Following up on the post from yesterday, the following list of "classics" that I've found most gratifying. Again, I go with authors rather than any one particular work (although the last entry, Max Weber, got on based on a single, relatively short work). Again, I list these in roughly chronological order:
- The Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). We're talking selections, not the whole thing. Especially Genesis, Exodus, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
- New Testament. (I read the entire NT straight through as a senior in high school, once I'd returned from the Dark Ages of pretty much not reading books after the 6th grade.)
- Plato (Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and Republic)
- St. Augustine (Confessions, City of God (portions)).
- Dante (Comedia. Perhaps the greatest single work in Western lit? )
- Machiavelli (The Prince).
- Montaigne (Essays)
- Shakespeare (a long list: the four great tragedies, The Tempest, Henry V, etc.
- Spinoza (Ethics).
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (Essays, etc.).
- Karl Marx (No, I am not a Marxist; however, he gets included because the early Marx was an interesting idealist and the later Marx was such a force that even if one disagrees with him, one must consider him and respond accordingly).
- William James (essays, Talks to Teachers, and especially The Varieties of Religious Experience).
- Max Weber (Politics as a Vocation).
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