Ten Books Every Student Should Read in College

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | Week of June 2, 2003 | 28 distinguished scholars and university professors

[RobbyS]

Aristotle remains the premier philosopher of the Western world. I know it is simplistic, but maybe the difference between Christendom and Islam is that the West honored the Philosopher while Islam abandoned him.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Never said anything to indicate otherwise. Bias is generally opposed to knowledge however and prevents its acquisition.

And I certainly know the difference between the greatest leaders America ever produced: Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Marshall and their trivial opponents whose names will become more obscure as the ages and the glory of their antagonists progress.

Hamilton and Madison were so far above the antis it is laughable. The document they produced and implemented is the greatest political work ever conceived by man. Federalist is the greatest work of policical science in the last millenium at least, no, make it the last two millenia.

[RobbyS]

I was very old before someone pointed out to me that one needs to read his metaphysics in conjunction with his logic. Much of the difficulties of his essentialism went away when I did this.

[RobbyS]

Better work in Aristotle, Locke and Hume, since they built on these philosophers.

[Remedy]

to show my respect for the 2nd amendment

The Emerson case had extensive research about 2nd amendment, that needs to be universally promulgated.

[FoxPro]

...the hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too... More than this, they were right in the fact that the plastic culture - modern man, the mechanistic worldview in university textbooks and in practice, the total threat of the machine, the establishment technology, the bourgeois upper middle class - is poor in its sensitivity to nature... As a utopian group, the counterculture understands something very real, both as to the culture as a culture, but also as to the poverty of modern man's concept of nature and the way the machine is eating up nature on every side.

-Francis Schaeffer, Pollution And The Death of Man

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

gee, you forgot the most important.

<\sarcasm>

[eastsider]

Aristotle remains the premier philosopher of the Western world.

I still think so, the blurb under The Republic notwithstanding ("The Republic is likely the most important work of the most important and influential philosopher who ever lived").

[M]aybe the difference between Christendom and Islam is that the West honored the Philosopher while Islam abandoned him.

LOL : ) Maybe, maybe ...

[justshutupandtakeit]

Yes, they did but Publius adapted them to their time and place and made those philosophies practical.

[aardvark1]

the list says "10 Books" not philosophers. Tolstoy is listed as a philosopher on some lists, though I don't think he belongs there.

[Ichneumon]

Anti-federalists were opposed to a nation and a federal government so they walked. They were irrelevent to history anyway and their leaving didn't matter maybe helped. They thought that would torpedo the CC but didn't count on Washington, Madison and Hamilton's genius.

Um, exsqueeze me? You only demonstrate that the anti-Federalist papers *should* be required reading, because you're hugely ignorant of how our nation was formed.

If it weren't for the anti-Federalists, we would not have a Bill of Rights. No Second Amendment, no First Amendment, no Tenth Amendment...

The Constitution would be a list of broad powers granted to the federal government, with no explicit "hands off" areas spelling out what government may *not* do with respect to the rights of individuals.

And in fact, many of the anti-federalist papers read like a litany of modern conservative essays about how the Constitution has failed or been subverted for lack of proper safeguards in the original language, such as:

Anti-federalist #11: UNRESTRICTED POWER OVER COMMERCE SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (warnings about the expansion of federal power under the commerce clause)

Anti-federalist #12: HOW WILL THE NEW GOVERNMENT RAISE MONEY? (warnings about the inability of the fedgov to raise sufficient funds via impost taxes, foreshadowing the problem of spiraling income taxes and other kinds of taxes)

Anti-federalist #17: FEDERALIST POWER WILL ULTIMATELY SUBVERT STATE AUTHORITY (title speaks for itself)

Anti-federalist #23: CERTAIN POWERS NECESSARY FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE, CAN AND SHOULD BE LIMITED (more concerns about the loss of state control of local events, powers, and monies. Sample excerpt: "These powers taken in connection, amount to this: that the general government have unlimited authority and control over all the wealth and all the force of the union. The advocates for this scheme, would favor the world with a new discovery, if they would show, what kind of freedom or independency is left to the state governments, when they cannot command any part of the property or of the force of the country, but at the will ofthe Congress.")

Anti-federalist #26: THE USE OF COERCION BY THE NEW GOVERNMENT (foreshadowing the unrestrained abuses of the IRS. Excerpt: " The excise officers have power to enter your houses at all times, by night or day, and if you refuse them entrance, they can, under pretense of searching for exciseable goods, that the duty has not been paid on, break open your doors, chests, trunks, desks, boxes, and rummage your houses from bottom to top. ")

Anti-federalist #32: FEDERAL TAXATION AND THE DOCTRINE OF IMPLIED POWERS (warnings of the unrestricted ability of the fedgov to raise taxes without limit. Excerpt: "Second. We will next inquire into what is implied in the authority to pass all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry this power into execution. It is, perhaps, utterly impossible fully to define this power. The authority granted in the first clause can only be understood in its full extent, by descending to all the particular cases in which a revenue can be raised; the number and variety of these cases are so endless, and as it were infinite, that no man living has, as yet, been able to reckon them up.")

Anti-federalist #46: WHERE THEN IS THE RESTRAINT? (powers of Congress defined too broadly. Excerpt: "Under such a clause as this, can anything be said to be reserved and kept back from Congress? Can it be said that the Congress have no power but what is expressed? "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" - or, in other words, to make all such laws which the Congress shall think necessary and proper")

Anti-federalist #51: DO CHECKS AND BALANCES REALLY SECURE THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE? (warnings about the corruption of Congress and the lack of sufficient controls on it)

Anti-federalist #78: THE POWER OF THE JUDICIARY (warnings on the lack of checks and balances on the Supreme Court. Excerpt: "The supreme court under this constitution would be exalted above all other power in the government, and subject to no control. The business of this paper will be to illustrate this, and to show the danger that will result from it. I question whether the world ever saw, in any period of it, a court of justice invested with such immense powers, and yet placed in a situation so little responsible.")

And so on.

The anti-federalists foresaw and warned about almost every weakness and loophole in the US Constitution which today's conservatives bemoan. Far from being "irrelevant", history has shown them to have been right on the money on the issues of how certain parts of the US Constitution were not sufficiently protected against abuse, or openly invited abuse. Far from being the work of the "genius" of Hamilton et al, who trusted too much to the good will and wisdom (*cough*) of those in power, the US Constitution would have been a far better document had the concerns of the anti-federalists been heeded and addressed.

Even in their own time, however, they managed to win an important victory which has immeasurably improved the US Constitution -- imagine what our government would be like today without it:

Anti-federalist #84: ON THE LACK OF A BILL OF RIGHTS (Excerpt: "This principle, which seems so evidently founded in the reason and nature of things, is confirmed by universal experience. Those who have governed, have been found in all ages ever active to enlarge their powers and abridge the public liberty. This has induced the people in all countries, where any sense of freedom remained, to fix barriers against the encroachments of their rulers.")

[RobbyS]

Don't forget that Dr. Locke was the leading publicist of the Whigs and most of his political writings are propoganda for their cause.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

Are there Cliff Notes available for The Bible? Or maybe "Idiot's Guide To Christ", etc. I HATE reading. I recognized a few of the texts on the list but have read none of them. I can read, of course, I just HATE reading. I like to listen.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

Here's an interesting site with an extensive set of links to online "greatest books":

http://books.mirror.org/gb.titles.html

[RobbyS]

I agree, but not too many college students can handle the disalogue between the two sides. Too many think the Constitution is a sacred text/dusty old document. The idea that brilliant could becomes so engaged in its issue is beyond all buy the two per cent. who are able to think in historical terms.

[gavriloprincip]

That is soo cool!

[muir_redwoods]

I'm glad Anthem put you to sleep. TYou were probably a good student. It was designed to be as simple a statement as possible and is often recommended for children. She wrote it for the express purpose of reaching semi-literate people who she felt needed to start somewhere. Of her fiction, Atlas Shrugged is the most on-point of her philosophy.

Yes she is not religious and does not try to mask that to gain a broader audience. Many of us are not religious but that does not detract from what she has to say about objectivism

[Lil'freeper]

great thread bump

[CyberCowboy777]

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