Great Books of the Western World
261 works · 72 authors
The books cited by Adler's Syntopicon, from Homer's Iliad to Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Each work links back to the Great Ideas it helped shape. Pick any title to see which ideas cite it and why.
Aeschylus
Dante Alighieri
Thomas Aquinas
Archimedes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
- Categories7 Great Ideas
- De Anima12 Great Ideas
- De Divinatione per Somnum1 Great Idea
- De Interpretatione7 Great Ideas
- Generation of Animals1 Great Idea
- History of Animals2 Great Ideas
- Metaphysics26 Great Ideas
- Nicomachean Ethics24 Great Ideas
- On Generation and Corruption4 Great Ideas
- On Memory and Reminiscence1 Great Idea
- On the Heavens2 Great Ideas
- Parts of Animals3 Great Ideas
- Physics14 Great Ideas
- Poetics3 Great Ideas
- Politics19 Great Ideas
- Posterior Analytics11 Great Ideas
- Prior Analytics3 Great Ideas
- Rhetoric6 Great Ideas
- Sense and the Sensible1 Great Idea
- Sophistical Refutations6 Great Ideas
- Topics6 Great Ideas
Augustine
Marcus Aurelius
Francis Bacon
George Berkeley
Boethius
John Calvin
Anselm of Canterbury
Miguel de Cervantes
Geoffrey Chaucer
Cicero
Nicolaus Copernicus
Charles Darwin
René Descartes
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Epictetus
Euclid
Euripides
Michael Faraday
Joseph Fourier
Sigmund Freud
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle3 Great Ideas
- Civilization and Its Discontents14 Great Ideas
- Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis4 Great Ideas
- New Introductory Lectures1 Great Idea
- New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis1 Great Idea
- The Ego and the Id6 Great Ideas
- The Interpretation of Dreams1 Great Idea
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality2 Great Ideas
Galen
Galileo Galilei
Edward Gibbon
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
William Harvey
G.W.F. Hegel
- Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences5 Great Ideas
- Lectures on Aesthetics3 Great Ideas
- Lectures on the Philosophy of History8 Great Ideas
- Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion2 Great Ideas
- Phenomenology of Spirit10 Great Ideas
- Philosophy of Nature5 Great Ideas
- Philosophy of Right16 Great Ideas
- Science of Logic16 Great Ideas
Herodotus
Hippocrates
Thomas Hobbes
Homer
David Hume
Christiaan Huygens
William James
Hamilton, Madison & Jay
Thomas Jefferson
Immanuel Kant
- Critique of Judgment7 Great Ideas
- Critique of Practical Reason13 Great Ideas
- Critique of Pure Reason44 Great Ideas
- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals10 Great Ideas
- Idea of a Universal History1 Great Idea
- Lectures on Pedagogy1 Great Idea
- Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science3 Great Ideas
- Metaphysics of Morals7 Great Ideas
- Perpetual Peace1 Great Idea
- Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone2 Great Ideas
Johannes Kepler
Søren Kierkegaard
Antoine Lavoisier
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
John Locke
Lucretius
Niccolò Machiavelli
Karl Marx
- Capital9 Great Ideas
- Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right1 Great Idea
- Critique of the Gotha Program3 Great Ideas
- Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts1 Great Idea
- Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 18441 Great Idea
- Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts1 Great Idea
- On the Jewish Question2 Great Ideas
- Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy1 Great Idea
- The Civil War in France2 Great Ideas
- The Communist Manifesto8 Great Ideas
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte3 Great Ideas
- The German Ideology2 Great Ideas
Herman Melville
John Stuart Mill
- A System of Logic8 Great Ideas
- Autobiography1 Great Idea
- Considerations on Representative Government9 Great Ideas
- Inaugural Address at St. Andrews1 Great Idea
- On Liberty13 Great Ideas
- Principles of Political Economy2 Great Ideas
- The Subjection of Women3 Great Ideas
- Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties1 Great Idea
- Three Essays on Religion1 Great Idea
- Utilitarianism11 Great Ideas
John Milton
Michel de Montaigne
Montesquieu
Isaac Newton
Friedrich Nietzsche
Blaise Pascal
Plato
- Apology3 Great Ideas
- Cratylus2 Great Ideas
- Crito1 Great Idea
- Gorgias6 Great Ideas
- Hippias Major1 Great Idea
- Ion2 Great Ideas
- Laches1 Great Idea
- Laws12 Great Ideas
- Meno9 Great Ideas
- Parmenides3 Great Ideas
- Phaedo11 Great Ideas
- Phaedrus7 Great Ideas
- Philebus2 Great Ideas
- Protagoras2 Great Ideas
- Republic44 Great Ideas
- Sophist6 Great Ideas
- Statesman4 Great Ideas
- Symposium6 Great Ideas
- Theaetetus7 Great Ideas
- Timaeus18 Great Ideas