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Dreams of a Democratic Culture: Revising the Origins of the Great Books Idea, 1869–19211
By Tim Lacy, Loyola University Chicago
British and American intellectuals began to formulate ideas about so-called great books from the mid-1800s to 1920. English critic Matthew Arnold's writings served as the fountainhead of ideas about the "best" books. But rather than simply buttress the opinions of highbrow cultural elites, he also inspired those with dreams of a democratized culture. From Arnold and from efforts such as Sir John Lubbock's "100 Best Books," the pursuit of the "best" in books spread in both Victorian Britain and the United States. The phrase "great books" gained currency in the midst of profound technical, cultural, educational, and philosophical changes. Victorian-era literature professors in America rooted the idea in both education and popular culture through their encouragements to read. Finally, the idea explicitly took hold on college campuses, first with Charles Mills Gayley at the University of California at Berkeley and then John Erskine's General Honors seminar at Columbia University.
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Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001), over his very long life the most prominent—and problematic—great books promoter in twentieth-century America, first encountered the "great books" at Columbia University in the fall of 1921. The meeting occurred in John Erskine's General Honors seminar.2 The impression that class, its readings, and Erskine made on Adler cannot be overstated. More than fifty years later, Adler reflected that "among the fortunate coincidences" of his life, he gave "top place to the good luck of having John Erskine as my preceptor in General Honors." To Adler, the seminar's reading list of Western culture's great books and Erskine's method of conducting "highly civil conversations" opened new vistas.3 While at Columbia, Adler took a course with the philosopher John Dewey, met a number of lifelong friends (such as Clifton Fadiman, the future editor and critic), discovered his philosophy muses (Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas), and earned his doctorate. But Adler's contact with Erskine and the great books transcended all else. |
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General Honors provided Adler with a nearly universal teaching philosophy and methodology. In terms of content, he saw the seminar as "the whole of a liberal education or certainly the core of it." Erskine taught the masterpieces of Western civilization from "Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides down to Darwin, Marx, and Freud." Each student read one book per week and attended weekly discussions for two academic years. Adler particularly admired the conversations between students that the course created. Because of this, reading bookstogether became a core principle of Adler's philosophy of education. Reading together provided "common intellectual themes," keeping conversation from devolving into "small talk."4 General Honors supplied Adler an integrative methodology and a focus he employed thereafter. |
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General Honors worked against prominent trends in the creation of what historian Laurence Veysey called the "American University." Those trends included the elective system, specialization, professionalization, and the rise of science. Harvard University's former president Charles W. Eliot championed the first of these shifts, the elective system, with his 1869 inaugural address. Electives had become a higher-education norm by the dawn of the twentieth century. The elective system replaced prescribed curricula based on "mental discipline" and the ancient Greek and Latin classics.5 But Adler agreed with Erskine that at Columbia the elective system ran "riot." General Honors served as a "needed corrective" by providing "standards."6 Eight years after Adler's first encounter with General Honors, he told Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, that "reading the great books, both as a student and as a teacher, had done more for [Adler's] mind than all the rest of the academic pursuits in which [he] had been so far engaged."7 No superlative sufficiently described the impression made by the great books, Erskine, and General Honors. |
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