Reading Lists

Submitted by Bill Bowden for Jim Carigan’s Lifelong Philosophy class in the Osher program

Reading in the earlier stages of my life that has helped to shape my philosophical views

· An Introduction to Modern Philosophy (Alburey Castell)    An undergraduate college course and textbook title. Survey course that included St. Thomas Aquinas, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, Huxley, Hobbes, Hegel, and others. Introduced me to the metaphysical realm of ideas, epistemology, the nature of existence, and much more.

· Various undergraduate English courses that included ancient literature, Greek and Roman philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Euclid, Lucretius, Saint Augustine, others.

· Various political and social essayists read on the graduate level in connection with master of arts in British and American literature. Locke, Hume, Mill, , Burke, Lamb, Addison, Bacon, others.

· Various non-fiction works of Ayn Rand, including Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, For the New Intellectual, and The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.

· Various political and social columnists from the left, center, and right, Gore Vidal to George Will.

 

Reading that reflects the philosophical view of life I hold to as a result of my studies, which also includes additional commentary on those ideas. Literature is the focus.

Philosophy and literature have always been closely intertwined in my choice of reading material. The novel is my favorite literary form. Plots must portray heroes and heroines struggling and often, but not always, prevailing against various forms of evil propagated by man. This means no reliance for plot points on freak accidents of nature, fatal disease, or coincidence, which have no philosophical meaning. I choose to exclude themes of nihilism, cynicism, and relativism. I’m looking for a clearly conceived universe where purposeful action, courage, productive achievement, and reason rule in an inspiring account of a view of life expressed in memorable characters and compelling plots.

Novels that have been important to me, and their heroes/heroines

· Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy) Bathsheba Everdene
· Middlemarch (George Elliot)  Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate
· Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)  Huckleberry Finn
· For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway) Robert Jordan
· Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean Auel) Ayla
· Main Street (Sinclair Lewis) Carol Milford and Will Kennicott
· Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) John Galt
· We the Living (Ayn Rand)  Kira Argounova
· Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurty) Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae
· The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (Herman Wouk)   An ensemble cast

History

On the building of the transcontinental railroad, the Oregon Trail, the Erie Canal, World War II.

 

Popular music, movies of the 1930s and ‘40s, filmmaking in general, the media.

· Katherine Hepburn (Barbara Leaming)  Biography

· Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Peter Guralnick)  Biography

· The Beatles Anthology (The Beatles)

· The Universal Story (Clive Hirschhorn) History of Universal Studios

· The Publisher (Alan Brinkley) Biography of Henry Luce

 

 Emily Dickinson

 To make a prairie it takes a clover
and one bee –
One clover, and a bee,
And, revery.

The revery alone will do
If bees are few.