AND IF GREEK LITERATURE IS NOT TO PASS AWAY, IT SEEMS TO BE NECESSARY THAT IN EVERY AGE SOME ONE WHO HAS DRUNK DEEPLY FROM THE ORIGINAL FOUNTAIN SHOULD RENEW THE LOVE OF IT IN THE WORLD, AND ONCE MORE PRESENT THAT OLD LIFE, WITH ITS GREAT IDEAS AND GREAT ACTIONS, ITS CREATIONS IN POLITICS AND IN ART, LIKE THE DISTANT REMEMBRANCE OF YOUTH, BEFORE THE DELIGHTED EYES OF MANKIND.
The Summer after we graduated college, Nick and I were backpacking through the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. After dinner one evening Nick mentioned that he had downloaded a copy of the Constitution of the United States on his kindle and proposed we read it. We sat over our cinnamon oatmeal desserts with the third member of our crew Sam and traded off reading the text aloud, parsing it by committee and debating its implications until the sun went down.
That night an idea took root that felt something like a calling to lean deeper into the examination of primary sources that have shaped the world we live in.
When we arrived back home we came across the Great Books of the Western World. A compilation of what many scholars and universities have found to be the types of works that have the ability to continue to grant knowledge in kind to the amount of attention and intention that is paid them by the reader. As we looked at the list we hoped that they would bring us closer to the cadences of thought that had occupied the hearts and minds of the western world throughout the ages.
The Great Books Adventure is a journey that Nick and I have laid out for ourselves to spur what we hope to be a lifetime of Great Conversations we can have to sharpen each other to grow in wisdom.
We wanted to create a space where others that might be similarly inclined could benefit from some of the legwork and research we've done along the way...