Great Books of the Western World, Volume 1: the Great Conversation; Hardcover – January 1, 1952

very nice book

This Volume 1 of the Great Books showcases the basics of our Western culture. Very few Americans know where our cultural underpinnings came from. The original works contained in the extended set should be REQUIRED reading for all Americans. Schools that have tried to incorporate these works in their curricula, must focus on the advanced student. The average student has not had the life experiences or the self-discipline necessary to read these incredibly well-written, foundational works. Volume 1 gives a broad overview of the reasons all Americans should read the full set. We need to know where we came from or we can easily lose our way philosophically and politically. Volume 1 could and should be required reading for all high school students. That one book could have a profound effect on young people who often question, "why should I be interested in higher education?"

I bought this because I lost my copy. I mostly wanted to re-start the recommended 10 year reading plan. The early chapters never fail to re-kindle enthusiasm for reading the Great Books.

This book is as described. Lovely cover. Great Experience.

As described

As I read this book, there were many times that I went to the computer, ready to share a gem of a sentence or a passage with my friends on Facebook or with my readers on my website. Each time I did so, however, I had to stop myself - fight myself even - and walk away from the computer. If I had shared every sentence and every passage I wanted to share, I would have ended up quoting the entire book! From beginning to end, this short book is a giant, shining gem.Robert Hutchins, playing the part of the great social doctor of Western Civilization, diagnoses the ailment that has come to pervade nearly every aspect of our culture and offers the prescription that could cure us of this otherwise fatal illness. We ourselves have been and now educate our children as, essentially, automatons. Drunk under the influence of Dewey and decline, and at the wheel of the greatest military-economic-political-cultural bloc the world has ever seen, we are a threat to ourselves and others. Hutchins wrote this book over 50 years ago, and the situation has only gotten worse since then. We live in a nation - the United States - and, in the bigger picture, a culture - Western - and a even world, in which the masses have been given ever more leisure time, more political power, and more say in their own lives and in the lives of others through democratic and republican forms of government. And yet these same masses, as anyone can plainly see by watching the evening news or just having a conversation with the man behind the counter at the gas station, are pitifully undereducated, miseducated, and uneducated. The average person has spent 13 years (if they have a high school degree) or perhaps 17 years (if they have a bachelor's degree) on what amounts to perhaps an 8th grade education! In short, we've given the car keys to a 12 year old!And how do we set about remedying this situation before it destroys us and the world with us? Hutchins provides the answer: a good classical, liberal education. Modern Westerners are asked to elect their leaders, to make important decisions about economics, law, and war; how can they possibly be prepared to do so without having read Plato, Adam Smith, and James Madison? Modern Westerners are asked to digest new and amazing scientific discoveries and technological advances; how can they possibly be expected to do so without some familiarity with Newton, Kepler, and Aristotle? They cannot and they will not be able to fully function in the roles the modern world demands of them until they have thoroughly familiarized themselves with the ideas and thinkers that came before them and built the world they live in.More than that, and of more importance by far, is the exercise and attainment of the fullness of humanity. Modern man, in addition to the increased authority and responsibility already mentioned, also has more leisure time and circumstances more conducive to the production of intellectual capital than his ancestors of any previous time. The question now is: is modern man to waste his existence as a sad, pitiful half animal-half machine, working, eating, sleeping, passing the time in video games and cheap entertainment, or is he to reach for the fullness of his own humanity, to contemplate the universe and his place in it, the origin and destiny of humanity, the possibilities of what is beyond him? The answer to that question is one that each of us must make for himself and for his children.I recommend this book to anyone with children of schooling age, to anyone who places value on education and intelligence, and to anyone who wants to be a human being in the fullest sense of the word - in other words, I recommend this book for everyone.

This slim opening volume of the Britannica Great Books of the Western World contends that liberal education, an unquestioned necessity for the civilized Westerner until the 19th century, though now all but dead, is not only worth reviving but is indispensable for every free citizen of our shrunken, technologized, and heavily armed world.Robert M. Hutchins, editor of the Britannica Great Books, delivers the keynote address in this essay, called "The Great Conversation". In it he seeks to fight off the various criticisms of liberal education and establish why its disappearance in the wake of other, more "modern" educational ideas is a near-disaster for humanity, certainly for the West, even if an invisible and slow-motion one.A liberal education boils down to studying and contemplating the Great Ideas contained in the Great Books of this series. "We think that these books show the origins of many of our most serious difficulties," he says. "We think that the spirit they represent and the habit of mind they teach are more necessary today than ever before."He makes the case that these books, far from containing fusty, outmoded ideas fit only for the deliberation of academic specialists, actually set forth, in the most cogent way yet developed, the most important and controversial problems that beset humanity. With few exceptions the Great Books were written not for specialists, but for the interested and intelligent lay reader.Hutchins deplores the descent of 20th-century education into academic specialization, physical science, and vocational training. According to him, such training in no way prepares us to deal with the deepest problems of modern life: how to coexist nonviolently, even when we cannot agree on things.As far as I can tell, all the criticisms that have been leveled against the Britannica Great Books series--that it is elitist, patriarchal, Western-biased--are answered in this essay, and answered well. Ideas don't care who has them or who talks about them. Our biggest danger is that we don't talk about them, don't think about them, and are mostly unaware of them. We can certainly debate whether these particular books are exactly the right set for such a series, but if not, they're pretty close, and they make a great place to start.I myself have no university education, and have been skeptical of the value of the old-fashioned "liberal education". Having read Ludwig von Mises' "Human Action", I've been persuaded that state education can only mean indoctrination, since, in Mises' view, no government will fund a curriculum that it perceives as being counter to its interests. Hutchins here delivers a powerful counterstroke to that thought, siding with Thomas Jefferson in the belief that the only way to preserve a free society is through universal education. I have to admit that for myself, the jury is back out. It's no coincidence, Hutchins would say: Education is one of the 102 Great Ideas discussed in the Great Books.This book challenged my beliefs and assumptions, made me think deeply, and did so in a very short space. What more recommendation can I give?

Every literate America needs to read this book.