Hello everyone, welcome to my first book post of this 2024. Here I write about five books I consider indispensable for you to start your classical education. Let’s find out which ones are they, shall we?
“A room without books is like a body without a soul." – Marcus Tullius Cicero
I recently stumbled on a YouTube video where a man recommended a few books on classical education; but I wasn’t quite convinced with the books the guy talked about, so I decided to make my own list of classical books and now I share them with you. I have read these books entirely and I have always went back to them from time to time. I would never recommend to you a book I haven’t read.
According to several sources, classical education in the Western World is rooted in the study of ancient history, mythology, and philosophy, among other subjects, with an emphasis on the Greek and Roman classics. The classical approach teaches students how to learn and how to think.
On this post you will find two great works of philosophy from ancient Greece; a sociology classic, often misinterpreted, from the 18th century; and the best book by a controversial German thinker. The number one place on this list will really surprise you.
As I always do with my book posts, first you will have a description of the work and later some information about the author and my own thoughts.
So, without further ado, let’s begin:
5 - The Nicomachean Ethics (Date Unkown)
By Aristotle
“The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.” – The Nicomachean Ethics
A set of recommendations the great philosopher from Stagira wrote for his son. It is divided into 10 books where different subjects such as virtue, moral responsibility, justice, prudence, education, and politics, are explained for a man on how to order his conduct with the purpose of reaching happiness. The concepts of physis (nature), ethos (customs), and logos (logic), the three pillars of moral virtue, must also be taken into account to guide his conduct.
A brave man may also fear a dangerous situation, but will set himself to face it; weak and vicious men are prone to be censured; we all have free will, we are all capable of good and bad actions, therefore, it depends on us to become virtuous and to perform only good actions; what the law doesn’t say, it forbids… these and others are some of the great ideas you will find better explained in this great book of moral wisdom. Balance, everything in moderation, is the key for a man to rule his life.
The son of a court physician to the king of Macedonia, Aristotle was born in the Ionian city of Stagira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC. From an early age, he was introduced to Greek medicine and biology, and after his father’s death was sent to the Athenian Academy of Plato in 367 BC; he remained there for the next 20 years. On Plato’s death in 347 BC, Aristotle left Athens, travelled for 12 years, and established new academies. In 342 BC he accepted a position in Pella to supervise the education of the 13-year-old son of Phillip II of Macedonia, the future Alexander the Great for the next three years. In 335 BC, he returned to Athens devoting himself to scientific work and opened the Lyceum, an institution to rival the Academy. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, and the anti-Macedonian agitation that broke-out later, Aristotle left Athens and withdrew to Chalcis, where he died the next year. Of his many works, 47 still remain.
It was a friend of a distant cousin of mine the first one who ever told me about The Nicomachean Ethics in 2002. I read it for the first time in 2011 and have always come back to it from time to time. It is a very difficult read at first, it is somewhat irregular, and some parts are difficult to follow. But it is also full of great advice on moral conduct, education, and interpersonal relationships; it reflects on war, pleasure politics, and the importance of leisure in a man’s life. A logician, a scientist, a realist man, it is Aristotle, perhaps more than any other thinker, the one who has defined the thought of Western Civilization.
4 - The Republic (c. 375 BC)
By Plato
“The beginning in every task is the chief thing” - The Republic
This is Plato’s must famous work and certainly does justice to its title. It contains ten books written in the form of dialogues between Plato’s master and friend Socrates and other philosophers. After the death of Pericles in 429 BC and having witnessed the disastrous Peloponnesian War, circumstances that caused the ruin of Greece, Plato was impelled to write about a better organized, more just, form of government. Written between 384 and 377 BC, The Republic became a treaty on politics, education, and the first model of a utopia.
The Ideal State, or “Callipolis,” takes some inspiration from the constitution of Sparta. Plato divides the State in three classes: the guardians, or ruling class, the auxiliary class, and the laborers. The ruling class must be educated in warfare, politics, and philosophy; the ruler of the State must be a philosopher king. The second class possesses complete political authority, but must own no property and their children will also become public servants. The third and last of the classes, formed by artisans, farmers, and others, must not be entitled to a higher education and have no say in the government. The Ideal State is, therefore, a rigid aristocracy of power, intellect and breeding but not of estates or families.
Plato was born in Athens possibly in 427 BC. He came from an aristocratic and wealthy family whose members were prominent on the anti-democratic side. His real name was Aristocles, but he was called Plato (for platos, or “broad”) by his gymnastics teacher for his wide back and strong physique. In his youth he has been described as handsome and perfect. At the age of 20, he became friends with philosophy master Socrates; this friendship would last until the death of the latter in 399 BC. After some years of travel around the Mediterranean and bad experiences in Syracuse, he returned to Athens in 388 BC and opened the famous Akademia outside the city walls. In collaboration with his best disciple, Aristotle, Plato dedicated the next 40 years of his life to this institution that lasted until 529 AD, when Emperor Justinian ordered its closure. Plato died in 347 BC at the age of eighty. He never married. His works, some two dozen compositions known as his dialogues, have left an indelible mark in Western thought.
The Ideal State, as Plato describes in The Republic, has never existed and may never exist in the future; the idea of a middle class of public servants who cannot own property and whose children will belong to the State is very difficult to swallow. The book, in the form of dialogues, can be a long and difficult reading, but it is an essential work for anyone interested in politics, philosophy, and education. A warrior must preserve and defend the freedom of the State; evil men must be known, but never imitated; the body of a man must be developed by gymnastics, and his soul by music; all crimes must be punished; impunity makes evil men even worse… these and others are some of the great ideas you need to imbibe from this eternal work of literature. Greek prose reached its pinnacle with the works of Plato.
3 - The Social Contract (1762)
By Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” – The Social Contract
Divided into 4 books, The Social Contract, published in 1762, explains the way an Estate should be governed. A man must sacrifice part of his inherent rights by nature in order to enter into a society; but, at the same time, he gains freedom and the sole property of what he owns. Nevertheless, civil liberty is subordinated to the general liberty, and individual property is conditioned to the rights of the community in general.
The first book deals with the constitution of a society by the contract. The second one, about sovereign. In the third book, about the government itself, different types of governments (democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, etc.) are explained. The fourth and final book explains with details the general will of a society, elections, voting, censorship and religion.
The book wasn’t precisely well-received at the time of its publication and was qualified as “utopian”; Rousseau himself said it couldn’t be applied in real life. Nonetheless, The Social Contract has proved to be inspirational for centuries now, and its ideas are still timeless and thought provoking.
Born in Geneva in 1712, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher, an essayist, and a novelist. He had little formal education. In 1728 he left Geneva to seek his fortune elsewhere. His literary career began in 1750 with the publication of his first book. He had met before the encyclopedists Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert and even contributed to music articles to the Encyclopédie. Then followed a short but intense period of writing, which saw the publication of such classics as Émile and the Contract Social, among other works. He moved from place to place always feeling oppressed and persecuted. He eventually settled in Paris, where he died in 1778. Rousseau considered himself an independent writer with a message for humanity, always admired the French taste, and considered happiness to be the legitimate goal of man.
I read The Social Contract for the first time in 2013 and I have always went back to it from time to time. Unfortunately, this book has had a bad reputation over the centuries as a manual for Totalitarism. It was used as inspiration by the Jacobins to justify the horrible French Revolution and the subsequent Terror. But these interpretations are not correct. Instead, Rousseau explains: Man is a free and rational being; a criminal is an enemy to the Estate; military service must be mandatory; when a man resides in an Estate, he’s implicitly saying he agrees with its way of life and laws; a tyrant is a ruler that goes against the laws; tyrannies are prone to be developed in small countries, with little population, and a hot climate…these and others are some of the ideas you will find in this great classic of universal literature.
2 - Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
By Friedrich Nietzsche
“The man who is to be the greatest is the one who can be the most solitary, the most hidden, the most deviant, the man beyond good and evil, lord of his virtues, a man lavishly endowed with will.” – Beyond Good and Evil (Aphorism 212) – Friedrich Nietzsche
The philosopher of the future will have to become a critic of all established values: Moral, Truth, Science, Platonism, and Christianity; all of this implies a temptation to transmute the values of Western culture. Divided into nine parts and published in 1886, Beyond Good and Evil consists in 296 consecutively numbered aphorisms, framed by a preface and a thoughtful poem as an epilogue. Together with On the Genealogy of Morality, it is considered Friedrich Nietzsche’s most philosophical work, and one of his most controversial.
Written with a light and easy to read prose that nonetheless is still pure literature, Nietzsche starts this book by questioning the concepts of “Good” and “Evil”. He then explains about suffering, faith, the dangers of miscegenation, among other ideas. He criticizes the French Revolution, but at the same time praises French culture and its philosophers. He also presents a very antifeminist position, and harshly criticizes the English culture. With a degenerated society and a diminished humanity, we must put our faith in the philosophers, we have no choice.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher and poet, born in Röcken, Prussia, in 1844. The son of a Lutheran minister who died in 1849, Nietzsche went to study theology and philology at the University of Bonn in 1864. But the next year he gave up theology and went to Leipzig, where, as a student, he discovered the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, two major influences of his thought, whom later he ended up rejecting. In 1870 he became a full time professor at the University of Basel. He published his first book in 1872. In his many books he developed the theme of the “free spirit” that is liberated through scientific thought. Later he wrote about the formation of the Übermensch, which is better explained in his books Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil. He was very critical of moral prejudices and explained about the theory of the eternal return. During his last years, he developed dementia and suffered a stroke. He died in Weimar from pneumonia in 1900.
Beyond Good and Evil is a book I really repent not having read years earlier. I bought it in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2023 that I finally decided to read it entirely. It has since become my go-to philosophy book. Ecce Homo, The Gay Science and Human, All Too Human are some of the other works by Nietzsche I have read and recommend you to read. He’s the one I consider my favorite philosopher and I can honestly tell you this: Beyond Good and Evil is the best philosophy book I have ever read in my life. There are a couple of things that bothered me, tough: one is that some of its parts are too long and the explanations seem rather confusing; and the other is his attack against the English culture and its philosophers. But otherwise, it is a great work of literature, and its short aphorisms, whether you agree or not, sure won’t let you indifferent.
1 - The Odyssey (c. 8th century BC)
By Homer
“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.” – The Odyssey
After the Greek victory on The Trojan War and ten years of wanderings, the hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, must return to his home. But his voyage has been thwarted numerous times by the god of the sea, Poseidon, after Odysseus has drawn his ire. Always counting on his own ingenuity and the occasional help from the goddess Athena, Odysseus (Ulysses for the Romans) must face numerous perils like storms, a Cyclops, cannibals, a man who can transform himself into every creature, the temptation of the witch Circe, the songs of the sirens, and the two giant monsters Scylla and Charybdis. Meanwhile, in island of Ithaca, Penelope, his wife, and Telemachus, his son, must keep at bay the suitors who want to take Odysseus’ kingdom.
Divided into 24 books or rhapsodies (short narrative poems) and attributed to the poet Homer, The Odyssey is set in Mycenaean Greece during the middle of the Bronze Age, between 1600 and 1200 BC. The tale of the king of Ithaca and his adventures returning home has endured over the centuries as a testament of human emotion, bravery, ingenuity, and the longing for a home and a family; it is also a window into the life of the Bronze Age, its history and mythology.
Virtually nothing is known about the life of Homer. Some scholars believe he could have been an Ionian who lived in the 9th or 8th centuries BC. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey were written inspired by old tales of oral traditions which the Homerids, disciples of Homer, brought from Ionia to the Greek mainland as early as the 6th century BC. The works were recited at the Panathenaic festivals with a fixed order. It was the tyrant Pisistratus, who ruled ancient Athens from 561 to 528 BC, the one who finally ordered all of the Homeric poems to be put in writing. But the disagreements about the texts were not resolved until about 150 BC, when the Alexandrian librarian, Aristarchus of Samothrace, published the editions considered as authoritative; the modern vulgate texts are derived from those of Aristarchus. Both texts have had an enormous influence in Western literature, with sublime passages about gods, heroic exploits, and deep human emotion.
You may wonder why I chose a work of fiction as the number one for a classical education and why did I choose The Odyssey instead of The Iliad. Well, I think in every person’s readings there always have to be a part just for fiction; it is in fiction where we can challenge our imagination and create the most amazing images inside our minds. Also, although you won’t believe it, there is a healing power in just sitting down to read a great work of fiction; it is good for your health. The Odyssey is a shorter book but it’s better written than The Iliad, is the most popular of the two Homeric poems, and has exerted a great influence in the education of the Western world. Although most people have never read it (heck, I’m the only one of my social circle who has ever read it), everyone is familiar with the Trojan horse, the Cyclops Polyphemus, the sirens, the suffering of Tantalus and Sisyphus, and the cleverness of the hero Odysseus. Its profound influence in Western culture is undeniable, and will continue long after all of us are gone from this world.
Conclusion
So, there you have it, guys, five great books for every one of you to start your own personal classical education. Remember this: only you can educate yourself, and the best education will always come from the books you choose to read.
It’s never too late to pick up a classic like some of these, so don’t be afraid to read them. I know they could seem a bit overwhelming at first, but all I can tell you is try, try them because these books certainly will help you on your journey in this world.
You may wonder where did I obtain this information. Well, I own copies of all the five books I just mentioned; also I went to my local library for research, some of the books I consulted are:
Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, Vol. 3
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1, by Paul Edwards
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5-6, by Paul Edwards
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7-8, by Paul Edwards.
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropedia, Vol. I
The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropedia, Vol. III
Now that you’re at it, check 5 great books I hope will never be made into a movie here:
@thereadingman/5-amazing-books-i-hope
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Take care
Orlando Caine