" ….human thought has made progress over time".

Has it really! You could have fooled me.

In the 21st. Century, it seems, few people read anything, let alone the 'Greats'; it's all Google and the latest twaddle on mobile phones.

I mostly agree. But it's only one opinion, not all old books are worth reading. But reading is an essential tool for life and self-education. And being fully informed.
Alan B.

Not only should we read the great works of the past, but we should make sure we buy and own them in hard copy before the wokocracy censors them into irrelevance.

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier." Thomas Jefferson.

The problem with people like Richard Hanania is that they have a massively overblown understanding of what the social sciences have discovered in the past 50 years. Lots of claims have been made and those claims are bought by the social scientists. But in fact very little has been revealed as unassailably true.

"In 2015, one group of scientists reported that they tried to replicate a hundred psychology studies – and found that they couldn’t reproduce the results of two-thirds of them. They also wrote that in the studies they could replicate, the results were not as stark as the originals’ authors had claimed them to be."

the problem is that the Hanania's of the world think the studies that couldn't be replicated are valid and, even worse, that they trump the works of the great scholars.

Social science believes it is the answer to the human condition. It isn't. Continue to read the great scholars.

Whenever I hear some 'review' of a book or a movie on ABC/SBS I won't bother looking them up.
I went to Vinnies last week & got a few books by authors I'd never heard of & I'm reading one now with without having it spoiled by some Pseudo-intellectual 'Preview' gits !

Thanks, Christian, for an interesting read. I'm mostly in agreement with you – the great classics address perennial questions about human nature that may never be conclusively answered. Movies like West Side Story and Bridget Jones’ Diary, which retell Shakespeare’ Romeo and Juliet and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in contemporary settings, show our enduring fascination with these stories and what they mean, including what they mean to us today.

Even bad books need to be remembered if they have been very influential. I would never advocate banning Mein Kampf, for example, and would encourage students of politics and history to read it.

If we have indeed made progress – and in some respects, I think we have – then it is often great works of literature that have guided us. It was the war poets as much as military historians that showed us the true horrors of WW1. Many white, Anglo people of my generation had their eyes opened to the evils of racism by To Kill a Mockingbird. It can seem a little over-earnest and stereotypical to modern eyes, and may even be guilty of white saviour syndrome, but it had a huge and positive impact for decades.

One of my many irritations at modern “woke” ideology is that it would cancel or denigrate the sources of what were once shared language, symbolism and culture. Even people who had never read Shakespeare would know phrases like “to be or not to be” or “pound of flesh”. And even non-Christians would know what “good Samaritan” and “prodigal son” refer to. Without these common points of reference, our discourse becomes more shallow and fragmented.

I love it when people worry about our dead culture,; as if it lives on!

What Rhian says!
Alan B.

Are you reading older books to find out what makes people tick?
(the word 'tick' is out of place here, but I use it deliberately)
If so, are there not better ways?
Study present day people thoroughly?
Start with oneself?
Here we all are; alive, and ready to be examined in detail.
If our ancestors had not written books, would that mean we must remain ignorant of ourselves?
Of course not.
We can work with what we have.
Reading books written a long time ago can give us an insight in to how thinking has changed over time.
Which might be useful to know.
But better to use the time we have to detail the persons we are right now?
So what happened in the past is supportive information.
Only those who are alive now can live life now.
The dead are but a memory.
But reading about them can be a pleasant diversion from the present day.
Almost like a well written fictional story.
I used to think that scholarly persons, well versed in the classics, and able to read latin fluently, were remarkable men.
Now I think otherwise.
They live in a false dimension.
Life is about survival.
Life is about family.
Which of you can say the antics of your remarkably wise and aware great grand-daughter does not delight you?
And you won't find that degree of warmth in an old book.

Read "By Flood & Field" again & "The Journal of John Sweatman". Eye-openers !

Quite recently I knew a man who lived locally.
He was older than I.
He was 'learned'.
He was clever, resourceful, and aware.
He spent his days either listening to classical music, or reading endlessly of weighty volumes.
As a person, he was often mean, and he could be quite nasty to those close to him.
His personal habits were almost disgusting.
Suffice to say I would not eat at his house.
So one should not judge a person by the kind of books he reads.
That is most certainly not a good indicator.
And I don't think one becomes a good person merely by reading 'weighty' volumes.

as if it lives on!
diver dan,
The woke are perpetuating it !

The woke are perpetuating it !

The Protestant ethic my dear Watson, is an unfathomable distance from the Managerial woke traders in human souls me thinks.

They be modern day slave traders!

Their aspirations are Chieftain by nature. Very undemocratic indeed.

Very amusing Diver Dan. The illusion to James Burnham. Kudos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham

Good points by Christian Gonzalez but perhaps Richard Hanania's argument "that the Great Books are not worth reading" comes from a place of woke communist ideology wanting to destroy the past- common at universities.

There's no need to analyse Hanania's argument when it can perhaps be explained easily by modern university woke communist corruption- little wonder that universities are more and more held in contempt by normal people.

There was a presentation recently about the way research is conducted in the so called modern era along with the gatekeepers that guard entry into authoritarian academia. The conclusion seemed to be that prospective gatekeepers should lie to the gatekeepers until they obtain the position of power.

Someone talked about the seven academic papers in seven years rule to obtain gatekeeper status.

diver dan,
is no culture still a culture ?

Individ..

No culture is no place to hide.

No culture is also no status: No status is the position of a slave.

Rent slaves, debt slaves, are a couple of common positions of the worthless.

No financial ability to nurture family, another red flag!

No culture- Nihilism- just as Dostoyevsky said.

A Point of View: The writer who foresaw the rise of the totalitarian state- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30129713

http://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9C9F995D2CF17ED39D30EC5412F1204D/S0037677900134874a.pdf/dostoevskys_the_devils_and_the_antinihilist_novel.pdf

Sorry illusion should be allusion.

No culture- Nihilism- just as Dostoyevsky said.

Canem Malum,
Scary parallels going on here now !

Kudos Indyvidual.

Academic CM.

But the beauty of global wars of the past were, that the young and the restless were given over to sacrifice, and as such, conservatism was reinforced in their absence.

In the case of Russia, and Germany alike of the period of Dostoyevskies novels themed on evil Communism, those youthful still living, became embittered: Not only embittered, but brutalised.

It’s too simple to conclude that Nihilism simply drifted in through the window with a revolution.

This is not the case in our time of madness, where the opposite is actually occurring.

Ours is a period of unprecedented affluence; theirs was a time of destitution and political chaos. Theirs was a time of political vacuum, ours now a time of division based on the distribution of wealth and political power towards managerial elites and their cohorts.
A vote is a fruitless exercise of self delusion.

What we witness is the complete destruction of Democracy as was once respected and taught as the noble ambition to preserve.
The preservation of a core being or value of equality, and an egalitarianism based on social wellbeing.

We suffer a different madness in the decline, which has taken managerialism to God status.