The 100 Great Ideas of the Western World

The following are the 100 Great Ideas that have carried the Great Conversation for thousands of years in the West. These ideas contain within themselves a myriad of differing, and often competing perspectives, demonstrating the breadth and depth of that conversation across the millennia.
As readers of the Great Books engage these ideas through thought and discussion, they take part in an expansive literary and intellectual tradition handed down to them. May they, in turn, carry it forward to the next generation.
As you look over these ideas, take a moment to consider where they connect, how they relate to and interact with one another. You will find much to love and much to inspire you.

“Angel”, “Animal”, “Aristocracy”, “Art”, “Astronomy/Cosmology”, “Beauty”, “Being”, “Cause”, “Chance”, “Change”, “Citizen”, “Constitution”, “Courage”, “Custom/Convention”, “Definition”, “Democracy”, “Desire”, “Dialectic”, “Duty”, “Education”, “Element”, “Emotion”, “Eternity”, “Evolution”, “Experience”, “Family”, “Fate”, “Form”, “God”, “Good/Evil”, “Government”, “Habit”, “Happiness”, “History”, “Honor”, “Hypothesis”, “Idea”, “Immortality”, “Induction”, “Infinity”, “Judgment”, “Justice”, “Knowledge”, “Labor”, “Language”, “Law”, “Liberty”, “Life/Death”, “Logic”, “Love”, “Man”, “Mathematics”, “Matter”, “Mechanics”, “Medicine”, “Memory/Imagination”, “Metaphysics”, “Mind”, “Monarchy”, “Nature”, “Necessity/Contingency”, “Oligarchy”, “One/Many”, “Opinion”, “Opposition”, “Philosophy”, “Physics”, “Pleasure/Pain”, “Poetry”, “Principle”, “Progress”, “Prophecy”, “Prudence”, “Punishment”, “Quality”, “Quantity”, “Reasoning”, “Relation”, “Religion”, “Revolution”, “Rhetoric”, “Same/Other”, “Science”, “Sense”, “Sign/Symbol”, “Sin”, “Slavery”, “Soul”, “Space”, “State”, “Temperance”, “Theology”, “Time”, “Truth”, “Tyranny/Despotism”, “Universal/Particular”, “Virtue/Vice”, “War/Peace”, “Wealth”, “Will”, “Wisdom”, “World”

I hope you can see that the study of the classics is a lifelong pursuit, not something reserved for high school or college, nor only for literature or philosophy majors.
By focusing first on the ideas rather than the authors or their works, we discover what initially inspires us. From that vantage point, we learn to read in the Great Books, and in time, to read through them as the soul matures and interest deepens.
This is the way.