Symposium: Books Every Educated Person Should Read

Avery Dulles, S.J.

This list probably reflects my own prejudices as a theologian, but I presume that it was as a theologian that I was invited to contributed to this symposium. I make no effort to rank the books.

DIVINE COMEDY by Dante

CONFESSIONS of St. Augustine

ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE by John Henry Newman

CATHOLICISM by Henri de Lubac

THE EVERLASTING MAN by G.K. Chesterton

TRUE HUMANISM by Jacques Maritain

THE SPIRIT OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY by Etienne Gilson

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS by John Courtney Murray

FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH by Karl Rahner

THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II

If the last is not eligible, I’ll substitute Cardinal Ratzinger’s INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY.

 

 

Walker Percy

The books below are listed only as they occurred to me. I omitted Shakespeare and Dante as being universal choices, hence not very interesting — and, of course, the Bible.

HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James

THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner

THE COLLECTEDISTORIES of Flannery O’Connor

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

DON QUIXOTE by Miguel Cervantes

CANTERBURY TALES by Chaucer

PENSEES by Blaise Pascal

MOBY DICK by Herman Melville

 

 

Eugene J. McCarthy

THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN by William Langland

IN PRAISE OF FOLLY by Erasmus

UTOPIA by Sir Thomas Moore

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS by Orestes Brownson

ORTHODOXY by G.K. Chesterton

PENSEES by Charles Peguy

MAN AND THE STATE by Jacques Maritain

AT THE SIGN OF THE LION by Hilaire Belloc

WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN by J.F. Powers

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton

 

 

Michael Novak

 

From a lifetime of reading, it is truly difficult to select only a few books. Here are at least seven. Each in its way focuses upon “practical wisdom,” the form of intellectual life that energizes action, a mix of will’s desire and intellect’s penetration. Pascal spoke of it in the famous line: “The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of.”

THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS by Aristotle. Most commentators, especially in Britain, tend to read this book as an exposition of virtue as the mean between extremes. But Aristotle considers that theory only to reject it. He turns instead to a richer and more vital concept: the phronimos, the person of practical insight. Think of the person you know who is most skillful in doing the right thing at the right time in the right way.

The criterion of good action cannot be a rule alone; it has to be a concrete person. This is because every human agent is unique, and concrete circumstances are also irrepeatable. Therefore, one needs an ethical method that cuts deeper than rules or general laws and gets down to concrete judgments concerning particulars.

SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES, BOOK THREE, “On Providence,” by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas seizes upon the Aristotelian concept of “practical wisdom,” in order to explain one of the favorite Jewish and Christian names for God, Providence. The idea here is that we know better what God is like (although of course no one sees God), not through the workings of logic or theoretical reason, but rather through the workings of practical wisdom. Providence is concerned with unique persons and unique circumstances. Providence cares about particular people, even while caring universally about all. Providence even chooses favorites, but without ever taking away their free will. There are several insights in this book that, once grasped, will change your way of thinking forever both about God and about free will.

THE GRAMMAR OF ASSENT by John Henry Newman. In an incredibly beautiful and disciplined English — practically no one in the history of English letters handles better the English period — Cardinal Newman here takes up one species of practical action, namely the action of assenting to God’s presence and action. He, too, follows the model of practical wisdom, not the model of the logical mind.

INSIGHT: A STUDY OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by Bernard J.F. Lonergan. Having insights is one of the most delightful of human activities. Having insights frequently is what most distinguishes the bright from the dull. More than anyone else in the history of epistemology, Lonergan fixes on this delicious activity of the human mind, and displays how it works in the various areas of human inquiry. It is important in reading this book not only to pay attention to the words on the page, but even more to pay attention to the activities of one’s own mind as one reads. The relevant evidence for the propositions on the page is supplied by that experience. Lonergan is a master of making things happen within the reader, and thus evoking the evidence necessary to grasp each stage of his argument. The book entails a voyage, a circular and upward journeying, one insight built upon another. There are not many intellectual adventures like it.

CREATIVE INTUITION IN ART AND POETRY by Jacques Maritain. This is a book that makes the heart sing; sometimes when I was first reading it, as a sophomore in college, I had to set down the book and go for a walk for a while. If you have ever been fascinated by insight in the writing of fiction or poetry, in painting or in sculpture or in music, you will find few accounts as breathtaking. Practical wisdom in art is not altogether unlike practical wisdom in action. But they are not the same.

THE FEDERALIST by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. No better practical handbook of what to do in the days after a revolution has ever been written. Americans are quite lucky that their revolutionary founders were so accomplished in practical wisdom (and appropriately gave thanks to Providence). They had an uncanny sense for the concrete, the practical, and the ebb and flow of vice and virtue. This enabled them to build seawalls against flood and to dig channels for strong currents. I confess to liking Madison’s contributions best, although many of Hamilton’s (beginning with the first) are not far behind. This book builds upon the ancient ways. But it goes far beyond them in its political and economic wisdom.

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis de Tocqueville. It is not going too far to say that Alexis de Tocqueville thought of the new experiment in the United States, some two score years after the Constitutional Convention, as the building of “the civilization of practical wisdom.” Americans went beyond the ancients in asking not only about the good, but also about the doable; not only about theoretical truth, but about its practical usefulness for even the commonest human beings. To call the philosophy of the Americans “pragmatism” is to use a word too narrow for what they actually accomplished. They were moved by a larger vision than that. They were even, Tocqueville thinks, unmistakably led by Providence.

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