人文教育(Liberal Arts Education)，在希臘羅馬時代是擁有公民權的自由人的教育，在台灣叫通識教育，香港叫博雅教育，中國叫素質教育。我也想了一個譯名叫"理博藝教育"，是音譯也是意譯，只是三個字太長了，也許叫博藝教育就好了，因這也與柏拉圖七藝與孔子六藝相通，只是現代文化遠超過當年的七藝與六藝，所以就叫博藝也很名副其實。博藝:博通藝文。《孔子家語·弟子行》：“好學博藝，省物而勤也，是 冉求 之行也。”《后漢書·張衡傳》：“吾子性德體道，篤信安仁，約己博藝，無堅不鉆。這裡我用人文教育一詞，是因這種教育本質上是人文的陶冶。這種人文教育和朱熹的<涵養居敬，窮理致知>意義是一樣的，目的是人格的形成與知識的追求。這樣的知識不只是聞見之知，而是要進一步孕育出一種視野與胸襟。
美國的大學前兩年重點在人文教育(Liberal Arts Education)，後兩年才是專業教育。哥倫比亞大學核心課程歷史悠久，是美國大學人文教育的代表。哈佛大學的核心課程就不強調經典閱讀，但也是很好的人文教育。美國有一種文理學院就是以人文教育為標榜。其實這種教育與中國傳統教育理念是一致的，就是學做人，成為君子之人，儒家教育的本質就是君子教育，是士的教育。中國傳統的教育就是一種人文教育。可惜在科舉制度下的儒林，就變成科舉考試的教育。人文教育的本質是一種思考能力的訓練，也是一種人格的陶冶。
人文教育是大學之所以為大學的核心價值之所在。人文教育是體，專業教育是用。人文教育訓練的是人，而不是專業。但這兩者都重要，無體有用，只能有一器之用，無法有廣闊的胸襟與視野，有體無用，進了社會要找工作，也沒法用。人文與專業要兼顧，否則就高不成低不就。誠如胡適所言，為學要如金字塔，要能廣大要能高。
如何閱讀一本書的作者阿德勒是一位多瑪斯主義哲學家，也是一個推動人文教育的大師，他是《西方世界偉大著作》的編輯者。多瑪斯是一位連結基督教與亞理斯多德的大師，也可以說他是一位連結聖經與文化的大師，中世紀的七藝就是當時的人文教育。孔子的六藝也是同樣的精神。
在古希臘時期，柏拉圖就提出了「七藝」，也稱為「自由七藝」（Liberal arts）。到歐洲中世紀初期成為學校中的七門課程：文法（包括拉丁文和文學）、修辭（包括散文與詩的寫作，以及歷史）、辯證（即形式邏輯）、算術、幾何（包括地理）、天文、音樂。聖伊西多爾又將前三科定為初級學科，稱為「三藝」（trivium），後四科定為高級學科，稱為「四術」（quadrivium）[4]。
經院哲學的發展地點是教會學校、修道院，以及後來由教會建立的大學。我們可以從當時學生所學習的課程看出經院哲學的重點：
三藝(Trivium)：
神學是那時的「科學之母」(The Queen of Science)，是每個學生的必修科。
教學的方法分為兩種：授課(lectio)及辯論(disputatio)。授課所集成的講義叫「大全」(summa)，而辯論所記下的資料叫「問題」(quaestiones)。除了「大全」及「問題」之外，還有「小品」(opuscula)是教授或學生寫成的小論文。
《西方世界偉大著作》是一套精選的西方經典作品，這讓我想起胡適與梁啟超寫的國學書單。這套書內容的廣度與深度都令我讚嘆不已，不過也叫我望塵莫及。但如果可行，這是人文教育的最佳選擇。我今天(10/21/2018)在eBay用$100標到了這套書，一本才兩塊錢，我用底價下標，居然下標三天也沒人和我競標，真是冷門的好貨，算是被我撿到了寶。我知道我的時間能力消化不了那麼多經典，但能讀個幾本也不錯，就當庫藏也好。希望有一天我家那兩個小孩再大一點可以知道它的價值，能夠自己懂得去挖寶。想起以前中國時報主編高信疆策畫的中國歷代經典寶庫青少年版，用淺顯的白話，讓青少年可以開始接觸中國經典，其實我們也很需要一套西方歷代經典寶庫青少年版，讓青少年可以開始接觸西方經典。不要說青少年，成年人也很需要這種經典入門的書。大學生也許一開始需要一些概論性質的普通課程，否則並不易直接就掌握經典。讀完這些，相當於讀了七個科系:文學、數學與自然科學、歷史與社會科學、哲學與神學。這並不容易。這種計畫需要四年的人文教育，一年一個領域。等大學畢業後，研究所再去攻專業教育，這種人文教育是所有愛智之人的夢想。
剛剛(10/26/2018)收到了這套書，我很高興。書是按著時代排序的，書後有一個十年讀經計畫。中國人吸收西方文化已有多年，但卻很少深入了解西方文化，除了民主，科學，西方有一個綿延三千年的人文傳統，這一部分對大多數的人而言其實是陌生的，我自己對西方深層的文化傳統也還只能算是一知半解，希望這套書是一個深度學習的開始。我買到的是第一版，第二版做了一些調整，加上二十世紀的經典，算是更完備。
《哈佛經典》和《西方世界偉大著作》類似，內容有些重疊，但哈佛百年經典已經翻成中文了。
所以中文讀者可以先讀這個。在Amazon下載電子書也不過就幾塊錢，當然它的價值遠遠超過這些錢。不過我覺得《西方世界偉大著作》選的書更具有代表性。希望有一天這套書也有中文譯本。哈佛的校長Dr. Eliot 認為人文教育可以通過每天花十五分鐘閱讀可以放在五英尺書架上的經典圖書獲得（最初的說法是三英尺）。這真是鼓舞人心的說法，也許我也應該來試試看，這是終身的人文教育。
希臘，羅馬，中世紀與文藝復興，近代，啟蒙運動，浪漫主義。一個時代兩年，共十二年才能完工。
以哲學為第一優先。第二文學，第三歷史與社會，第四科學。
希臘，柏拉圖，亞里斯多德
羅馬，奧古斯丁
中世紀與文藝復興，多瑪斯
近代，培根，笛卡爾
啟蒙運動，康德
浪漫主義，黑格爾
希臘哲學，柏拉圖，亞里斯多德這是西方文化基本教材，就好像四書是中國文化基本教材，亞里斯多德是希臘哲學的總結，他一人就創立了西方文化完整的規模，他的理論哲學有邏輯，形上學，自然哲學，實踐哲學有倫理學，政治學，美學有詩學，修辭學。讓我就從基礎開始吧。
他的形而上學是處理抽象性一般性實體的學問，自然哲學是處理具體性特殊性實體的學問。在他的哲學裏面形而上學並不是印象中那種遙不可及，虛無飄渺的玄學，他的形而上學是他的自然哲學的基礎。形而上學事後人取的，其實亞里斯多德取的名稱是第一哲學。
人文教育八藝
天: 宗教，哲學
文: 文學，藝術
人: 歷史，社會
物: 數算，科學
人: 中史，西史。政法，社經。
物: 數學，資訊。理化，生地。
四年的人文教育: 這是隱藏在<中庸>的大學之道
大一: 文學，藝術(己)
大二: 歷史，社會(群)
大三: 數算，科學(物)
大四: 宗教，哲學(天)
"唯天下至誠，為能盡其性；
能盡其性，則能盡人之性；
能盡 人之性，則能盡物之性；
能盡物之性，則可以贊大地之化育；
可以贊天地之化育，則可以與天地參矣。" <中庸>
人文教育是大學之所以為大學的核心價值之所在。人文教育是體，專業教育是用。人文教育訓練的是人，而不是專業。但這兩者都重要，無體有用，只能有一器之用，無法有廣闊的胸襟與視野，有體無用，進了社會要找工作，也沒法用。人文與專業要兼顧，否則就高不成低不就。誠如胡適所言，為學要如金字塔，要能廣大要能高。
如何閱讀一本書的作者阿德勒是一位多瑪斯主義哲學家，也是一個推動人文教育的大師，他是《西方世界偉大著作》的編輯者。多瑪斯是一位連結基督教與亞理斯多德的大師，也可以說他是一位連結聖經與文化的大師，中世紀的七藝就是當時的人文教育。孔子的六藝也是同樣的精神。
在古希臘時期，柏拉圖就提出了「七藝」，也稱為「自由七藝」（Liberal arts）。到歐洲中世紀初期成為學校中的七門課程：文法（包括拉丁文和文學）、修辭（包括散文與詩的寫作，以及歷史）、辯證（即形式邏輯）、算術、幾何（包括地理）、天文、音樂。聖伊西多爾又將前三科定為初級學科，稱為「三藝」（trivium），後四科定為高級學科，稱為「四術」（quadrivium）[4]。
經院哲學的發展地點是教會學校、修道院，以及後來由教會建立的大學。我們可以從當時學生所學習的課程看出經院哲學的重點：
三藝(Trivium)：
- 辯證 (dialectica)
- 修辭 (rhetorica)
- 文法 (grammatica)
- 天文 (astronomica)
- 音樂 (musica)
- 幾何 (geometrica)
- 算術 (arithmetica)
神學是那時的「科學之母」(The Queen of Science)，是每個學生的必修科。
教學的方法分為兩種：授課(lectio)及辯論(disputatio)。授課所集成的講義叫「大全」(summa)，而辯論所記下的資料叫「問題」(quaestiones)。除了「大全」及「問題」之外，還有「小品」(opuscula)是教授或學生寫成的小論文。
《西方世界偉大著作》是一套精選的西方經典作品，這讓我想起胡適與梁啟超寫的國學書單。這套書內容的廣度與深度都令我讚嘆不已，不過也叫我望塵莫及。但如果可行，這是人文教育的最佳選擇。我今天(10/21/2018)在eBay用$100標到了這套書，一本才兩塊錢，我用底價下標，居然下標三天也沒人和我競標，真是冷門的好貨，算是被我撿到了寶。我知道我的時間能力消化不了那麼多經典，但能讀個幾本也不錯，就當庫藏也好。希望有一天我家那兩個小孩再大一點可以知道它的價值，能夠自己懂得去挖寶。想起以前中國時報主編高信疆策畫的中國歷代經典寶庫青少年版，用淺顯的白話，讓青少年可以開始接觸中國經典，其實我們也很需要一套西方歷代經典寶庫青少年版，讓青少年可以開始接觸西方經典。不要說青少年，成年人也很需要這種經典入門的書。大學生也許一開始需要一些概論性質的普通課程，否則並不易直接就掌握經典。讀完這些，相當於讀了七個科系:文學、數學與自然科學、歷史與社會科學、哲學與神學。這並不容易。這種計畫需要四年的人文教育，一年一個領域。等大學畢業後，研究所再去攻專業教育，這種人文教育是所有愛智之人的夢想。
剛剛(10/26/2018)收到了這套書，我很高興。書是按著時代排序的，書後有一個十年讀經計畫。中國人吸收西方文化已有多年，但卻很少深入了解西方文化，除了民主，科學，西方有一個綿延三千年的人文傳統，這一部分對大多數的人而言其實是陌生的，我自己對西方深層的文化傳統也還只能算是一知半解，希望這套書是一個深度學習的開始。我買到的是第一版，第二版做了一些調整，加上二十世紀的經典，算是更完備。
《哈佛經典》和《西方世界偉大著作》類似，內容有些重疊，但哈佛百年經典已經翻成中文了。
所以中文讀者可以先讀這個。在Amazon下載電子書也不過就幾塊錢，當然它的價值遠遠超過這些錢。不過我覺得《西方世界偉大著作》選的書更具有代表性。希望有一天這套書也有中文譯本。哈佛的校長Dr. Eliot 認為人文教育可以通過每天花十五分鐘閱讀可以放在五英尺書架上的經典圖書獲得（最初的說法是三英尺）。這真是鼓舞人心的說法，也許我也應該來試試看，這是終身的人文教育。
希臘，羅馬，中世紀與文藝復興，近代，啟蒙運動，浪漫主義。一個時代兩年，共十二年才能完工。
以哲學為第一優先。第二文學，第三歷史與社會，第四科學。
希臘，柏拉圖，亞里斯多德
羅馬，奧古斯丁
中世紀與文藝復興，多瑪斯
近代，培根，笛卡爾
啟蒙運動，康德
浪漫主義，黑格爾
希臘哲學，柏拉圖，亞里斯多德這是西方文化基本教材，就好像四書是中國文化基本教材，亞里斯多德是希臘哲學的總結，他一人就創立了西方文化完整的規模，他的理論哲學有邏輯，形上學，自然哲學，實踐哲學有倫理學，政治學，美學有詩學，修辭學。讓我就從基礎開始吧。
他的形而上學是處理抽象性一般性實體的學問，自然哲學是處理具體性特殊性實體的學問。在他的哲學裏面形而上學並不是印象中那種遙不可及，虛無飄渺的玄學，他的形而上學是他的自然哲學的基礎。形而上學事後人取的，其實亞里斯多德取的名稱是第一哲學。
人文教育八藝
天: 宗教，哲學
文: 文學，藝術
人: 歷史，社會
物: 數算，科學
人文教育八藝十六科
天: 聖經，神學。中哲，西哲。
文: 國文，英文。美術，音樂。人: 中史，西史。政法，社經。
物: 數學，資訊。理化，生地。
四年的人文教育: 這是隱藏在<中庸>的大學之道
大一: 文學，藝術(己)
大二: 歷史，社會(群)
大三: 數算，科學(物)
大四: 宗教，哲學(天)
"唯天下至誠，為能盡其性；
能盡其性，則能盡人之性；
能盡 人之性，則能盡物之性；
能盡物之性，則可以贊大地之化育；
可以贊天地之化育，則可以與天地參矣。" <中庸>
《西方世界偉大著作》歷史
《西方世界偉大著作》項目由芝加哥大學發起，校長羅伯特·哈欽斯與莫蒂默·阿德勒合作開發一門針對商人的課程，目的是填補他們的自由教育的空白。使讀者成為熟悉西方經典的智力精英，了解三千年來發展起來的偉大思想。這個項目的最初學生是威廉·本頓（後來是美國參議員，不列顛百科全書出版公司的執行長），他提議選擇西方經典的最偉大的書籍，由不列顛百科全書出版公司。然而，哈欽斯對這樣一個商業行為心存警惕，擔心這些書會作為一種產品出售，從而貶低它們作為文化藝術品的價值；不過，他同意這筆交易，並且因這個項目獲得了6萬美元稿費。
在決定選取什麼主題和作者以及如何呈現材料之後，項目開始，預算為200萬美元。1952年4月15日，「西方世界的偉大著作」在紐約沃爾多夫 - 阿斯托利亞酒店舉行的出版發行會上呈現。哈欽斯在講話中說：「這不僅僅是一本書，更是一種自由的教育，《西方世界偉大著作》是一種虔誠的獻禮，這就是我們存在的源泉，這是我們的遺產。這是西方，這是人類的意義。」 前兩套書作為禮物獻給了當時聯合王國女王伊莉莎白二世和美國總統杜魯門。
《西方世界偉大著作》內容
《西方世界偉大著作》最初出版了54卷，涵蓋小說，歷史，詩歌，自然科學，數學，哲學，戲劇，政治，宗教，經濟和道德等領域。 哈欽斯寫了第一冊，題為「偉大的對話」，作為對自由教育的介紹和論述。 阿德勒主編了下兩卷「偉大的思想：一個索引」，強調了該全集的統一性，並將西方思想的作為一種思維方式。這些索引人花費數月的時間編寫，包括了「與上帝的意志相關的人類自由」和「擯棄真空，支持物質空間論」等議題。他們把這些話題分成了102個章節，阿德勒寫了102篇介紹。每卷的顏色按主題領域分為四種 -
1952 第一版
INCLUDES:
序言
(1) The Great Conversation --
(2) The Great Ideas I --
(3) The Great Ideas II --
希臘 智慧
(4) Homer --
(5) Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes --
(6) Herodotus, Thucydides --
(7) Plato --
(8) Aristotle I --
(9) Aristotle II --
(10) Hippocrates, Galen --
(11) Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Nicomachus --
羅馬 法律
(12) Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius --
(13) Virgil --
(14) Plutarch --
(15) Tacitus --
(16) Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler --
(17) Plotinus --
(18) Augustine --
中世紀 十三世紀到十四世紀 經院哲學
(19) Thomas Aquinas I --
(20) Thomas Aquinas II --
(21) Dante --
(22) Chaucer --
文藝復興 十五世紀到十六世紀 人文主義
(23) Machiavelli, Hobbes --
(24) Rabelais --
(25) Montaigne --
(26) Shakespeare --
(27) Shakespeare II --
(28) Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey --
(29) Cervantes --
近代 十七世紀 科學 理性
(30) Francis Bacon --
(31) Descartes, Spinoza --
(32) Milton --
(33) Pascal --
(34) Newton, Huygens --
(35) Locke, Berkeley, Hume --
(36) Swift, Sterne --
(37) Fielding --
啟蒙運動 十八世紀 民主 革命
(38) Montesquieu, Rousseau --
(39) Adam Smith --
(40) Gibbon I --
(41) Gibbon II --
(42) Kant --
(43) American State Papers, The Federalist, JS Mill --
(44) Boswell --
十九世紀 浪漫 寫實 進步
(45) Lavoisier, Fourier, Faraday --
(46) Hegel --
(47) Goethe --
(48) Melville --
(49) Darwin --
(50) Marx, Engels --
(51) Tolstoy --
(52) Dostoevsky --
(53) William James --
(54) Freud.
按著時代讀，共有七個時代，一個時代一年或兩年。林毓生說讀經典要比慢。
我們有不少國學大師指導人們讀國學經典，但卻很少聽到西學大師來指導人們好好讀西學經典，我們對西學經典的了解其實是相當有限的。我們應該鼓勵依些年輕人好好地鑽研西學，培養一些可以專攻西學的人文學者。雖說生活逐漸西化，但我們學的主要是科學與技術，我們對西方人文思想傳統的瞭解還是不夠深入。曾經志文出版社的新潮文庫做了一代人的啟蒙工作，如今我們仍然需要這樣的工作。我們需要有出版家把這一套經典翻譯出來。三民的國學經典新注新譯做得很好，我們需要對西方經典有類似的工作。大陸的商務已經翻譯了大部分的人文經典，北大的科學經典文庫也翻譯了不少科學經典，所以西方經典的中譯應該大部分都找得到。
如何閱讀一本書
黑體字是第二版增加的六本二十世紀經典 Special colours on Great Books' spines guide you quickly to the four subject areas -
GREEN: Novels, Short Stories, Plays and Poetry
Volume 3 Homer
Volume 4 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
Volume 12 Virgil
Volume 19 Dante, Chaucer
Volume 22 Rabelais
Volume 24 Shakespeare l
Volume 25 Shakespeare ll
Volume 27 Cervantes
Volume 29 Milton
Volume 31 Moliere, Racine
Volume 34 Swift, Voltaire, Diderot
Volume 45 Goethe, Balzac
Volume 46 Austen, George Eliot
Volume 47 Dickens
Volume 48 Melville, Twain
Volume 51 Tolstoy
Volume 52 Dostoevsky, Ibsen
Volume 59 Henry James, Shaw, Conrad, Chekhov, Pirandello, Proust, Cather, Mann, Joyce
Volume 60 Woolf, Kafka, Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, O'Neill, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Brecht, Hemingway, Orwell, Beckett
RED: Philosophy and Religion
Volume 6 Plato
Volume 7 Aristotle l
Volume 8 Aristotle ll
Volume 11 Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus
Volume 16 Augustine
Volume 17 Aquinas l
Volume 18 Aquinas ll
Volume 20 Calvin
Volume 28 Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza
Volume 30 Pascal
Volume 33 Locke, Berkeley, Hume
Volume 39 Kant
Volume 43 Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche
Volume 55 William James, Bergson, Dewey, Whitehead, Russell, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Barth
BLUE: History, Politics, Economics and Ethics
Volume 5 Herodotus, Thucydides
Volume 13 Plutarch
Volume 14 Tacitus
Volume 21 Machiavelli, Hobbes
Volume 23 Erasmus, Montaigne Volume 35 Montesquieu, Rousseau
Volume 36 Adam Smith
Volume 37 Gibbon l
Volume 38 Gibbon ll
Volume 40 J.S. Mill
Volume 41 Boswell
Volume 44 Tocqueville
Volume 50 Marx, Engels
Volume 57 Veblen, Tawney, Keynes
Volume 58 Frazer, Weber, Huizinga, Levi-Strauss
GREY: Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Volume 9 Hippocrates, Galen
Volume 10 Euclid, Archimedes, Nicomachus
Volume 15 Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler
Volume 26 Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey
Volume 32 Newton, Huygens
Volume 42 Lavoisier, Faraday
Volume 49 Darwin
Volume 53 William James
Volume 54 Freud
Volume 56 Poincare, Planck, Whitehead, Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Hardy, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dobzhansky, Waddington
1. The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas
2. The Syntopicon (cont.)
3. Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey
4. Aeschylus, Plays
Sophocles, Plays
Euripides, Plays
Aristophanes, Plays
5. Herodotus, The History of the Persian Wars
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
6. Plato, Dialogues, The Seventh Letter
7. Aristotle, Works
8. Aristotle, Works (cont.)
9. Hippocrates, Works
Galen, On the Natural Faculties
10. Euclid, Elements
Archimedes, Works
Nicomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic
11. Lucretius, The Way Things Are
Epictetus, Discourses
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Plotinus, The Six Enneads
12. Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, The Aeneid
13. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
14. Tacitus, The Annals, The Histories
15. Ptolemy, The Almagest
Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Johannes Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV-V), The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
16. Saint Augustine, The Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine
17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
18. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (cont.)
19. Dante, The Divine Comedy
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales
20. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
21. Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
22. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
23. Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
24. William Shakespeare, Plays
25. William Shakespeare, Plays (cont.), Sonnets
26. William Gilbert, On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
Galileo, Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, On the Circulation of the Blood,
On the Generation of Animals
27. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
28. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, New Atlantis
René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on the Method, Meditations on First Philosophy,
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies, The Geometry
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics
29. John Milton, English Minor Poems, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, Areopagitica
30. Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, Pensées, Scientific Treatises
31. Molière, The School for Wives, The Critique of the School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Miser,
The Would-Be Gentleman, The Would-Be Invalid
Jean Racine, Berenice, Phaedra
32. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics Christiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light
33. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Second Essay on Civil Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
34. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Voltaire, Candide
Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew
35. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, A Discourse on Political Economy, The Social Contract
36. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
37. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
38. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (cont.)
39. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, The Critique of Practical
Reason, Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals,
The Science of Right, The Critique of Judgment
40. American State Papers (Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States of America)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Representative Government, Utilitarianism
41. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
42. Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry
Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity
43. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
44. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
45. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette
46. Jane Austen, Emma
George Eliot, Middlemarch
47. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
48. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
49. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man
50. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Karl Marx, Capital (Vol. 1)
51. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
52. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder
53. William James, The Principles of Psychology
54. Sigmund Freud, Major Works (including Selected Papers on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, A General Introduction
to Psychoanalysis, Civilization and Its Discontents, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis)
55. 20th Century Philosophy and Religion:
William James, Pragmatism
Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics
John Dewey, Experience and Education
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Martin Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man
56. 20th Century Natural Science:
Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections), Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems
in Atomic Physics
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species
C.H. Waddington, The Nature of Life
57. 20th Century Social Science (I):
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
R.H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
58. 20th Century Social Science (II):
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (selections)
Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (selections)
Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (selections)
59. 20th Century Imaginative Literature (I):
Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Marcel Proust, Swann in Love (from Remembrance of Things Past)
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
60. 20th Century Imaginative Literature (II):
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
D.H. Lawrence, The Prussian Officer
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children
Ernest Hemingway, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Note: The Bible should also be considered as part of this list. It is indexed in The Syntopicon. The editors explain that it was not included in the Great Books set because it was assumed that any literate person would already have a copy.
The editors also note that the twentieth-century selections are just a provisional sampling: It remains to be seen which of them, in the perspective of time, will prove to be as enduring as the earlier works.
Table of contents of the Great Books of the Western World (2nd edition, 1990), edited by Mortimer Adler et al., published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
The second edition is significantly larger than the first (1952). It dropped Apollonius’s Conics, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and J.B. Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat, but it added the works by Calvin, Erasmus, Molière, Racine, Voltaire, Diderot, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tocqueville, Kierkegaard, George Eliot, Twain, Ibsen and Nietzsche, plus the six volumes of twentieth-century authors.
《西方大觀念》是《西方世界的偉大著作》叢書的前兩卷的中文版。
《西方世界的偉大著作》是大英百科全書出版社編輯的一套叢書，60卷，選取了西方哲學、文學、心理學等人文社會科學及一些自然科學的煌煌巨著，涵蓋的時代自荷馬起至薩繆爾·貝克特止。這套叢書的前兩卷，Syntopicon，我們稱之為“西方大觀念”。它包括了代表西方文化最主要特征的102個觀念，如存在、民主、藝術等等，其意在為后面各卷的偉大著作提供一個總論性的概述和主題索引。每一章對應一個大觀念。其文字并不是對該的詳盡分析，而是勾勒出該觀念的基本輪廓，引導讀者去閱讀支撐著該觀念的一批西方偉大著作。《西方大觀念》也可以看作一部問題集，我們所關心的“哲學問題”，差不多都包括在這里了。在本書的總論后面，都隱藏著有待進一步探討的問題，而本書恰可以供我們作為探討的起點，因為本書對這些基本觀念的基本闡論執中穩靠。愛好思索的朋友，在深入思考之前和之際，了解前人的基本思想，助莫大焉。任何人的思想都是在傳統中生長起來的，今天，我們的論理詞匯多數是從西方移植過來的，不深入西方的思想傳統，我們就無法認真論理。很少中国
《西方世界偉大著作》項目由芝加哥大學發起，校長羅伯特·哈欽斯與莫蒂默·阿德勒合作開發一門針對商人的課程，目的是填補他們的自由教育的空白。使讀者成為熟悉西方經典的智力精英，了解三千年來發展起來的偉大思想。這個項目的最初學生是威廉·本頓（後來是美國參議員，不列顛百科全書出版公司的執行長），他提議選擇西方經典的最偉大的書籍，由不列顛百科全書出版公司。然而，哈欽斯對這樣一個商業行為心存警惕，擔心這些書會作為一種產品出售，從而貶低它們作為文化藝術品的價值；不過，他同意這筆交易，並且因這個項目獲得了6萬美元稿費。
在決定選取什麼主題和作者以及如何呈現材料之後，項目開始，預算為200萬美元。1952年4月15日，「西方世界的偉大著作」在紐約沃爾多夫 - 阿斯托利亞酒店舉行的出版發行會上呈現。哈欽斯在講話中說：「這不僅僅是一本書，更是一種自由的教育，《西方世界偉大著作》是一種虔誠的獻禮，這就是我們存在的源泉，這是我們的遺產。這是西方，這是人類的意義。」 前兩套書作為禮物獻給了當時聯合王國女王伊莉莎白二世和美國總統杜魯門。
《西方世界偉大著作》內容
《西方世界偉大著作》最初出版了54卷，涵蓋小說，歷史，詩歌，自然科學，數學，哲學，戲劇，政治，宗教，經濟和道德等領域。 哈欽斯寫了第一冊，題為「偉大的對話」，作為對自由教育的介紹和論述。 阿德勒主編了下兩卷「偉大的思想：一個索引」，強調了該全集的統一性，並將西方思想的作為一種思維方式。這些索引人花費數月的時間編寫，包括了「與上帝的意志相關的人類自由」和「擯棄真空，支持物質空間論」等議題。他們把這些話題分成了102個章節，阿德勒寫了102篇介紹。每卷的顏色按主題領域分為四種 -
- 文學
- 哲學與神學
- 歷史與社會科學
- 數學與自然科學
1952 第一版
INCLUDES:
序言
(1) The Great Conversation --
(2) The Great Ideas I --
(3) The Great Ideas II --
希臘 智慧
(4) Homer --
(5) Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes --
(6) Herodotus, Thucydides --
(7) Plato --
(8) Aristotle I --
(9) Aristotle II --
(10) Hippocrates, Galen --
(11) Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Nicomachus --
羅馬 法律
(12) Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius --
(13) Virgil --
(14) Plutarch --
(15) Tacitus --
(16) Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler --
(17) Plotinus --
(18) Augustine --
中世紀 十三世紀到十四世紀 經院哲學
(19) Thomas Aquinas I --
(20) Thomas Aquinas II --
(21) Dante --
(22) Chaucer --
文藝復興 十五世紀到十六世紀 人文主義
(23) Machiavelli, Hobbes --
(24) Rabelais --
(25) Montaigne --
(26) Shakespeare --
(27) Shakespeare II --
(28) Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey --
(29) Cervantes --
近代 十七世紀 科學 理性
(30) Francis Bacon --
(31) Descartes, Spinoza --
(32) Milton --
(33) Pascal --
(34) Newton, Huygens --
(35) Locke, Berkeley, Hume --
(36) Swift, Sterne --
(37) Fielding --
啟蒙運動 十八世紀 民主 革命
(38) Montesquieu, Rousseau --
(39) Adam Smith --
(40) Gibbon I --
(41) Gibbon II --
(42) Kant --
(43) American State Papers, The Federalist, JS Mill --
(44) Boswell --
十九世紀 浪漫 寫實 進步
(45) Lavoisier, Fourier, Faraday --
(46) Hegel --
(47) Goethe --
(48) Melville --
(49) Darwin --
(50) Marx, Engels --
(51) Tolstoy --
(52) Dostoevsky --
(53) William James --
(54) Freud.
按著時代讀，共有七個時代，一個時代一年或兩年。林毓生說讀經典要比慢。
我們有不少國學大師指導人們讀國學經典，但卻很少聽到西學大師來指導人們好好讀西學經典，我們對西學經典的了解其實是相當有限的。我們應該鼓勵依些年輕人好好地鑽研西學，培養一些可以專攻西學的人文學者。雖說生活逐漸西化，但我們學的主要是科學與技術，我們對西方人文思想傳統的瞭解還是不夠深入。曾經志文出版社的新潮文庫做了一代人的啟蒙工作，如今我們仍然需要這樣的工作。我們需要有出版家把這一套經典翻譯出來。三民的國學經典新注新譯做得很好，我們需要對西方經典有類似的工作。大陸的商務已經翻譯了大部分的人文經典，北大的科學經典文庫也翻譯了不少科學經典，所以西方經典的中譯應該大部分都找得到。
如何閱讀一本書
該書列出了從古至今西方一百三十七位作家的幾百部經典作品。
- 荷馬：伊利亞特、奧德賽
- 舊約聖經
- 埃斯庫羅斯：悲劇
- 索福克勒斯：悲劇
- 希羅多德：《希臘波斯戰爭史》
- 歐里庇得斯：悲劇
- 修昔底德：《伯羅奔尼撒戰爭史》
- 希波克拉底：醫學
- 阿里斯托芬: 喜劇
- 柏拉圖：對話錄
- 亞里斯多德: 作品集
- 伊壁鳩魯: Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
- 歐幾里得: 《幾何原本》
- 阿基米德: 作品集
- Apollonius of Perga: Conic Sections
- 西塞羅: 作品集
- 盧克萊修: On the Nature of Things
- 維吉爾: 作品集
- 賀拉斯: 作品集
- 李維: History of Rome
- 奧維德: 作品集
- 普魯塔克: Parallel Lives; Moralia
- 塔西佗: Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
- Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic
- Epictetus: Discourses; Encheiridion
- 克勞狄烏斯·托勒密: 天文學大成
- 琉善: 作品集
- 馬可奧勒留: 《沉思錄》
- 蓋倫: On the Natural Faculties
- 《新約》
- Plotinus: The Enneads
- 聖奧古斯丁: On the Teacher; 懺悔錄; 《上帝之城》；On Christian Doctrine
- 《羅蘭之歌》
- 《尼伯龍根之歌》
- The Saga of Burnt Njál
- 托馬斯·阿奎那: 《神學大全》
- Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
- 喬叟: Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
- 達文西: 筆記
- 馬基雅弗利: 《君主論》； Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
- 伊拉斯謨: The Praise of Folly
- 哥白尼: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
- 托馬斯·莫爾 : 《烏托邦》
- 馬丁·路德: Table Talk; Three Treatises
- 拉伯雷: 《巨人傳》
- 約翰·加爾文: Institutes of the Christian Religion
- 蒙田: Essays
- William Gilbert: On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
- 塞萬提斯: 《堂吉訶德》
- Edmund Spenser: Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
- 弗朗西斯·培根: Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
- 威廉·莎士比亞: Poetry and Plays
- 伽利略·伽利萊: Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
- 克卜勒: Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; 世界的和諧
- William Harvey: On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
- 托馬斯·霍布斯: 《利維坦》
- 笛卡爾: Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy
- 約翰·米爾頓: 作品集
- 莫里哀: 喜劇
- 布萊茲·帕斯卡: The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises
- 克里斯蒂安·惠更斯: Treatise on Light
- 斯賓諾莎: 《倫理學》
- 約翰·洛克: Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Thoughts Concerning Education
- Jean Baptiste Racine: Tragedies
- 艾薩克·牛頓: 《自然哲學的數學原理》；Optics
- 萊布尼茨: Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding; Monadology
- 笛福: 《魯賓遜漂流記》
- 斯威夫特: A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella；《格列佛遊記》； A Modest Proposal
- William Congreve: The Way of the World
- George Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge
- 亞歷山大·蒲柏: Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man
- 孟德斯鳩: Persian Letters；《論法的精神》
- 伏爾泰: Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary
- Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones
- 塞繆爾·詹森: The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
- 大衛·休謨: Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- 盧梭: On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile, The Social Contract
- Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
- 亞當斯密: The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
- 康德: 《純粹理性的批判》；Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
- 愛德華·吉本: 《羅馬帝國衰亡史》； Autobiography
- James Boswell: Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
- 拉瓦錫: Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
- 亞歷山大·漢密爾頓, 約翰·傑伊, and 詹姆斯·麥迪遜: 聯邦黨人文集
- 邊沁: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
- 歌德: 《浮士德》； Poetry and Truth
- 傅立葉: Analytical Theory of Heat
- 黑格爾: 《精神現象學》； Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
- 華茲華斯: Poems
- 柯勒律治: Poems; Biographia Literaria
- 簡·奧斯丁: 《傲慢與偏見》；《艾瑪》
- 克勞塞維茨: 《戰爭論》
- 司湯達: 《紅與黑》； The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
- 拜倫: 《唐璜》
- 叔本華: Studies in Pessimism
- Michael Faraday: Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
- Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology
- Auguste Comte: The Positive Philosophy
- 巴爾扎克: 《高老頭》； Eugenie Grandet
- 愛默生: Representative Men; Essays; Journal
- Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
- 托克維爾: 《論美國的民主》
- John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
- 達爾文: 《物種起源》; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
- 狄更斯: 《彼得·維克》； 《大衛·克波菲爾》；《艱難時世》
- Claude Bernard: Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
- 大衛·梭羅: 《論公民的不服從》；《瓦爾登湖》
- 卡爾·馬克思: 《資本論》；《共產黨宣言》
- George Eliot: Adam Bede; Middlemarch
- Herman Melville: Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
- 陀思妥耶夫斯基: 罪與罰; 白痴 (小說); 卡拉馬佐夫兄弟
- 福樓拜: Madame Bovary; Three Stories
- 易普生: Plays
- 托爾斯泰: 《戰爭與和平》；《安娜卡列尼娜》 ； What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
- 馬克·吐溫: 頑童歷險記; The Mysterious Stranger
- William James: The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
- 亨利·詹姆斯: 美國人; 大使
- 尼采: Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals; The Will to Power
- 龐加萊: Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
- 西格蒙德·佛洛伊德: The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
- 蕭伯納: Plays and Prefaces
- 普朗克: Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
- Henri Bergson: Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
- 杜伊: How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
- 懷特海德: An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
- 桑塔亞那: The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
- 列寧: The State and Revolution
- 普魯斯特: Remembrance of Things Past
- 伯特蘭·羅素: The Problems of Philosophy; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
- 托馬斯·曼: The Magic Mountain; Joseph and His Brothers
- 阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦: The Meaning of Relativity; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; 物理學的進化
- 喬伊斯: 'The Dead' in Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; 《尤利西斯》
- Jacques Maritain: Art and Scholasticism; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Rights of Man and Natural Law; True Humanism
- 卡夫卡: 《審判》;《城堡》
- 湯因比: A Study of History; Civilization on Trial
- 薩特: 《噁心》; No Exit; 《存在與虛無》
- 索忍尼辛: The First Circle; 《癌症房》
黑體字是第二版增加的六本二十世紀經典 Special colours on Great Books' spines guide you quickly to the four subject areas -
GREEN: Novels, Short Stories, Plays and Poetry
Volume 3 Homer
Volume 4 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
Volume 12 Virgil
Volume 19 Dante, Chaucer
Volume 22 Rabelais
Volume 24 Shakespeare l
Volume 25 Shakespeare ll
Volume 27 Cervantes
Volume 29 Milton
Volume 31 Moliere, Racine
Volume 34 Swift, Voltaire, Diderot
Volume 45 Goethe, Balzac
Volume 46 Austen, George Eliot
Volume 47 Dickens
Volume 48 Melville, Twain
Volume 51 Tolstoy
Volume 52 Dostoevsky, Ibsen
Volume 59 Henry James, Shaw, Conrad, Chekhov, Pirandello, Proust, Cather, Mann, Joyce
Volume 60 Woolf, Kafka, Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, O'Neill, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Brecht, Hemingway, Orwell, Beckett
RED: Philosophy and Religion
Volume 6 Plato
Volume 7 Aristotle l
Volume 8 Aristotle ll
Volume 11 Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus
Volume 16 Augustine
Volume 17 Aquinas l
Volume 18 Aquinas ll
Volume 20 Calvin
Volume 28 Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza
Volume 30 Pascal
Volume 33 Locke, Berkeley, Hume
Volume 39 Kant
Volume 43 Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche
Volume 55 William James, Bergson, Dewey, Whitehead, Russell, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Barth
BLUE: History, Politics, Economics and Ethics
Volume 5 Herodotus, Thucydides
Volume 13 Plutarch
Volume 14 Tacitus
Volume 21 Machiavelli, Hobbes
Volume 23 Erasmus, Montaigne Volume 35 Montesquieu, Rousseau
Volume 36 Adam Smith
Volume 37 Gibbon l
Volume 38 Gibbon ll
Volume 40 J.S. Mill
Volume 41 Boswell
Volume 44 Tocqueville
Volume 50 Marx, Engels
Volume 57 Veblen, Tawney, Keynes
Volume 58 Frazer, Weber, Huizinga, Levi-Strauss
GREY: Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Volume 9 Hippocrates, Galen
Volume 10 Euclid, Archimedes, Nicomachus
Volume 15 Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler
Volume 26 Gilbert, Galileo, Harvey
Volume 32 Newton, Huygens
Volume 42 Lavoisier, Faraday
Volume 49 Darwin
Volume 53 William James
Volume 54 Freud
Volume 56 Poincare, Planck, Whitehead, Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Hardy, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Dobzhansky, Waddington
Great Books of the Western World
Contents of the 60-Volume Set (1990 Edition)
2. The Syntopicon (cont.)
3. Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey
4. Aeschylus, Plays
Sophocles, Plays
Euripides, Plays
Aristophanes, Plays
5. Herodotus, The History of the Persian Wars
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
6. Plato, Dialogues, The Seventh Letter
7. Aristotle, Works
8. Aristotle, Works (cont.)
9. Hippocrates, Works
Galen, On the Natural Faculties
10. Euclid, Elements
Archimedes, Works
Nicomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic
11. Lucretius, The Way Things Are
Epictetus, Discourses
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Plotinus, The Six Enneads
12. Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, The Aeneid
13. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
14. Tacitus, The Annals, The Histories
15. Ptolemy, The Almagest
Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Johannes Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV-V), The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
16. Saint Augustine, The Confessions, The City of God, On Christian Doctrine
17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
18. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (cont.)
19. Dante, The Divine Comedy
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales
20. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
21. Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
22. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
23. Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly
Michel de Montaigne, Essays
24. William Shakespeare, Plays
25. William Shakespeare, Plays (cont.), Sonnets
26. William Gilbert, On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
Galileo, Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, On the Circulation of the Blood,
On the Generation of Animals
27. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
28. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, New Atlantis
René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Discourse on the Method, Meditations on First Philosophy,
Objections Against the Meditations and Replies, The Geometry
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics
29. John Milton, English Minor Poems, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, Areopagitica
30. Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters, Pensées, Scientific Treatises
31. Molière, The School for Wives, The Critique of the School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Miser,
The Would-Be Gentleman, The Would-Be Invalid
Jean Racine, Berenice, Phaedra
32. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics Christiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light
33. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Second Essay on Civil Government, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
34. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Voltaire, Candide
Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew
35. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, A Discourse on Political Economy, The Social Contract
36. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
37. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
38. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (cont.)
39. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, The Critique of Practical
Reason, Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals,
The Science of Right, The Critique of Judgment
40. American State Papers (Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States of America)
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Representative Government, Utilitarianism
41. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
42. Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry
Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity
43. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, The Philosophy of History
Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
44. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
45. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Honoré de Balzac, Cousin Bette
46. Jane Austen, Emma
George Eliot, Middlemarch
47. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
48. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
49. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man
50. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Karl Marx, Capital (Vol. 1)
51. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
52. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder
53. William James, The Principles of Psychology
54. Sigmund Freud, Major Works (including Selected Papers on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, A General Introduction
to Psychoanalysis, Civilization and Its Discontents, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis)
55. 20th Century Philosophy and Religion:
William James, Pragmatism
Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics
John Dewey, Experience and Education
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Martin Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man
56. 20th Century Natural Science:
Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections), Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems
in Atomic Physics
G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species
C.H. Waddington, The Nature of Life
57. 20th Century Social Science (I):
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
R.H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
58. 20th Century Social Science (II):
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (selections)
Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (selections)
Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (selections)
59. 20th Century Imaginative Literature (I):
Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
Marcel Proust, Swann in Love (from Remembrance of Things Past)
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
60. 20th Century Imaginative Literature (II):
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
D.H. Lawrence, The Prussian Officer
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children
Ernest Hemingway, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Note: The Bible should also be considered as part of this list. It is indexed in The Syntopicon. The editors explain that it was not included in the Great Books set because it was assumed that any literate person would already have a copy.
The editors also note that the twentieth-century selections are just a provisional sampling: It remains to be seen which of them, in the perspective of time, will prove to be as enduring as the earlier works.
Table of contents of the Great Books of the Western World (2nd edition, 1990), edited by Mortimer Adler et al., published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
The second edition is significantly larger than the first (1952). It dropped Apollonius’s Conics, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and J.B. Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat, but it added the works by Calvin, Erasmus, Molière, Racine, Voltaire, Diderot, Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tocqueville, Kierkegaard, George Eliot, Twain, Ibsen and Nietzsche, plus the six volumes of twentieth-century authors.
《西方大觀念》是《西方世界的偉大著作》叢書的前兩卷的中文版。
《西方世界的偉大著作》是大英百科全書出版社編輯的一套叢書，60卷，選取了西方哲學、文學、心理學等人文社會科學及一些自然科學的煌煌巨著，涵蓋的時代自荷馬起至薩繆爾·貝克特止。這套叢書的前兩卷，Syntopicon，我們稱之為“西方大觀念”。它包括了代表西方文化最主要特征的102個觀念，如存在、民主、藝術等等，其意在為后面各卷的偉大著作提供一個總論性的概述和主題索引。每一章對應一個大觀念。其文字并不是對該的詳盡分析，而是勾勒出該觀念的基本輪廓，引導讀者去閱讀支撐著該觀念的一批西方偉大著作。《西方大觀念》也可以看作一部問題集，我們所關心的“哲學問題”，差不多都包括在這里了。在本書的總論后面，都隱藏著有待進一步探討的問題，而本書恰可以供我們作為探討的起點，因為本書對這些基本觀念的基本闡論執中穩靠。愛好思索的朋友，在深入思考之前和之際，了解前人的基本思想，助莫大焉。任何人的思想都是在傳統中生長起來的，今天，我們的論理詞匯多數是從西方移植過來的，不深入西方的思想傳統，我們就無法認真論理。很少中国
西方大觀念第一卷
1 天使
2 動物
3 貴族制
4 藝術
5 天文學與宇宙論
6 美
7 存在
8 原因
9 機會
10 變化
11 公民
12 憲法
13 勇敢
14 習俗與約定
15 定義
16 民主制
17 欲望
18 辯證法
19 責任
20 教育
21 元素
22 情感
23 永恒
24 進化
25 經驗
26 家庭
27 命運
28 形式
29 上帝
30 善與惡
31 政府
32 習慣
33 幸福
34 歷史
35 榮譽
36 假說
37 觀念
38 不朽
39 歸納
40 無限
41 判斷
42 正義
43 知識
44 勞動
45 語言
46 法律
47 自由
48 生命與死亡
49 邏輯學
50 愛
……
西方大觀念第二卷《西方大观念》是《Great Books of the Western World》丛书的前两卷的中文版。
《Great Books of the Western World》(西方世界的伟大著作)
是美国大英百科全书出版社编辑的一套丛书，第一版54卷，第二版有60卷，
选取了西方哲学、文学、心理学等人文社会科学及一些自然科学的煌煌巨著，
涵盖的时代自荷马[Homer]起至萨缪尔·贝克特[Samuel Beckett]为止。
这套丛书的第一及第二卷，名叫Syntopicon，就是“综合论题”的意思。
华夏出版社的编者把它翻译为“西方大观念”。
这两卷书包括了代表西方文化最主要特征的102个观念，
如存在、民主、艺术等等，它的用意是在为第三至六十卷的伟大著作提供一个
总论性的概述和主题索引。每一章对应一个大观念。
其文字并不是对该观念的详尽分析，而是勾勒出该观念的基本轮廓，
引导读者去阅读支撑着该观念的一批西方伟大著作。
《西方大观念》也可以看作一部问题集，许多大家关心的“哲学问题”，
差不多都包括在这里了。在本书的总论后面，都隐藏着有待进一步探讨的问题，
而本书恰可以让大家作为探讨的起点，因为本书对这些基本观念的阐论执中稳靠。
爱好思索的朋友，在深入思考之前和之际，了解前人的基本思想，助莫大焉。
任何人的思想都是在传统中生长起来的，就算是我们东方社会，
学习的论理词汇多数也是从西方移植过来的，不深入西方的思想传统，
我们就无法认真做论理。
《西方大观念》中文版全书分两卷，中文大约150多万字，连上英文附录，
共1900多页。此书的译者颇多为著名的翻译家，如邓正来、孙周兴、倪梁康等。
当然，不是说西方观念只有102个，只是在这套丛书里面经过梳理与综合所得到的，
而在这102个大观念之下，还细分了另外大约2000个分类概念或者子论题。
每个大观念的编辑布局为：
1 总论
2 分类主题
3 相关参考/索引
总论并不是非常有深度的去解说该观念，只能算是一个粗略的纲要陈述，
让读者对相关观念有个初步的认知。
分类主题是接下来勾勒出该大观念的内部结构，这些大观念的分类主题
数量都有所不同，从6个到73个，视乎该观念的复杂性。
紧接着分类主题后面的就是最重要的索引了，
简单来说，就是该大观念在58卷书中出现的章节。
这两卷书，充其量只不过是部“比较详细”的巨著索引，如果要超级认真的知晓
每一个大观念的背后来源，那恐怕就得买下整套60卷的《Great Books》了。
当然，我是不可能投资在这套马币4000++的英文书，这两卷书再不完善，
也对我这入门者而言绰绰有余。
本来还在考量人民币290两卷书是否值得，但是在网络上了解了之后还是决定买下。
除了对大英百科全书出版社有信心，也感觉这套中文版很难得，
类似的中文书还没见过。心里想：就当作是工具书吧，反正自己那么热爱哲学与
认知，可以学多一些无害啊~
感激我的同事 -- 斗达博士从南京替我带回这书。（本地没书商愿意引进）
读过了一些大观念，感觉上很好，对我来说算是很详细的解说了，
最重要的是，至少我知道了在那一本著作里面可以找到这个观念，
或者这个观念在历史上的演化到底是如何的。
举个例子：艺术（ART）这个大观念，
我们都知道艺术与美感/审美（Aesthetic）是分不开的。
然而，这不过是近代尤其是19世纪把艺术理论和并于美学的倾向，
很自然的把艺术列入艺术中的一个门类，就是“审美艺术”。
但是在历史上，艺术与实用和知识的联系可能更为紧密与广泛。
当我在给于讲师教学培训的时候说到：「教学是一种艺术。」
一些讲师露出疑惑的神情。那如果说到：「医疗也是一种艺术。」又会怎样呢~
投资这两卷书，不曾让我后悔。
Four Basic Characteristics of Courses in the Columbia Core Curriculum
1. Uniform and Required Courses
Core courses are uniform required courses that provide a common intellectual experience to all students. Discussions begun in the classroom spill over into hallways, dining halls, and dormitories. Through the Core, the student body engages in a campus-wide conversation about what one of its founders called the “insistent problems of the present.” These “Core conversations” become anchor points that organize the often bewildering experience of the early college years. These formative intellectual encounters—the texts, issues, and questions of Core courses—also become touchstones to which students return again and again as they advance in their studies and mature in their lives.
It is hard to overstate the extent to which these campus-wide conversations allow students to build communities, equip them to talk to each other across differences of background and opinion, and allow them to see themselves as part of a human continuum that is larger than themselves and their particular interests. Core questions are not merely academic, but concern issues that everyone confronts, more or less consciously, throughout his or her life.
2. The Study of Original Texts
Core courses focus on primary texts, eschewing secondary or scholarly literature. Students examine important texts from antiquity to the present that speak compellingly to the most basic and enduring questions of human life. All of the texts are meeting points for conversations that have been going on for centuries; conversations that, at every turn, stimulate reflection about the nature of the human good and prepare our students to live more thoughtful and examined lives.
3. Learning Through Conversation
All Core courses are taught in seminar format; that is, they are organized as conversations around a table that are led, but not dictated, by an instructor. The capacity for reasoned and civil conversation about fundamental questions is a critical capacity for democratic self-governance. Our classrooms are training grounds for those intellectual and affective virtues that make collective action, whether it be collective inquiry or collective decision-making, possible. Core courses ask students not only to read complex texts, but also to engage in conversations about some of the most challenging and persistent questions of their individual and collective experience. Students learn to express themselves coherently and convincingly, to listen to opposing viewpoints and to evaluate them honestly, and to articulate the rationale for their positions in ways that can be understood by others. Core seminars prod students to reasoned examination of their own views, and to attentive and open dialogue with others whose views may differ in fundamental ways.
The Core classroom is also the place where the College realizes most vividly the value of its diversity. In the Core classroom, students meet face-to-face and listen to each other. Because Core conversations are about human questions of the deepest order, they serve as vehicles for individuals from sometimes starkly different backgrounds to experience what it means to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
4. Non-Disciplinary Approach
Core courses are taught by an interdisciplinary faculty and are not governed by disciplinary concerns. A Columbia professor once quipped that while the Core is touted for the education it provides to students, its real value is the education it provides to the faculty. Interdisciplinarity, admired and praised everywhere, is actually rarely found in academic institutions, which tend to be organized around highly specialized disciplines. The Columbia Core provides structure, context, and support for exploring the pre-disciplinary human questions from which the disciplines arise. Indeed, what happens in Core classrooms or in Core faculty meetings is best described as meta-disciplinary. The Core, from its very inception, has been conceived as a non-disciplinary endeavor, requiring faculty from various disciplines to come together regularly to share their insights, absorb the insights of others, and teach outside their intellectual comfort zones. Our program, our students, our faculty, and the University in general are enriched by the cross-fertilization of expertise and perspectives that the Core occasions.
1 天使
2 動物
3 貴族制
4 藝術
5 天文學與宇宙論
6 美
7 存在
8 原因
9 機會
10 變化
11 公民
12 憲法
13 勇敢
14 習俗與約定
15 定義
16 民主制
17 欲望
18 辯證法
19 責任
20 教育
21 元素
22 情感
23 永恒
24 進化
25 經驗
26 家庭
27 命運
28 形式
29 上帝
30 善與惡
31 政府
32 習慣
33 幸福
34 歷史
35 榮譽
36 假說
37 觀念
38 不朽
39 歸納
40 無限
41 判斷
42 正義
43 知識
44 勞動
45 語言
46 法律
47 自由
48 生命與死亡
49 邏輯學
50 愛
……
西方大觀念第二卷《西方大观念》是《Great Books of the Western World》丛书的前两卷的中文版。
《Great Books of the Western World》(西方世界的伟大著作)
是美国大英百科全书出版社编辑的一套丛书，第一版54卷，第二版有60卷，
选取了西方哲学、文学、心理学等人文社会科学及一些自然科学的煌煌巨著，
涵盖的时代自荷马[Homer]起至萨缪尔·贝克特[Samuel Beckett]为止。
这套丛书的第一及第二卷，名叫Syntopicon，就是“综合论题”的意思。
华夏出版社的编者把它翻译为“西方大观念”。
这两卷书包括了代表西方文化最主要特征的102个观念，
如存在、民主、艺术等等，它的用意是在为第三至六十卷的伟大著作提供一个
总论性的概述和主题索引。每一章对应一个大观念。
其文字并不是对该观念的详尽分析，而是勾勒出该观念的基本轮廓，
引导读者去阅读支撑着该观念的一批西方伟大著作。
《西方大观念》也可以看作一部问题集，许多大家关心的“哲学问题”，
差不多都包括在这里了。在本书的总论后面，都隐藏着有待进一步探讨的问题，
而本书恰可以让大家作为探讨的起点，因为本书对这些基本观念的阐论执中稳靠。
爱好思索的朋友，在深入思考之前和之际，了解前人的基本思想，助莫大焉。
任何人的思想都是在传统中生长起来的，就算是我们东方社会，
学习的论理词汇多数也是从西方移植过来的，不深入西方的思想传统，
我们就无法认真做论理。
《西方大观念》中文版全书分两卷，中文大约150多万字，连上英文附录，
共1900多页。此书的译者颇多为著名的翻译家，如邓正来、孙周兴、倪梁康等。
当然，不是说西方观念只有102个，只是在这套丛书里面经过梳理与综合所得到的，
而在这102个大观念之下，还细分了另外大约2000个分类概念或者子论题。
每个大观念的编辑布局为：
1 总论
2 分类主题
3 相关参考/索引
总论并不是非常有深度的去解说该观念，只能算是一个粗略的纲要陈述，
让读者对相关观念有个初步的认知。
分类主题是接下来勾勒出该大观念的内部结构，这些大观念的分类主题
数量都有所不同，从6个到73个，视乎该观念的复杂性。
紧接着分类主题后面的就是最重要的索引了，
简单来说，就是该大观念在58卷书中出现的章节。
这两卷书，充其量只不过是部“比较详细”的巨著索引，如果要超级认真的知晓
每一个大观念的背后来源，那恐怕就得买下整套60卷的《Great Books》了。
当然，我是不可能投资在这套马币4000++的英文书，这两卷书再不完善，
也对我这入门者而言绰绰有余。
本来还在考量人民币290两卷书是否值得，但是在网络上了解了之后还是决定买下。
除了对大英百科全书出版社有信心，也感觉这套中文版很难得，
类似的中文书还没见过。心里想：就当作是工具书吧，反正自己那么热爱哲学与
认知，可以学多一些无害啊~
感激我的同事 -- 斗达博士从南京替我带回这书。（本地没书商愿意引进）
读过了一些大观念，感觉上很好，对我来说算是很详细的解说了，
最重要的是，至少我知道了在那一本著作里面可以找到这个观念，
或者这个观念在历史上的演化到底是如何的。
举个例子：艺术（ART）这个大观念，
我们都知道艺术与美感/审美（Aesthetic）是分不开的。
然而，这不过是近代尤其是19世纪把艺术理论和并于美学的倾向，
很自然的把艺术列入艺术中的一个门类，就是“审美艺术”。
但是在历史上，艺术与实用和知识的联系可能更为紧密与广泛。
当我在给于讲师教学培训的时候说到：「教学是一种艺术。」
一些讲师露出疑惑的神情。那如果说到：「医疗也是一种艺术。」又会怎样呢~
投资这两卷书，不曾让我后悔。
The Columbia College Core Curriculum
Since 1919, the Core Curriculum has been the centerpiece of the undergraduate intellectual experience at Columbia College. The Core Curriculum consists of five required courses in important books and works of art in the Western tradition. The courses are meant to prompt students to grapple with fundamental questions of human existence and to think deeply about how the contemporary world has been shaped by the past. With an emphasis on oral and written expression, the courses also hone students’ skills of analysis, clear and cogent argumentation, and persuasive exposition.
Courses in the Core Curriculum share four basic characteristics which, together, embody the College’s intellectual and institutional commitment to liberal arts education:
1. They are uniform courses required of all students;
2. They focus exclusively on primary texts, eschewing secondary or scholarly literature;
3. They are taught as small, discussion-driven seminars;
4. They are conceived as non-disciplinary courses taught by an interdisciplinary faculty.
The content and organization of the Core Curriculum are guided by the view that the ultimate ends of a liberal education necessarily reflect a vision of the ultimate ends of a human life. The Columbia Core is the result of debates and conversations among faculty that span the entire history of the modern College and that have evolved along with our understanding of the place of undergraduate education in the university and in the contemporary world. The effort behind the Core Curriculum presupposes an acceptance by the faculty of the responsibility to present to students a vision—if always a provisional vision—of what a liberal education means. The conversations across disciplines and specializations that sustain the Core Curriculum as a non-disciplinary requirement for all students also give it its vitality and force. They represent an exercise in the complex arts of consensus-building, compromise, and honest debate—liberal habits of mind that we hold as fundamental to the education we aim to provide and to the intellectual communities we wish to foster.
At bottom, the Columbia Core Curriculum aims to cultivate the capacity for reasoned judgment in complex human matters. We study texts and works of art that confront us with fundamental questions of human experience. By analyzing complex and challenging works closely and discussing them in small groups, we aim to develop in our students a capacity for deep inquiry and a life-long habit of self-examination and honest engagement with ideas. Our approach to learning aims to make students more acutely aware of the premises that inform their views and of the ultimate values that guide their decision-making. This awareness heightens the intensity with which students pursue the rest of their studies at Columbia and shapes how they go about organizing their lives beyond their college years. In this way, the Core Curriculum seeks to cultivate virtues of both intellect and character. Our focus is not on the mastery of particular bodies of knowledge, but on the development of the human capacities required for a life of self-reflection, deliberative action, and freedom. The small classes and intimate discussions promote an intellectual and affective integration that carries beyond the classroom and into the rest of their lives. The Core educates by affirming each student's intellectual freedom, irreducible worth, moral autonomy, and dignity.
Structure
The Core Curriculum is taken by all undergraduates at Columbia College in small seminars of around twenty students. Two of the courses are year-long, allowing students the rare opportunity to read and discuss important books with the same instructor and the same group of peers for an entire year. The two year-long courses anchor the first and second-year experience of each student. During these first two years, all College students read the same books at roughly the same time, creating an intellectual and social community that unites them with each other, with students further along in their degrees, and with all College alumni.
Additionally, all first-year students take a one-semester course that integrates modern science into the Core Curriculum. Before their senior year, all students also take a semester-long course in important works of Western art, and one in important works of Western music.
Visiting Professors in the Core Curriculum will teach one of the two year-long courses in the Core (Literature Humanities or Introduction to Contemporary Civilization) and possibly one course in a home department.
The Courses
Literature Humanities (whose formal name is Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy), is taken by all first-year students in the College. Beginning with Homer, students read and discuss, chronologically, one important book each week, up to the present. As in all Core courses, each section of Literature Humanities has a maximum of 22 students, and every section reads the same syllabus in tandem.
Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West (or simply Contemporary Civilization) is the original Core course and has been offered without interruption since 1919. Contemporary Civilization is taken by every College sophomore. Beginning with Plato's Republic, and advancing chronologically, students read classics of moral and political thought—including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Holy Qur'an—up to the present.
Faculty Community and Pedagogical Support
Every week, instructors in Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization meet over lunch to discuss the text to be taught the following week. These faculty meetings bring together instructors from nearly all humanities and social science departments in the University and from every stage of the academic career: retired professors, tenured faculty, junior faculty, postdoctoral lecturers, advanced graduate students, and adjunct professors.
Four Basic Characteristics of Courses in the Columbia Core Curriculum
1. Uniform and Required Courses
Core courses are uniform required courses that provide a common intellectual experience to all students. Discussions begun in the classroom spill over into hallways, dining halls, and dormitories. Through the Core, the student body engages in a campus-wide conversation about what one of its founders called the “insistent problems of the present.” These “Core conversations” become anchor points that organize the often bewildering experience of the early college years. These formative intellectual encounters—the texts, issues, and questions of Core courses—also become touchstones to which students return again and again as they advance in their studies and mature in their lives.
It is hard to overstate the extent to which these campus-wide conversations allow students to build communities, equip them to talk to each other across differences of background and opinion, and allow them to see themselves as part of a human continuum that is larger than themselves and their particular interests. Core questions are not merely academic, but concern issues that everyone confronts, more or less consciously, throughout his or her life.
2. The Study of Original Texts
Core courses focus on primary texts, eschewing secondary or scholarly literature. Students examine important texts from antiquity to the present that speak compellingly to the most basic and enduring questions of human life. All of the texts are meeting points for conversations that have been going on for centuries; conversations that, at every turn, stimulate reflection about the nature of the human good and prepare our students to live more thoughtful and examined lives.
3. Learning Through Conversation
All Core courses are taught in seminar format; that is, they are organized as conversations around a table that are led, but not dictated, by an instructor. The capacity for reasoned and civil conversation about fundamental questions is a critical capacity for democratic self-governance. Our classrooms are training grounds for those intellectual and affective virtues that make collective action, whether it be collective inquiry or collective decision-making, possible. Core courses ask students not only to read complex texts, but also to engage in conversations about some of the most challenging and persistent questions of their individual and collective experience. Students learn to express themselves coherently and convincingly, to listen to opposing viewpoints and to evaluate them honestly, and to articulate the rationale for their positions in ways that can be understood by others. Core seminars prod students to reasoned examination of their own views, and to attentive and open dialogue with others whose views may differ in fundamental ways.
The Core classroom is also the place where the College realizes most vividly the value of its diversity. In the Core classroom, students meet face-to-face and listen to each other. Because Core conversations are about human questions of the deepest order, they serve as vehicles for individuals from sometimes starkly different backgrounds to experience what it means to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
4. Non-Disciplinary Approach
Core courses are taught by an interdisciplinary faculty and are not governed by disciplinary concerns. A Columbia professor once quipped that while the Core is touted for the education it provides to students, its real value is the education it provides to the faculty. Interdisciplinarity, admired and praised everywhere, is actually rarely found in academic institutions, which tend to be organized around highly specialized disciplines. The Columbia Core provides structure, context, and support for exploring the pre-disciplinary human questions from which the disciplines arise. Indeed, what happens in Core classrooms or in Core faculty meetings is best described as meta-disciplinary. The Core, from its very inception, has been conceived as a non-disciplinary endeavor, requiring faculty from various disciplines to come together regularly to share their insights, absorb the insights of others, and teach outside their intellectual comfort zones. Our program, our students, our faculty, and the University in general are enriched by the cross-fertilization of expertise and perspectives that the Core occasions.
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