Ideas Mattered in Great Books Movement

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Reading minds

Ideas mattered to the Great Books movement

by Janie B. Cheaney; Illustration by Krieg Barrie

Admit it: you always wanted to know what Aristotle said about the body politic, or the gist of Plato's Republic, or Kant's general idea about idealism. OK, enough with the projection—I've wanted to know these things since dropping out of college. My reasons were both base and noble: a desire to appear smart, and a hankering for wisdom.

"Getting wisdom" is a suitable ambition (see Proverbs 4:5), and not just for Christians. It was the stated goal of the "Great Books movement" of the early '50s, begun by a couple of academics who saw the trend to research and specialization in the American university as a thing to be decried. Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, and Mortimer Adler, educational gadfly and public intellectual, believed that "the aim of higher education is wisdom"—and the surest route to wisdom was studying the classic works of Western literature. Together they established a Great Books curriculum for the University of Chicago, then branched out to the community with a businessman's seminar.

The seminars were so popular that satellite programs popped up across the nation, about 2,500 Great Books discussion groups by 1951. Capitalizing on the hunger (for knowledge, if not wisdom), Hutchins approached his millionaire friend William Benton, who had recently acquired the Encyclopedia Britannica publishing company. The plan was to codify the seminal works of civilization, publish them in a set of volumes (54 was the final count), and offer them to the public at large. Great Books of the Western World (GBWW) was thus conceived, and made its appearance in 1952.

It was "A Great Idea at the Time," according to Alex Beam, author of a book by that title. The time was auspicious for several reasons: The postwar GI bill had produced a crop of college graduates, postwar industry had generated disposable income, and advertising had entered a golden age. A widely reproduced chart that divided American tastes into "highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow," though meant as nothing more than social humor, created anxiety in the burgeoning middle class about whether it was classy enough.

Two American traits merged to make the Great Books a hit: a desire for self-improvement plus a weakness for high-pressure salesmanship. "The ability to Discuss and Clarify Basic Ideas is vital to success," ad campaigns not-too-subtly promised. The price was a little steep—$250 for the whole set—but what was that, measured against lifelong success?