How to Read a Book
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How to Read a Book is a book by the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. Originally published in 1940,cite-ref-1[1] it was heavily revised for a 1972 edition, co-authored by Adler with editor Charles Van Doren.cite-ref-2[2] The 1972 revision gives guidelines for critically reading good and great books of any tradition. In addition, it deals with genres (including, but not limited to, poetry, history, science, and fiction), as well as inspectional and syntopical reading.
Contents
• See also
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Overview of the 1972 edition
How to Read a Book is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters.
Part 1: The Dimensions of Reading
Here, Adler sets forth his method for reading a non-fiction book in order to gain understanding. He claims that three distinct approaches, or readings, must all be made in order to get the most possible out of a book, but that performing these three levels of readings does not necessarily mean reading the book three times, as the experienced reader will be able to do all three in the course of reading the book just once. Adler names the readings "structural", "interpretative", and "critical", in that order.
Structural stage: The first stage of analytical reading is concerned with understanding the structure and purpose of the book. It begins with determining the basic topic and type of the book being read, so as to better anticipate the contents and comprehend the book from the very beginning. Adler says that the reader must distinguish between practical and theoretical books, as well as determining the field of study that the book addresses. Further, Adler says that the reader must note any divisions in the book, and that these are not restricted to the divisions laid out in the table of contents. Lastly, the reader must find out what problems the author is trying to solve.
Interpretive stage: The second stage of analytical reading involves constructing the author's arguments. This first requires the reader to note and understand any special phrases and terms that the author uses. Once that is done, Adler says that the reader should find and work to understand each proposition that the author advances, as well as the author's support for those propositions.
Critical stage: In the third stage of analytical reading, Adler directs the reader to critique the book. He asserts that upon understanding the author's propositions and arguments, the reader has been elevated to the author's level of understanding and is now able (and obligated) to judge the book's merit and accuracy. Adler advocates judging books based on the soundness of their arguments. Adler says that one may not disagree with an argument unless one can find fault in its reasoning, facts, or premises, though one is free to dislike it in any case.
Part 2: The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading
Adler explains for whom the book is intended, defines different classes of reading, and tells which classes will be addressed. He also makes a brief argument favoring the Great Books, and explains his reasons for writing How to Read a Book.
There are three types of knowledge: practical, informational, and comprehensive. He discusses the methods of acquiring knowledge, concluding that 1. practical knowledge, though teachable, cannot be truly mastered without experience, 2. that only informational knowledge can be gained by one whose understanding equals the author's, and 3. that comprehension (insight) is best learned from the person who first achieved said understanding – an "original communication" with the source of understanding.
The idea that communication directly from those who first discovered an idea is the best way of gaining understanding is Adler's argument for reading the Great Books; that any book that does not represent original communication is inferior, as a source, to the original, and that any teacher, save those who discovered the subject he or she teaches, is inferior to the Great Books as a source of comprehension.
Adler spends a good deal of this first section explaining why he was compelled to write this book. He asserts that very few people can read a book for understanding, but that he believes that most are capable of it, given the right instruction and the will to do so. It is his intent to provide that instruction. He takes time to tell the reader about how he believes that the educational system has failed to teach students the art of reading well, up to and including undergraduate, university-level institutions. He concludes that, due to these shortcomings in formal education, it falls upon individuals to cultivate these abilities in themselves. Throughout this section, he relates anecdotes and summaries of his experience in education as support for these assertions.
Part 3: Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter
In this part, Adler briefly discusses the differences in approaching various kinds of literature and suggests reading several other books. He explains a method of approaching the Great Books – read the books that influenced a given author prior to reading works by that author – and gives several examples of that method.
Part 4: The Ultimate Goals of Reading
The last part of the book covers the fourth level of reading: syntopical reading. At this stage, the reader broadens and deepens his or her knowledge on a given subject – e.g., love, war, particle physics, etc. – by reading several books on that subject. In the final pages of this part, the author expounds on the philosophical benefits of reading: "growth of the mind", fuller experience as a conscious being...
Reading list (1972 edition)
Appendix A in the 1972 edition provided the following recommended reading list:
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
4. Sophocles – Tragedies
6. Euripides – Tragedies
8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
9. Aristophanes – Comedies
10. Plato – Dialogues
11. Aristotle – Works
12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
14. Archimedes – Works
16. Cicero – Works
18. Virgil – Works
19. Horace – Works
20. Livy – History of Rome
21. Ovid – Works
27. Lucian – Works
28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus – The Enneads
34. The Nibelungenlied
39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
43. Thomas More – Utopia
44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
58. John Milton – Works
59. Molière – Comedies
62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies
67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract
82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
83. Antoine de Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
85. Jeremy Bentham – An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat
89. William Wordsworth – Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria
92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
94. Lord Byron – Don Juan
95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism
96. Michael Faraday – The Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays
119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
122. Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123. Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. John Dewey – How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic: the Theory of Inquiry
125. Alfred North Whitehead – An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
129. Bertrand Russell – The Problems of Philosophy; The Analysis of Mind; An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth; Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits
131. Albert Einstein – The Meaning of Relativity; On the Method of Theoretical Physics; The Evolution of Physics
133. Jacques Maritain – Art and Scholasticism; The Degrees of Knowledge; The Rights of Man and Natural Law; True Humanism
135. Arnold J. Toynbee – A Study of History; Civilization on Trial
Publication data
• Mortimer Adler (1940), How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education (registration required), OCLC 822771595
• 1972 revised edition (registration required), coauthor Charles Van Doren, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 1-567-31010-9. OCLC 788925161.
See also
References