Volume 1
Volume 2
- Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love
Volume 3
- Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, and World
Volume 4
- Homer (rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler)
Volume 5
- Aeschylus (translated into English verse by G.M. Cookson)
- Sophocles (translated into English prose by Sir Richard C. Jebb)
- Euripides (translated into English prose by Edward P. Coleridge)
- Aristophanes (translated into English verse by Benjamin Bickley Rogers)
Volume 6
- Herodotus
- The History (translated by George Rawlinson)
- Thucydides
- History of the Peloponnesian War (translated by Richard Crawley and revised by R. Feetham)
Volume 7
- Plato
- The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin Jowett)
- The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)
Volume 8
Volume 9
Volume 10
- Hippocrates
- Works
- Galen
- On the Natural Faculties
Volume 11
- Euclid
- The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements
- Archimedes
- On the Sphere and Cylinder
- Measurement of a Circle
- On Conoids and Spheroids
- On Spirals
- On the Equilibrium of Planes
- The Sand Reckoner
- The Quadrature of the Parabola
- On Floating Bodies
- Book of Lemmas
- The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems
- Apollonius of Perga
- Nicomachus of Gerasa
Volume 12
- Lucretius
- On the Nature of Things (translated by H.A.J. Munro)
- Epictetus
- The Discourses (translated by George Long)
- Marcus Aurelius
- The Meditations (translated by George Long)
Volume 13
Volume 14
Volume 15
- P. Cornelius Tacitus (translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
Volume 16
- Ptolemy
- Almagest, part 1 (translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro)
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
- Johannes Kepler (translated by Charles Glenn Wallis)
- Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Books IV–V)
- The Harmonies of the World (Book V)
Volume 17
Volume 18
Volume 19
- Thomas Aquinas
- Summa Theologica (First part complete, selections from second part, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
Volume 20
- Thomas Aquinas
- Summa Theologica (Selections from second and third parts and supplement, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province and revised by Daniel J. Sullivan)
Volume 21
- Dante Alighieri
- The Divine Comedy (Translated by Charles Eliot Norton)
Volume 22
Volume 23
Volume 24
Volume 25
Volume 26
- William Shakespeare
- The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
- The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
- The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth
- The Tragedy of Richard the Third
- The Comedy of Errors
- Titus Andronicus
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Love’s Labour’s Lost
- Romeo and Juliet
- The Tragedy of King Richard the Second
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- The Life and Death of King John
- The Merchant of Venice
- The First Part of King Henry the Fourth
- The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
- Much Ado About Nothing
- The Life of King Henry the Fifth
- Julius Caesar
- As You Like It
Volume 27
- William Shakespeare
- Twelfth Night; or, What You Will
- The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Troilus and Cressida
- All’s Well That Ends Well
- Measure for Measure
- Othello, the Moor of Venice
- King Lear
- Macbeth
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Coriolanus
- Timon of Athens
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre
- Cymbeline
- The Winter’s Tale
- The Tempest
- The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth
- Sonnets
Volume 28
- William Gilbert
- Galileo Galilei
- William Harvey
- On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
- On the Circulation of Blood
- On the Generation of Animals
Volume 29
Volume 30
Volume 31
Volume 32
- John Milton
- English Minor Poems
- Paradise Lost
- Samson Agonistes
- Areopagitica
Volume 33
- Blaise Pascal
- The Provincial Letters
- Pensées
- Scientific and mathematical essays
Volume 34
Volume 35
Volume 36
Volume 37
Volume 38
- Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
- A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
- A Discourse on Political Economy
- The Social Contract
Volume 39
Volume 40
Volume 41
Volume 42
- Immanuel Kant
- Critique of Pure Reason
- Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
- Critique of Practical Reason
- Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals
- Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics with a note on Conscience
- General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals
- The Science of Right
- The Critique of Judgement
Volume 43
- American State Papers
- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
- John Stuart Mill
Volume 44
Volume 45
- Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
- Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
- Analytical Theory of Heat
- Michael Faraday
- Experimental Researches in Electricity
Volume 46
Volume 47
Volume 48
Volume 49
Volume 50
Volume 51
Volume 52
Volume 53
Volume 54
- Sigmund Freud
- The Origin and Development of Psycho-Analysis
- Selected Papers on Hysteria
- The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
- The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy
- Observations on “Wild” Psycho-Analysis
- The Interpretation of Dreams
- On Narcissism
- Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
- Repression
- The Unconscious
- A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle
- Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
- The Ego and the Id
- Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
- Thoughts for the Times on War and Death
- Civilization and Its Discontents
- New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Second edition
The second edition of Great Books of the Western World, 1990, saw an increase from 54 to 60 volumes, with updated translations. The six new volumes concerned the 20th century, an era of which the first edition’s sole representative was Freud. Some of the other volumes were re-arranged, with even more pre-20th century material added but with four texts deleted: Apollonius’ On Conic Sections, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Joseph Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat. Adler later expressed regret about dropping On Conic Sections and Tom Jones. Adler also voiced disagreement with the addition of Voltaire’s Candide, and said that the Syntopicon should have included references to the Koran. He addressed criticisms that the set was too heavily Western European and did not adequately represent women and minority authors.[6]
The added pre-20th century texts appear in these volumes (some of the accompanying content of these volumes differs from the first edition volume of that number):
Volume 20
- John Calvin
- Institutes of the Christian Religion (Selections)
Volume 23
Volume 31
- Molière
- The School for Wives
- The Critique of the School for Wives
- Tartuffe
- Don Juan
- The Miser
- The Would-Be Gentleman
- The Imaginary Invalid
- Jean Racine
Volume 34
Volume 43
Volume 44
Volume 45
Volume 46
Volume 47
Volume 48
Volume 52
The contents of the six volumes of added 20th-century material:
Volume 55
- William James
- Pragmatism
- Henri Bergson
- John Dewey
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Science and the Modern World
- Bertrand Russell
- Martin Heidegger
- What Is Metaphysics?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Karl Barth
- The Word of God and the Word of Man
Volume 56
- Henri Poincaré
- Science and Hypothesis
- Max Planck
- Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
- Alfred North Whitehead
- An Introduction to Mathematics
- Albert Einstein
- Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
- Arthur Eddington
- The Expanding Universe
- Niels Bohr
- Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (selections)
- Discussion with Einstein on Epistemology
- G. H. Hardy
- Werner Heisenberg
- Physics and Philosophy
- Erwin Schrödinger
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
- C. H. Waddington
- The Nature of Life
Volume 57
- Thorstein Veblen
- R. H. Tawney
- The Acquisitive Society
- John Maynard Keynes
Volume 58
- Sir James George Frazer
- The Golden Bough (selections)
- Max Weber
- Essays in Sociology (selections)
- Johan Huizinga
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
- Structural Anthropology (selections)
Volume 59
- Henry James
- George Bernard Shaw
- Joseph Conrad
- Anton Chekhov
- Luigi Pirandello
- Marcel Proust
- Willa Cather
- Thomas Mann
- James Joyce
Volume 60
- Virginia Woolf
- Franz Kafka
- D. H. Lawrence
- T. S. Eliot
- Eugene O’Neill
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- William Faulkner
- Bertolt Brecht
- Ernest Hemingway
- George Orwell
- Samuel Beckett
