Recently, I got a great question on the Great Books (because during our Veritas Academy series on the Great Books, Mr. Dawson is going to be speaking on Adam Smith and Karl Marx). Here is the question:
I understand that you are the folks responsible for saying that Karl Marx's book is of the great kind...Would you please expand on that?
Here is my response:
Great question (about the Great Books). The term “Great Books” does NOT denote correct. Great, in this case, means that they have had a great impact and that to understand the story of Civilization one needs to read the book (even if its ideas are horribly wrong).
Concerning Marx, his Manifesto is massively wrongheaded. It is economic bunk and it is morally repugnant, but it is a very important book. Sadly, millions lost their lives because of this little piece of flawed literature. Something in the idea is powerful, and we need to examine it so as not to fall prey to it again. You cannot makes sense of the 20th century without an understanding of Communism. We read other Great Books like this too (Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil would be an example), and as a Christian school we believe that every book outside of Bible has some mixture of truth and error in it. We do try to glean any truth that we can find out of books that are (in the main) wrong. Marx blows it because he fails to recognize that man is inherently broken and sinful. When you start an economic system with this premise it veers sharply away from reality. He does recommend broad ownership of the means of production. This idea can be examined outside of his system and is mentioned by much more clear and correct thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Jefferson, and Wendell Berry. So, we read the most impactful, important, books so we can know what has happened in our Civilization.
Hope this is clarifying. Thanks for the question.
Remember, in a classical Christian education, our main goal is not to hide from bad ideas, but to understand them and figure out how to defeat them!
