Reading
From the January 2021 to the end of 2022 I am reading a selection of the "Great Books" of the Western Canon.
The list below is compiled from several sources, and marked as follows:
- 🧭: Interintellect: Reading the Greats Salon Series
- 🎓: Open Yale: Introduction to Political Philosophy
- 🏫: Yale Directed Studies Historical and Political Thought
- 🎙: Talking Politics Podcast: History of Ideas
I have also added some more books, inspired by Tommy Collison's Great Books list, conversations with friends, and personal interest.
Here is the list:
- (Anon): Beowulf 🧭
- Aquinas: Treatise on Law 🏫
- Arendt: The Human Condition 🎙
- Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism 🏫
- Aristotle: Politics 🎓🏫
- Augustine: The City of God 🏫
- Austen: Pride and Prejudice 🧭
- Boswell: The Life of Johnson
- Brecht: Mother Courage and Her Children 🧭
- Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France 🧭🏫
- Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales 🧭
- Constant: The Liberty of the Ancients 🎙
- Dante: Inferno 🧭
- Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy 🧭
- Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folks 🏫
- Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth 🎙
- Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man 🎙
- Gandhi: Hind Swaraj 🎙
- Hayek: The Road to Serfdom 🎙
- Herodotus: The History 🏫
- Hobbes: Leviathan 🎓🏫🎙
- Homer: Iliad 🧭
- Homer: The Odyssey
- Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature
- Huxley: Brave New World 🧭
- Kant: Perpetual Peace and other Essays 🏫
- Livy: The Rise of Rome 🏫
- Locke: Second Treatise of Government 🎓🏫
- MacKinnon: Towards a Femenist Theory of the State 🎙
- Machiavelli: The Prince 🧭🎓🏫
- Marx: Communist Manifesto 🎙
- Marx: Selected Writings 🏫
- Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals 🏫
- Orwell: 1984 🧭
- Plato: Meno, Laches and other Dialogues
- Plato: Republic 🎓
- Plato: The Last Days of Socrates 🧭🎓🏫
- Rousseau: Political Writings 🎓🏫
- Shakespeare: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III, Henry V, Tempest and Twelfth Night
- Shelly: Frankenstein 🧭
- Smith: The Wealth of Nations
- Sophocles: Antigone 🧭
- Tacitus: Annals 🏫
- Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War 🏫
- Toqueville: Democracy in America 🎓🏫
- Vergil: The Aeneid
- Weber: The Profession and Vocation of Politics 🎙
- Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women 🎙
- Woolf: Mrs Dalloway 🧭
By the nature of following the traditional "Western Canon" works, the list is biased towards white, male writers. I will do two things to alleviate this bias: 1) Seek out classic works outside the canon to expand the list, 2) Read adaptions, re-interpretations or translations made by women and non-white writers.
There are some obvious Classics that are missing from this list, and I will be adding these as I decide which works to read. As I read around each of the books I'll be posting on my Goodreads profile.
Other Reading Lists
I am in the process of putting together a reading list for photography. If you have thoughts on any of these lists then please do drop me a line!
