The Great Conversation
About this project
The Great Books
In 1952, the University of Chicago published the Great Books of the Western World, a 54-volume set edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. The collection gathers roughly 450 works spanning from Homer to the twentieth century, not as a canon to be worshipped, but as a reading list for anyone who wants to think seriously about the questions that have shaped Western civilization.
The Syntopicon
Adler spent eight years building a companion index he called the Syntopicon (from the Greek for “collection of topics”). It identifies 102 Great Ideas (from Angel to World) and maps every passage in the Great Books where each idea is treated. The result is a cross-referencing engine: pick an idea, and the Syntopicon shows you what Plato, Aquinas, Locke, Darwin, and dozens of others had to say about it.
The Great Conversation
Adler called the tradition these books represent “the Great Conversation”: a dialogue carried on across centuries, where each thinker responds to those who came before. Aristotle answers Plato; Aquinas synthesizes Aristotle with Scripture; Hobbes and Locke argue over the state of nature; Mill and Marx debate the meaning of freedom. No single author has the final word. The conversation is the point.
This site
This is a free, interactive version of the Syntopicon. Pick any of the Great Ideas and trace how it has been debated and reinterpreted across 2,500 years of Western thought. Every thinker links to the book where you can read their argument for yourself.