culture

Are the Great Books truly great?

University of Dallas
Southern Methodist University
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale

Ryan Murphy

Southern Methodist University

January 17th, 2022
Suppose I tell you that when you buy a car, you should get a good deal, and make sure what you buy is worth it. That isn’t a recommendation to buy a cheap used car! You could look at the available evidence and decide that given your circumstances, you should buy a new Lexus. My claim was not and was never you should only read tweets and headlines. It was concerned with whether reading the Greats Books is worth it. Sometimes reading a difficult book is worth it. But it isn’t worth reading the Great Books.
On the issue of the Great Books as “time-tested” and the suggestion that newer books are better is “chronological snobbery,” let’s step back and consider the history. In all likelihood, the vast majority of works were burned or lost during the latter days of the Roman Empire. Among the older of what we call the Great Books is simply a selection of what by historical happenstance didn’t burn.
The amount of writing we are in possession of written before 1000 AD is actually quite scant. Even limiting ourselves to new books, we today produce that much societally every few hours, I would suspect—certainly that much within the span of a week.
I am not giving modern works extra credit because they are modern. It isn’t even necessary to claim that progress has been made (though it has). With numbers this large, it eventually becomes almost impossible to seriously claim that nothing has been published that is an improvement on the Great Books.
I am also unsure how to evaluate certain claims, such as that earlier periods were more literate, given that any data we have directly contradicts that notion. Think of the question in terms of percentiles. The 65th percentile adult in America has a bachelor’s degree. The 65th percentile adult in many of the earlier societies was entirely illiterate.
The Great Books are “great” by accident. After the West’s rediscovery and later acceptance of the works of the ancients, what became “scholarship” could be described approximately as “monks copying works over and over and providing commentaries.” Scholarship did not produce any new knowledge, but hoped to merely regain the wisdom of the past.
Per the economic historian Joel Mokyr, the growth of knowledge took force only when scholars, scientists, and hobbyists, led by Francis Bacon, decided that they could try to do better. They would actively disrespect the past. That disrespect is a big reason why you have running water in your home today.
Studying the Great Books today is a continuation of the earlier form of scholarship.
What I think is appropriate is to remove the social prestige of reading the Great Books. If they do not have that prestige, then I am confident that they will be unable to compete with modern books. Maybe a few will. I will welcome it if that’s the case, because then I will finally know which ones I should read.
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