The Great Conversation is the ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors. This process is characterized by writers in the

Western canon The Western canon is the embodiment of High culture, high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly cherished across the Western culture, Western world, such works having achieved the status of classics. Recent ...

making comparisons and allusions to the works of earlier writers and thinkers. As such it is a name used in the promotion of the ''

Great Books of the Western World ''Great Books of the Western World'' is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in 54 volumes. The original editors had three criteria for including a b ...

'' published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1952. It is also the title of (i) the first volume of the first edition of this set of books, written by the educational theorist

Robert Maynard Hutchins Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899 – May 14, 1977) was an American educational philosopher. He was the President of the University of Chicago, 5th president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, and ear ...

, and (ii) an accessory volume to the second edition (1990), written by the philosopher

Mortimer J. Adler Mortimer Jerome Adler (; December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, popular author and lay theologian. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He taught at ...

. According to Hutchins, "The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day". Adler said,

What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.Mortimer Adler: "The Great Conversation Revisited," in ''The Great Conversation: A Peoples Guide to Great Books of the Western World'', Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1990, p. 28.

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External links

Great Conversation book discussion group
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nbsp;– chapter one of "The Great Conversation" online preserved at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

*
The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education
' (1952) .b. private library edition, twenty-seventh printing, 1984 first volume of the ''

'' series 1952 non-fiction books Abstraction Concepts in aesthetics Concepts in epistemology History of literature Innovation Literary concepts Philosophical schools and traditions Philosophy of culture Philosophy of literature Sociology of knowledge Tradition {{aesthetics-stub

See also

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