Greetings. It has been three and a half years since I gave up on this blog. But I'm back. And I have (hopefully) a bit more drive and purpose behind myself this time.
So, to start I'll be doing the 10 year reading program set forth in "The Great Conversation" by the Encyclopedia Britannica. This will serve a dual purpose of giving me structure and preventing burnout from any ill-conceived attempts at being a completionist.
This blog lays out the reading program with the useful addition of page numbers. With some rough calculations based off of the average number of words per page and an assumed average reading speed of roughly 300 words per minute this program only requires about 10 minutes of reading per day. Seems pretty reasonable to me in order to delve into the cultural, philosophical, and literary history of Western Civilization. And hopefully after the completion of this program I'll be able to answer with superior articulation and clarity what exactly is meant by "Western Civilization."
In addition to the reading, writing, and reckoning of the Great Books, I'll also be presenting other books that in my estimate contribute positively to a greater understanding of the Great Books. For now I'm concurrently studying
1) The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph
and
2) Socratic Logic: A Logic Text using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles by Peter Kreeft.
Now! I've been at this program for almost a month now. So, I'm already through the first two sections for the First Year. I'll be sure to write up posts about those at some point. And this post will move forward from where I'm currently at.
Here's a link to the eBook for The Republic by Plato (Books I-II). Should be easily accomplished in six days. See you June 12th.
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