contemporary educational theory. Educational theorists like Sidney Hook and John Dewey (''see Pragmatism '') disagreed with the premise that there was Crossover in education (e.g, that a study of philosophy, formal logic, or rhetoric could be of use in medicine or economics). Great Books started out as a list of 100 essential primary source texts considered to constitute the Western Canon . This list was always intended to be tentative, although many critics considered it presumptuous and laughable to nominate 100 ''Great'' Books to the exclusion of all others. PROGRAM The Great Books Program is a curriculum that makes use of this list of texts. The undergraduate program as implemented at St. John's College involves a four-year set course of studies consisting of four classes:
As much as possible, students rely on primary sources. They are encouraged to conduct classes themselves, with guidance from a Tutor . In 1919, Professor Erskine taught the first course based on the "great books" program, titled "General Honors," at Columbia University. Erskine left for the University Of Chicago in the 1920's, and helped mold its core curriculum. It initially failed, however, shortly after its introduction due to fallings-out between the instructors over the best ways to conduct classes and due to concerns about the rigor of the courses. However, to this day, both Chicago and Columbia maintain required Core Curricula heavily focused on the "great books" of the Western Canon . Several schools maintain a Great Books Program as an option for students, but some of the most prominent schools are the University Of Notre Dame , University Of San Francisco , Furman University , St. John's College sister schools, Shimer College , Thomas Aquinas College , Gutenberg College , the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University , the Integral Liberal Arts program at Saint Mary's College Of California (Moraga), the Hutchins School at Sonoma State University , and the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University (Natchitoches). {Link without Title} SERIES See Also: Great Books of the Western World The '' Great Books Of The Western World '' is a hardcover 60-volume collection (originally 54 volumes) of the books on the Great Books list. Many of the books in the collection were translated into English for the first time. A prominent feature of the collection is a two-volume "Syntopicon" that includes essays written by Mortimer Adler on 102 "great ideas." Following each essay is an extensive outline of the idea with page references to relevant passages throughout the collection. Familiar to many Americans, the collection is available from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., which owns the copyright. Shortly after Adler retired from the Great Books Foundation in 1989, a second edition (1990) of the ''Great Books of the Western World'' was published; it included for the first time works by black, Hispanic, and women authors.1 During his tenure as president of the Foundation, Adler had resisted such inclusions.2 SAMPLE LIST Any recommended set of great books is expected to change with the times, as reflected in the following statement by Robert Hutchins :''Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954. "In the course of history... new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation." The following is an example list from ''How to Read a Book'' by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren . (1940, 1972) # '', ''The Odyssey '' # The Old Testament # Aeschylus : Tragedies # Sophocles : Tragedies # '' # Euripides : Tragedies # '' # Hippocrates : Medical Writings # Aristophanes : Comedies # Plato : Dialogues # Aristotle : Works # ", " Letter To Menoecus " # '' # Archimedes : Works # '' # Cicero : Works # '' # Virgil : Works # Horace : Works # '' # Ovid : Works # ''; '' Moralia '' # ''; '' Annals ''; '' Agricola ''; '' Germania '' # '' # '' # '' # Lucian : Works # '' # '' # The New Testament # '' # ''; '' City Of God ''; "On Christian Doctrine" # The Song Of Roland # The Nibelungenlied # The Saga Of Burnt Njál # '' # '' (''La Vita Nuova''); "On Monarchy"; '' The Divine Comedy '' # ''; '' The Canterbury Tales '' # Leonardo Da Vinci : Notebooks # ''; '' Discourses On The First Ten Books Of Livy '' # '' # '' # '' # ''; Three Treatises # '' # '' # '' # '' # '' # '' # ''; '' The Advancement Of Learning ''; '' Novum Organum ''; '' The New Atlantis '' # William Shakespeare : Poetry and Plays # ''; '' Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences '' # ''; '' Concerning The Harmonies Of The World '' # ''; '' On The Circulation Of The Blood ''; '' On The Generation Of Animals '' # '' # ''; '' Discourse On Method ''; '' Geometry ''; '' Meditations On First Philosophy '' # John Milton : Works # Molière : Comedies # ''; '' Pensées ''; Scientific Treatises # '' # '' # ; Of Civil Government ; Essay Concerning Human Understanding ; Thoughts Concerning Education # Jean Baptiste Racine : Tragedies # ''; '' Opticks '' # ''; '' New Essays Concerning Human Understanding ''; " Monadology " # '' # "; '' Journal To Stella ''; '' Gulliver's Travels ''; " A Modest Proposal " # '' # '' # "; " The Rape Of The Lock "; " Essay On Man " # '', '' Spirit Of The Laws '' # '', '' Candide '', '' Philosophical Dictionary '' # '', '' Tom Jones '' # ", '' Dictionary '', '' Rasselas '', '' Lives Of The Poets '' # '', '' Essays Moral And Political '', '' An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding '' # '', '' On Political Economy '', '' Emile '', '' The Social Contract '' # '', '' A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy '' # '', '' The Wealth Of Nations '' # '', ''Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals'', '' Critique Of Practical Reason ''; The Science of Right; '' Critique Of Judgment '', Perpetual Peace # ''; Autobiography # '' # '' # '' # ''; '' Theory Of Fictions '' # ''; Poetry and Truth # '' # ''; ''The Philosophy Of Right ''; '' Lectures On The Philosophy Of History '' # William Wordsworth : Poems # '' # ''; '' Emma '' # '' # ''; '' The Charterhouse Of Parma ''; '' Stendhal '' # '' # '' # ''; '' Experimental Researches In Electricity '' # '' # '' # ''; '' Eugenie Grandet '' # '', '' Essays '', Journal # '' # '' # ''; '' Representative Government ''; " Utilitarianism "; '' The Subjection Of Women ''; '' Autobiography '' # ''; '' The Descent Of Man ''; Autobiography # ''; '' David Copperfield ''; '' Hard Times '' # '' # "; '' Walden '' # ''; '' The Communist Manifesto '' # ''; '' Middlemarch '' # ''; '' Billy Budd '' # ''; '' The Idiot ''; '' The Brothers Karamazov '' # ''; '' Three Stories '' # Henrik Ibsen : Plays # ''; '' Anna Karenina ''; '' What Is Art? ''; Twenty-Three Tales # ''; '' The Mysterious Stranger '' # ''; '' The Varieties Of Religious Experience ''; '' Pragmatism ''; '' Essays In Radical Empiricism '' # ''; '' The Ambassadors '' # ''; '' Beyond Good And Evil ''; '' The Genealogy Of Morals ''; '' The Will To Power '' # ''; '' Science And Method '' # ''; '' Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis ''; '' Civilization And Its Discontents ''; '' New Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis '' # George Bernard Shaw : Plays and Prefaces # ''; '' Where Is Science Going? ''; '' Scientific Autobiography '' # ''; '' Matter And Memory ''; '' Creative Evolution ''; '' The Two Sources Of Morality And Religion '' # ''; '' Democracy And Education ''; '' Experience And Nature ''; '' Logic ''; '' The Theory Of Inquiry '' # ''; '' Science And The Modern World ''; '' The Aims Of Education And Other Essays ''; '' Adventures Of Ideas '' # ''; '' Skepticism And Animal Faith ''; '' Persons And Places '' # '' # '' (the revised translation is '' In Search Of Lost Time ''; the original French title is ''À la recherche du temps perdu'') # ''; '' The Analysis Of Mind ''; '' An Inquiry Into Meaning And Truth ''; '' Human Knowledge, Its Scope And Limits '' # ''; '' Joseph And His Brothers '' # ''; '' On The Method Of Theoretical Physics ''; '' The Evolution Of Physics '' # " in '' Dubliners ''; '' A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man ''; '' Ulysses '' # ''; '' The Degrees Of Knowledge ''; '' The Rights Of Man And Natural Law ''; '' True Humanism '' # ''; '' The Castle '' # ''; '' Civilization On Trial '' # ''; '' No Exit ''; '' Being And Nothingness '' # ''; '' Cancer Ward '' TELEVISION In 1993 and 1994, the Learning Channel did a series of one hour shows discussing many of the great books of history and their impact on the world. It was narrated by Donald Sutherland . REFERENCES SEE ALSO
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