刊《北市大校訊》78期 96年11月 / 東吳大學前校長 劉源俊教授
一般人多曉得，現今世界上最受推崇的百科全書當屬《大英百科全書》（Encyclopædia Britannica，包括《小百科》（Micropædia）12大冊、《大百科》（Macropædia）17大冊與《前百科》（Propædia）1大冊），但相信很少人知道另有一套書是它的「姊妹套書」，那就是《西方世界鉅著》(Great Books of the Western World ) 一套60冊（包括《題彙─主題索引》（TheSyntopicon–An Index to the Great Ideas）2冊、十九世紀以前的鉅著52冊與二十世紀鉅著6冊）。
這是一套什麼樣的書呢？兩大套書的編委會主席，既是哲學家也是教育家、編輯家的艾德勒（Mortimer J. Adler）寫道：人生所應逐步追求的見聞( information)、知識( knowledge)、學問(understanding)、智慧 (wisdom) 的所謂「四好」(four goods)中，《大英百科全書》可提供的只是見聞與知識，學問與智慧則要靠《主題索引》所介紹的102個大觀念，及諸鉅著本身所蘊含的內容。
這套書（全為英譯本或英文原本）的第一版出版於1952年（總編輯是當時芝加哥大學的校長哈欽斯 (Robert M. Hutchins) ，艾德勒是當時的副總編）只包括十九世紀的鉅著，共54冊。第二版出版於1990年，增加了二十世紀1980年前的鉅著，擴增為60冊。
套書依內容分為四大類─文學、哲學與神學、算學與科學、歷史與社會科學，各以綠、紅、灰、藍四種封皮顏色作區分。前54冊共收容74位作者（文學方面從荷馬到易卜生，哲學與神學方面從柏拉圖到尼采，算學與科學方面從歐幾里得到佛洛伊德，史學與社會科學方面從普魯塔琪到馬克斯）的433種著作，後6冊則收容膾炙人口的46位現代作者的著作。有的作者一人單冊（如荷馬、牛頓、托爾斯泰、…），有的作者一人兩冊（如莎士比亞），大多是好幾位領域相近的作者共一冊。
哈欽斯形容這套書是一「大對話」（The Great Conversation）。什麼對話呢？是二千五百年來關於西方102個「大觀念」(Great Ideas) 的深入論辯。哪102個大觀念呢？艾德勒認為最核心的是六大觀念─「真」（truth）、「善」（goodness）、「美」（beauty）、「自由」（liberty）、「平等」（equality）、「正義」（justice），其它有「科學」（science）、「藝術」（art）、「宗教」（religion）、「知識」（knowledge）、「愛」（love）、「幸福」（happiness）、「上帝」（god）、「世界」（world）、「時」（time）、「空」（space）、「生與死」（life and death）、「演化」（evolution）、「法律」（law）、「民主」（democracy）、「革命」（revolution）、…等等。鉅著的選材特別著眼於圍繞著這102個觀念。
又特別值得一提的是，每一作者都附有不到兩頁的傳略，文字精簡扼要，對於認識鉅著的背景不可或缺。這些許是簡介作者的權威資料。
艾德勒充分了解這套書的侷限性，所以他特別澄清：從套書的書名就可以看出，這只是一套關於西方世界的對話，而在東方還有『四到五種相當不同的知性與文化傳統』；而在每一種文化傳統裏，想來都可編出一套「大對話」來。但這顯然超出編者的能力。另有一本西方重要經典明顯未納入，那就是基督《聖經》。原因是：第一，作者不明；第二，已經廣為流傳，毋需浪費篇幅。
艾德勒認為經典閱讀應作為終身學習的重要課題。近來臺灣通識教育界也有許多人開始注意到經典閱讀的重要性。本校最近選定了二十五種中外著作作為重要經典，鼓勵同學們閱讀；其中大部分的西方經典都可在這套書中找到。圖書館裏藏有這套好書多年，看的人不多，實在可惜。特別在此推介，希望得到愛書人的注意，多多利用。
(維基百科英文版)
Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the western canon in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes.
The works
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
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 andMany, 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 andParticular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Volume 7
Volume 8
Volume 9
Volume 10
Volume 11
- Euclid
- The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements
- Archimedes
- Apollonius of Perga
- Nicomachus of Gerasa
Volume 12
Volume 13
Volume 14
Volume 15
Volume 16
- Ptolemy
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Johannes Kepler
- Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV – V)
- The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
Volume 17
Volume 18
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
Volume 22
Volume 23
Volume 24
Volume 25
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
Volume 29
Volume 30
Volume 31
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
Volume 35
Volume 36
Volume 37
Volume 38
Volume 39
Volume 40
Volume 41
Volume 42
- Immanuel Kant
- The Critique of Pure Reason
- Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
- The 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
- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
- John Stuart Mill
Volume 44
Volume 45
Volume 46
Volume 47
Volume 48
Volume 49
Volume 50
Volume 51
Volume 52
Volume 53
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
Second edition
In 1990 a second edition of Great Books of the Western World was published, with updated translations and six more volumes of material covering the 20th century, an era of which the first edition was nearly devoid. A number of pre-20th century books were also added, and four were dropped: Apollonius’ On Conic Sections, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy,Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Joseph Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler later expressed regret about dropping On Conic Sections and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the addition of Voltaire’s Candide, and said that the Syntopicon should have included references to the Koran. He addressed criticisms that the set was too heavily Western European and did not adequately represent women and minority authors.[3]
The pre-20th century books added (volume numbering is not strictly compatible with the first edition due to rearrangement of some books—see the complete table of contents[4] for the second edition):
Volume 20
- John Calvin
- Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)
Volume 23
Volume 31
Volume 34
Volume 43
Volume 44
Volume 45
Volume 46
Volume 47
Volume 48
Volume 52
The six volumes of 20th century material consisted of the following:
Volume 55
- William James
- Henri Bergson
- John Dewey
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Bertrand Russell
- Martin Heidegger
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Karl Barth
Volume 56
- Henri Poincaré
- Max Planck
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Albert Einstein
- Arthur Eddington
- Niels Bohr
- G. H. Hardy
- Werner Heisenberg
- Erwin Schrödinger
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
- C. H. Waddington
Volume 57
Volume 58
- Sir James George Frazer
- The Golden Bough (selections)
- Max Weber
- Essays in Sociology (selections)
- Johan Huizinga
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Structural Anthropology (selections)
Volume 59
- Henry James
- George Bernard Shaw
- Joseph Conrad
- Anton Chekhov
- Luigi Pirandello
- Marcel Proust
- Willa Cather
- Thomas Mann
- James Joyce
Volume 60
- Virginia Woolf
- Franz Kafka
- D. H. Lawrence
- T. S. Eliot
- Eugene O’Neill
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- William Faulkner
- Bertolt Brecht
- Ernest Hemingway
- George Orwell
- Samuel Beckett
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