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The best kept secret is The West...News is emphemeral. That’s tautological, even redundant. But quality endures. That is the saving grace of The West, the grace that saves us, that we treasure the knowledge that others before us have wrested from nature. Mr. Ken Roberts has accumulated a vast horde of quality treasures at his web site covering “The Great Books of Western Civilization”. The original Great Books was a curriculum put together by University of Chicago scholars Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins for the Encyclopedia Britannica. They later did another, similar project for The Great Books Foundation. Mr. Roberts’ project is distinct from both of these, although it is in close correspondence. What he has done is accumulate links to free on-line copies of classic texts. A list of represented authors is shown below. He also provides links to other Great Books sites, including an academic program at Mercer University that mirrors the curriculum of St. John’s College, the Olympus of American Classicism. It is argued that the classic ideas of Western Civilization are in some way defective. At their best, it is said, they represent the thinking of Dead White European Males, which is largely true for whatever the claim is worth. At their worst, say critics, the ideas of Western Civilization are the tools of the exploiters of... whom? Of everyone who doesn’t share them, or who affects not to? The argument is difficult to entertain, first because the Western idea is all about liberation, not exploitation, and second because the loudest objections to the Western idea are raised by the owners of the earth’s many slave-labor camps. Doubters are invited to investigate the details behind the (Nobel prize winning!) ‘memoirs’ of Rigoberto Menchú, a book that is required reading in many institutions of alleged learning from which the classics of Western Civilization have been banished. And that can all fester. Quality endures, and that is all that matters. The daily news may be filled with complaints about the evils of the internet, but Mr. Roberts’ site is an example of the world wide web—and of The West—at its best. See it with your children... —GSS |
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| Light one candle... If you know of some person or movement or organization whose human grace should grace this space, write with the particulars. |
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An index of authors...This is a list of the authors catalogued at the Great Books of Western Civilization Index site. One or more books by each of these authors is available for free on the internet.
CONTENTS | HOPE | DESPAIR | NOTES | CRYPT | ENLIST | LINKS | CURRENT ISSUE |
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