I wish I'd done these reflections in a more organized way. I've talked about what I learned, an overall rating of the selections, what I liked and didn't like, etc. But I think I want to do one more post about how successful I feel like the whole thing was. I'll also talk a little about how well I think Eliot did about achieving his goals. Here's the official goal from the 15MAD guide:
My aim was not to select the best fifty, or best hundred, books in the world, but to give, in twenty-three thousand pages or thereabouts, a picture of the progress of the human race within historical times, so far as that progress can be depicted in books. The purpose of The Harvard Classics is, therefore, one different from that of collections in which the editor's aim has been to select a number of best books; it is nothing less than the purpose to present so ample and characteristic a record of the stream of the world's thought that the observant reader's mind shall be enriched, refined and fertilized. Within the limits of fifty volumes, containing about twenty-three thousand pages, my task was to provide the means of obtaining such knowledge of ancient and modern literature as seemed essential to the twentieth-century idea of a cultivated man. The best acquisition of a cultivated man is a liberal frame of mind or way of thinking; but there must be added to that possession acquaintance with the prodigious store of recorded discoveries, experiences, and reflections which humanity in its intermittent and irregular progress from barbarism to civilization has acquired and laid up.
Within the segments I read, it's hard to trace an exact "picture of the progress of the human race" since we jumped around so much. I think, overall, he does a pretty good job of tracing a good breadth over a couple thousands years. People have already written about a million times that the collection is fairly white, male, etc. I'm not going to say that isn't true (it is), but I am going to say that, yeah, that's most of what would've been available at that point for a collection. Translations for anything outside of Europe were nearly non-existent and (as we saw in a few places) of questionable quality (he was also working with, as far as I can tell, mostly public domain or at least cheaply reprintable sources). The fact that he devotes in an entire volume for 1001 Nights is pretty progressive for the time. I do quibble with some of his selections in 15MAD for the Quran (which feels very focused on comparing it to the Bible). The lack of women is a bit less reasonable. There weren't as many (or as famous) women writers back then, but I'm pretty sure I could count the total number of women on one hand (maybe two if you add translators of men's works). Still, I think these critiques are better focused on the literary culture of the time than on Eliot himself. Also, where's Russia? I know it's not Western, but I don't think there's even a single poem in here.
The second goal, specifically of 15MAD was:
In my opinion, a five-foot shelf would hold books enough to give a liberal education to any one who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day for reading.
And I think that dovetails nicely with my goals for the project. I've talked a little about how I felt letdown by my education in regards to a lot of the traditional "liberal education" stuff. I took one completely awful class in Philosophy, and the vast majority of my professors were firmly in the "teach you what to think, not how to think" category (when they could be bothered to teach instead of rambling about how much they hated everything, how dumb we all were, etc.). I had a lot of friends who went to private schools, and I think I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder that they seemed to have gotten further on the classics, philosophy, etc. in high school than I did in college, let alone high school. T5FSOB and 15MAD seemed like a good first step, if nothing else, to giving myself the education I wish I'd gotten a decade or two ago.
So, how did the project stack up there? Pretty well, I think. I've written before about how I'd never really been exposed to philosophy that thinks life actually can have a point. I've got a nice long reading list that I've started to chip away at, and I've started looking at podcasts and other secondary sources.
I think I've gained a more positive world view in general. All of human history isn't a complete shitshow of everything being terrible all the time, getting marginally better very occasionally, and then backsliding just as far! People, aren't entirely defined by the situation of their birth, and can choose to improve themselves. I think I knew most of those things, but it was nice to peak into an organized world view that supported it, instead of the constant barrage of everything being terrible all the time that was most of my education (and much of modern discourse).
And I think that brings me into the biggest success of the project, which is just a general improvement in self confidence. I can devote myself to a project like this, and keep it up for a whole year. I can read all of these challenging texts and mostly understand them. I read the US Constitution today because of the inauguration. It was kind of awkard in spots. "Chuse" was a valid spelling for "choose" then. But I was able to do it. I can read stuff, think about it, and make myself a better person.
If that's not worth 15 Minutes A Day, I don't know what is.
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