Great Books of The Western World - Volumes

Volumes

Originally published in 54 volumes, The Great Books of the Western World covers categories including fiction, history, poetry, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, drama, politics, religion, economics, and ethics. Hutchins wrote the first volume, titled The Great Conversation, as an introduction and discourse on liberal education. Adler sponsored the next two volumes, "The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon", as a way of emphasizing the unity of the set and, by extension, of Western thought in general. A team of indexers spent months compiling references to such topics as "Man's freedom in relation to the will of God" and "The denial of void or vacuum in favor of a plenum". They grouped the topics into 102 chapters, for which Adler wrote 102 introductions. The volumes contained the following works, color-coding the spines to denote the categories:

Volume 1

• The Great Conversation

Volume 2

• Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love

Volume 3

• Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World

Volume 4

• Homer
  • The Iliad
  • The Odyssey

Volume 5

• Aeschylus
  • The Suppliant Maidens
  • The Persians
  • Seven Against Thebes
  • Prometheus Bound
  • The Oresteia
    • Agamemnon
    • Choephoroe
    • The Eumenides
• Sophocles
  • The Oedipus Cycle
    • Oedipus the King
    • Oedipus at Colonus
    • Antigone
  • Ajax
  • Electra
  • The Trachiniae
  • Philoctetes
• Euripides
  • Rhesus
  • Medea
  • Hippolytus
  • Alcestis
  • Heracleidae
  • The Suppliants
  • Trojan Women
  • Ion
  • Helen
  • Andromache
  • Electra
  • Bacchantes
  • Hecuba
  • Heracles Mad
  • Phoenician Women
  • Orestes
  • Iphigeneia in Tauris
  • Iphigeneia at Aulis
  • Cyclops
• Aristophanes
  • The Acharnians
  • The Knights
  • The Clouds
  • The Wasps
  • Peace
  • The Birds
  • The Frogs
  • Lysistrata
  • Thesmophoriazusae
  • Ecclesiazousae
  • Plutus

Volume 6

• Herodotus
  • The History
• Thucydides
  • History of the Peloponnesian War

Volume 7

• Plato
  • Charmides
  • Lysis
  • Laches
  • Protagoras
  • Euthydemus
  • Cratylus
  • Phaedrus
  • Ion
  • Symposium
  • Meno
  • Euthyphro
  • Apology
  • Crito
  • Phaedo
  • Gorgias
  • The Republic
  • Timaeus
  • Critias
  • Parmenides
  • Theaetetus
  • Sophist
  • Statesman
  • Philebus
  • Laws
  • The Seventh Letter

Volume 8

• Aristotle
  • Categories
  • On Interpretation
  • Prior Analytics
  • Posterior Analytics
  • Topics
  • Sophistical Refutations
  • Physics
  • On the Heavens
  • On Generation and Corruption
  • Meteorology
  • Metaphysics
  • On the Soul
  • Minor biological works

Volume 9

• Aristotle
  • History of Animals
  • Parts of Animals
  • On the Motion of Animals
  • On the Gait of Animals
  • On the Generation of Animals
  • Nicomachean Ethics
  • Politics
  • The Athenian Constitution
  • Rhetoric
  • Poetics

Volume 10

• Hippocrates
  • Works
• Galen
  • On the Natural Faculties

Volume 11

• Euclid
  • The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements
• Archimedes
  • On the Sphere and Cylinder
  • Measurement of a Circle
  • On Conoids and Spheroids
  • On Spirals
  • On the Equilibrium of Planes
  • The Sand Reckoner
  • The Quadrature of the Parabola
  • On Floating Bodies
  • Book of Lemmas
  • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
• Apollonius of Perga
  • On Conic Sections
• Nicomachus of Gerasa
  • Introduction to Arithmetic

Volume 12

• Lucretius
  • On the Nature of Things
• Epictetus
  • The Discourses
• Marcus Aurelius
  • The Meditations

Volume 13

• Virgil
  • Eclogues
  • Georgics
  • Aeneid

Volume 14

• Plutarch
  • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Volume 15

• P. Cornelius Tacitus
  • The Annals
  • The Histories

Volume 16

• Ptolemy
  • Almagest
• Nicolaus Copernicus
  • On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
• Johannes Kepler
  • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV–V)
  • The Harmonies of the World (Book V)

Volume 17

• Plotinus
  • The Six Enneads

Volume 18

• Augustine of Hippo
  • The Confessions
  • The City of God
  • On Christian Doctrine

Volume 19

• Thomas Aquinas
  • Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part)

Volume 20

• Thomas Aquinas
  • Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement)

Volume 21

• Dante Alighieri
  • The Divine Comedy

Volume 22

• Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Troilus and Criseyde
  • The Canterbury Tales

Volume 23

• Niccolò Machiavelli
  • The Prince
• Thomas Hobbes
  • Leviathan

Volume 24

• François Rabelais
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel

Volume 25

• Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
  • Essays

Volume 26

• William Shakespeare
  • The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Tragedy of Richard the Third
  • The Comedy of Errors
  • Titus Andronicus
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Love's Labour's Lost
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • The Life and Death of King John
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
  • Julius Caesar
  • As You Like It

Volume 27

• William Shakespeare
  • Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
  • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • Troilus and Cressida
  • All's Well That Ends Well
  • Measure for Measure
  • Othello, the Moor of Venice
  • King Lear
  • Macbeth
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • Coriolanus
  • Timon of Athens
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • Cymbeline
  • The Winter's Tale
  • The Tempest
  • The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
  • Sonnets

Volume 28

• William Gilbert
  • On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
• Galileo Galilei
  • Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
• William Harvey
  • On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
  • On the Circulation of Blood
  • On the Generation of Animals

Volume 29

• Miguel de Cervantes
  • The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha

Volume 30

• Sir Francis Bacon
  • The Advancement of Learning
  • Novum Organum
  • New Atlantis

Volume 31

• 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

Volume 32

• John Milton
  • English Minor Poems
  • Paradise Lost
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Areopagitica

Volume 33

• Blaise Pascal
  • The Provincial Letters
  • Pensées
  • Scientific and mathematical essays

Volume 34

• Sir Isaac Newton
  • Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
  • Optics
• Christian Huygens
  • Treatise on Light

Volume 35

• John Locke
  • A Letter Concerning Toleration
  • Concerning Civil Government, Second Essay
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• George Berkeley
  • The Principles of Human Knowledge
• David Hume
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Volume 36

• Jonathan Swift
  • Gulliver's Travels
• Laurence Sterne
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Volume 37

• Henry Fielding
  • The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Volume 38

• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
  • The Spirit of the Laws
• Jean Jacques Rousseau
  • A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
  • A Discourse on Political Economy
  • The Social Contract

Volume 39

• Adam Smith
  • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Volume 40

• Edward Gibbon
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 1)

Volume 41

• Edward Gibbon
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Part 2)

Volume 42

• Immanuel Kant
  • Critique of Pure Reason
  • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
  • Critique of Practical Reason
  • Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals
    • Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Conscience
    • General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
    • The Science of Right
  • The Critique of Judgement

Volume 43

• American State Papers
  • Declaration of Independence
  • Articles of Confederation
  • The Constitution of the United States of America
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
  • The Federalist
• John Stuart Mill
  • On Liberty
  • Considerations on Representative Government
  • Utilitarianism

Volume 44

• James Boswell
  • The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Volume 45

• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
  • Elements of Chemistry
• Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
  • Analytical Theory of Heat
• Michael Faraday
  • Experimental Researches in Electricity

Volume 46

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  • The Philosophy of Right
  • The Philosophy of History

Volume 47

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Faust

Volume 48

• Herman Melville
  • Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Volume 49

• Charles Darwin
  • The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
  • The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Volume 50

• Karl Marx
  • Capital
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
  • Manifesto of the Communist Party

Volume 51

• Count Leo Tolstoy
  • War and Peace

Volume 52

• Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
  • The Brothers Karamazov

Volume 53

• William James
  • The Principles of Psychology

Volume 54

• Sigmund Freud
  • The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
  • Selected Papers on Hysteria
  • The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
  • The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
  • Observations on "Wild" Psycho-Analysis
  • The Interpretation of Dreams
  • On Narcissism
  • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
  • Repression
  • The Unconscious
  • A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle
  • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
  • The Ego and the Id
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
  • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
  • Civilization and Its Discontents
  • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis