Welcome - Updated 11/8/2007

Welcome to the Olympia Academy. I intend this to be a discussion with a Great Books focus. The ground rules are:

a) No politics unless it can be directly related to the book currently being discussed.
b) Be respectful.
c) Since I own the blog I kind of get to set the pace.

The basis for the reading list will be the "Dartmouth Canon"

First Year

First Quarter

First Week
1) Genesis
2) Hesiod, Theogony
3) Hesiod, Works and Days

Second Week
1) Homer, Iliad 1-4
2) Homer, Iliad 5-8
3) Homer, Iliad 9-12

Third Week
1) Homer, Iliad 13-16
2) Homer, Iliad 17-20
3) Homer, Iliad 21-24

Fourth Week
1) Gilgamesh
2) Thucydides 1
3) Thucydides 2

Fifth Week
1) Thucydides 3-5
2) Thucydides 6-8
3) Job

Sixth Week
1) Aeschylus, Oresteia
2) Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus
3) Sophocles, Antigone

Seventh Week
1) Isaiah
2) Aristophanes, Clouds
3) Aristophanes, Frogs

Eighth Week
1) Plato, Apology
2) Plato, Crito
3) Plato, Phædo

Ninth Week
1) Plato, Republic
2) Plato, Republic 2-3
3) Plato, Republic 4-5

Tenth Week
1) Plato, Republic 6-7
2) Plato, Republic 8-9
3) Plato, Republic 10

Second Quarter

First Week
1) Plato’s Symposium
2) Song of Solomon
3) Psalms

Second Week
1) Aristotle, Ethics 1-2
2) Aristotle, Ethics 3-4
3) Aristotle, Ethics 5-6

Third Week
1) Aristotle, Ethics 7-8
2) Aristotle, Ethics 9-10
3) Aristotle, Politics 1-2

Fourth Week
1) Aristotle, Politics 3-4
2) Aristotle, Politics 7-8
3) Aristotle, Poetics

Fifth Week
1) Aristotle, Metaphysics 1
2) Aristotle, Metaphysics 1
3) Aristotle, Physics 2

Sixth Week
1) Aristotle, Physics 2
2) Aristotle, On The Soul 1-2
3) Aristotle, On The Soul 2-3

Seventh Week
1) Aristotle, Physics 7
2) Aristotle, Physics 7
3) Aristotle, Metaphysics 11

Eighth Week
1) Lucretius, On The Nature of Things 1-2
2) Lucretius, On The Nature of Things 3-4
3) Lucretius, On The Nature of Things 5-6

Ninth Week
1) Livy 1
2) Polybius 6
3) Cicero, De Re Publica

Tenth Week
1) Plutarch, Caesar, Alexander
2) Plutarch, Romulus, Theseus

Third Quarter

First Week
1) Exodus
2) Exodus
3) Deuteronomy

Second Week
1) Virgil, Aeneid 1-3
2) Virgil, Aeneid 4-6,
3)Georgics 4

Third Week
1) Virgil, Aeneid 7-12
2) Tacitus, Annals 1-6
3) Tacitus, History 1-5

Fourth Week
1) Matthew
2) Paul, Romans
3) Revelation

Fifth Week
1) Augustine, Confessions
2) Augustine, Confessions
3) Augustine, City of God

Sixth Week
1) Augustine, City of God
2) Aquinas, Summa Theologica
3) Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Seventh Week
1) Aquinas, Summa Theologica
2) Aquinas, Summa Theologica
3) Dante, Inferno

Eighth Week
1) Ibn Kaldun, The Muqaddimah
2) Ibn Kaldun, The Muqaddimah
3) Dante, Inferno

Ninth Week
1) Dante, Inferno
2) Dante, Paradiso
3) Dante, Paradiso

Tenth Week
1) Njal Saga
2) Njal Saga
3) Song of Roland

Second Year

First Quarter

First Week
1) Montaigne, Essays
2) Montaigne, Essays
3) Machiavelli, Prince

Second Week
1) Machiavelli, Prince
2) Machiavelli, Discourses
3) Machiavelli, Discourses

Third Week
1) Cervantes, Don Quixote
2) Cervantes, Don Quixote
3) Cervantes, Don Quixote

Fourth Week
1) Racine, Phædre
2) Shakespeare, Hamlet
3) Shakespeare, Lear

Fifth Week
1) Shakespeare, Lear
2) Shakespeare, Tempest
3) Bacon, New Atlantis

Sixth Week
1) Galileo, Two World Systems
2) Galileo, Two World Systems
3) Descartes, Discourse on Method

Seventh Week
1) Descartes, Discourse on Method
2) Descartes, Meditations
3) Descartes, Meditations

Eighth Week
1) Hobbes, Leviathan
2) Hobbes, Leviathan
3) Hobbes, Leviathan

Ninth Week
1) Hobbes, Leviathan
2) Pascal, Pensées
3) Pascal, Pensées

Tenth Week
1) Vico, The New Science
2) Vico, The New Science
3) Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Second Quarter

First Week
1) Locke, Second Treatise
2) Locke, Second Treatise
3) Locke, Second Treatise

Second Week
1) Montesquieu, Persian Letters
2) Montesquieu, Persian Letters
3) Hume, Dialogues on Natural Religion

Third Week
1) Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
2) Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
3) Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Fourth Week
1) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections)
2) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections)
3) D’Alembert, Preface to L’Encyclopedie

Fifth Week
1) Rousseau, First Discourse
2) Rousseau, Second Discourse
3) Rousseau, Third Discourse

Sixth Week
1) Rousseau, Emile 1
2) Rousseau, Emile 2
3) Rousseau, Emile 3

Seventh Week
1) Rousseau, Emile 4
2) Rousseau, Emile 5
3) Rousseau, Social Contract 1

Eighth Week
1) Rousseau, Social Contract 2
2) Rousseau, Social Contract 3-4
3) Rousseau, Reveries

Ninth Week
1) Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
2) Tocqueville, The Ancient Regime and the French Revolution
3) Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1

Tenth Week
1) Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1
2) Tocqueville, Democracy in America 2
3) Tocqueville, Democracy in America 3

Third Quarter

First Week
1) Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals
2) Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals
3) Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (Introduction)

Second Week
1) Goethe, Faust 1
2) Goethe, Faust 1
3) Goethe, Faust 2

Third Week
1) Goethe, Faust 2
2) Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind (selections)
3) Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind (selections)

Fourth Week
1) Hegel, Philosophy of History
2) Hegel, Philosophy of History
3) Hegel, Philosophy of History

Fifth Week
1) Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
2) Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
3) Marx, German Ideology

Sixth Week
1) Marx, Das Kapital (selections)
2) Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
3) Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Seventh Week
1) Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
2) Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
3) Darwin, Origin of Species

Eighth Week
1) Darwin, Origin of Species
2) Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals
3) Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Ninth Week
1) Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
2) Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
3) Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (selections)

Tenth Week
1) Weber, Science as a Vocation
2) Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
3) Heidegger, Letter on Humanism

I don't really expect to cover ground at the same pace as is outlined here, and I don't really expect anyone to read all these books. I figure that as we go along we will pick and choose. Hopefully this will lead to other suggestions. As the site gets established I will be more than happy to let others guide the selection of the reading. Discussion can take place in the comments section. Unless the comments are profane or spam I will not delete them. I will also be tagging each selection with an appropriate Technorati tag for easy linking to related items.

***Update*** Minor format change. I was striking out works as I finished them I am now linking the entries in the list below and the posts concerning each work.

I also struck the original introduction.

Way back when I started this endeavor I figure a few of my friends might stop by and comment every once in a while. Not the case. The fatal mistake in that plan was forgetting I don't have any friends.

I also thought I might get some visitors from technorati and from other blogs I might link. Again I was mistaken. Apparently my opinion of the philosophical works that formed the basis of Western Civilization isn't that highly sought after. Imagine that.

As soon as those pieces clicked into place in my admittedly slow brain I realized that I don't really need to explain my blog or establish any rules. It would almost be liberating if I had any readers. ***Sob***

OK so I don't have any readers and the reading is progressing at a snails pace, why am I continuing? It's a grudge match now. I don't care if I die on the shitter with some ancient piece of semi-pornographic sadomasochistic dreck passing as profound thought (yes I am looking at you Freud) clutched in my cold dead hands and now one ever reads this piece o' crap blog except me I am finishing this project. You can come along for the ride or not it's your choice, but when cockroaches rule the earth and they restore my hard drive this blog will still be there.

Books, Great Books of the Western World, Western Canon