Great Books Of The Western World

First Edition 1952

Vol. 2. The Great Ideas; A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World Vol. I

The 1952 edition includes...

  • A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas Compiled by Mortimer Adler part I (Angel to Love).

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Notes about the Syntopicon

  • Adler was conflicted about the list of concepts in the Syntopicon and wrote a number of works that extended on it, most notably "Six Great Ideas: Truth–Goodness–Beauty–Liberty–Equality–Justice" (1981) and a single volume reprint of the commentary on all 102 ideas without indexing to the Great Books or cross-references to the other Great Ideas in "The Great Ideas: a Lexicon of Western Thought" (1992)

  • Wikipedia makes an apt analogy regarding the list of the great ideas when it says, "People, particularly ideologues, would see the list of Great Ideas as representing a kind of popularity contest of significance among ideas when the Great Ideas were actually employed to group ideas under short-as-possible names more like older and newer constellations established over the centuries are used as a convenience to group stars in the night sky, which even the most modern astronomers might use to introduce the study of the stars to novices."