Grandi Libri del Mondo Occidentale (titolo originale inglese Great Books of the Western World) è una collana di libri pubblicati in origine negli Stati Uniti nel 1952 dall'Enciclopedia Britannica con lo scopo di presentare il Canone occidentale in un unico blocco di 54 volumi, con opere scelte integrali dei maggiori scrittori e pensatori del mondo occidentale. La serie è ora arrivata alla sua seconda edizione e contiene 60 volumi. Il catalogo dei Grandi Libri è tenuto dalla Fondazione Grandi Libri (Great Books Foundation) e fa parte del curriculum editoriale Great Books. I primi due volumi furono presentati alla Regina Elisabetta II d'Inghilterra e al Presidente USA Harry S. Truman.
Redazione Originariamente pubblicata in 54 volumi, The Great Books of the Western World comprende opere di narrativa, storia, poesia, scienze naturali, matematica, filosofia, dramma, politica, religione, economia ed etica. Il fondatore della collana, Robert Hutchins (già Presidente della University of Chicago), ne scrisse il primo volume, intitolato The Great Conversation, inteso come introduzione e discorso sulla formazione. Il curatore principale, Mortimer Adler, curò i successivi due volumi, The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon, per sottolineare l'unità della serie e, di conseguenza, il pensiero occidentale in generale. Un gruppo di redattori passò mesi a compilare riferimenti e note su argomenti tipo "La libertà dell'uomo in relazione alla volontà di Dio" e "La negazione del Vuoto o vacuum in favore del Pieno o plenum". Raggrupparono gli argomenti in 102 capitoli, per cui Adler scrisse 102 introduzioni.
Contenuti I volumi contengono le opere elencate di seguito (in inglese come in originale). I volumi erano contraddistinti da colori diversi sul dorso che ne individuavano le diverse categorie di appartenenza.
Volume 1 Great Conversation
Volume 2 Syntopicon I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom e Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good e Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life e Death, Logic, e Love
Volume 3 Syntopicon II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory e Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity e Contingency, Oligarchy, One e Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure e Pain, Poetry, Principle, Progress, Prophecy, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Quantity, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same e Other, Science, Sense, Sign e Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, State, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny, Universal e Particular, Virtue e Vice, War e Peace, Wealth, Will, Wisdom, e World
Volume 4 Homer The Iliad The Odyssey
Volume 5 Aeschylus The Suppliant Maidens The Persians Seven Against Thebes Prometheus Bound The Oresteia Agamemnon Choephoroe The Eumenides Sophocles The Oedipus Cycle Oedipus the King Oedipus at Colonus Antigone Ajax Electra The Trachiniae Philoctetes Euripides Rhesus Medea Hippolytus Alcestis Heracleidae The Suppliants Trojan Women Ion Helen Andromache Electra Bacchantes Hecuba Heracles Mad Phoenician Women Orestes Iphigeneia in Tauris Iphigeneia at Aulis Cyclops Aristophanes The Acharnians The Knights The Clouds The Wasps Peace The Birds The Frogs Lysistrata Thesmophoriazusae Ecclesiazousae Plutus
Volume 6 Herodotus The History Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War
Volume 7 Plato Charmides Lysis Laches Protagoras Euthydemus Cratylus Phaedrus Ion Symposium Meno Euthyphro Apology Crito Phaedo Gorgias The Republic Timaeus Critias Parmenides Theaetetus Sophist Statesman Philebus Laws The Seventh Letter
Volume 8
Aristotle Categories De Interpretatione Prior Analytics Posterior Analytics Topics On Sophistical Refutations Physics On Generation and Corruption Meteorology Metaphysics On the Soul Minor biological works (Opere biologiche minori)
Volume 9 Aristotle History of Animals On the Parts of Animals On the Motion of Animals On the Gait of Animals On the Generation of Animals Nicomachean Ethics Politics The Athenian Constitution Rhetoric Poetics
Volume 10 Hippocrates Works (Corpus Hippocraticum) Galen On the Natural Faculties
Volume 11
Euclid The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (I 13 libri degli Elementi) Archimedes On the Sphere and Cylinder Measurement of a Circle On Conoids and Pheroids 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 On Conic Sections Nicomachus of Gerasa Introduction to Arithmetic
Volume 12 Lucretius On the Nature of Things Epictetus The Discourses Marcus Aurelius The Meditations
Volume 13 Virgil The Eclogues The Georgics The Aeneid
Volume 14 Plutarch The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Volume 15 P. Cornelius Tacitus The Annals The Histories
Volume 16
Ptolemy The Almagest Nicolaus Copernicus On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres Johannes Kepler Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (Libri IV - V) The Harmonies of the World (Libro V)
Volume 17 Plotinus The Six Enneads
Volume 18 Augustine of Hippo The Confessions The City of God On Christian Doctrine
Volume 19 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica (Prima parte integrale, scelta antologica della seconda parte)
Volume 20 Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica (Scelta antologica della II e III parte, e supplemento)
Volume 21 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy
Volume 22 Geoffrey Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde The Canterbury Tales
Volume 23 Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
Volume 24 François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel
Volume 25 Michel Eyquem de Montaigne Essays (Saggi)
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 On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies Galileo Galilei Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences William Harvey On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals On the Circulation of Blood On the Generation of Animals
Volume 29 Miguel de Cervantes The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha
Volume 30 Sir Francis Bacon Advancement of Learning Novum Organum New Atlantis
Volume 31 René Descartes Rules for the Direction of the Mind Discourse on the Method Meditations on First Philosophy Objections Against the Meditations and Replies The Geometry Benedict de Spinoza Ethics
Volume 32 John Milton English Minor Poems (scritti poetici minori) Paradise Lost Samson Agonistes Areopagitica
Volume 33
Blaise Pascal The Provincial Letters Pensées Scientific and mathematical essays (Saggi scientifici e matematici)
Volume 34 Sir Isaac Newton Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Optics Christian Huygens Treatise on Light
Volume 35 John Locke A Letter Concerning Toleration Two Treatises of Government, Second Essay (secondo saggio) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding George Berkeley The Principles of Human Knowledge David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Volume 36 Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Volume 37 Henry Fielding The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Volume 38 Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu The Spirit of the Laws Jean Jacques Rousseau A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality A Discourse on Political Economy The Social Contract
Volume 39 Adam Smith An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Volume 40 Edward Gibbon The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Parte I)
Volume 41 Edward Gibbon The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Parte II)
Volume 42 Immanuel Kant The Critique of Pure Reason Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals The Critique of Practical Reason Excerpts from The Metaphysics of Morals, (Estratti da La metafisica dei costumi) 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 (Documenti degli Stati Uniti) Declaration of Independence Articles of Confederation The Constitution of the United States of America Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay The Federalist John Stuart Mill On Liberty Considerations on Representative Government Utilitarianism
Volume 44 James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Volume 45 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Elements of Chemistry Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier Analytical Theory of Heat Michael Faraday Experimental Researches in Electricity
Volume 46 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The Philosophy of Right The Philosophy of History
Volume 47 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Faust
Volume 48 Herman Melville Moby Dick
Volume 49 Charles Darwin The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
Volume 50 Karl Marx Capital Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party
Volume 51 Count Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
Volume 52 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov
Volume 53 William James The Principles of Psychology
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
Seconda edizione
Nel 1990 fu pubblicata una seconda edizione dei Grandi Libri, con rinnovate traduzioni e aggiornamenti, e altri sei volumi dedicati al XX secolo, periodo quasi mancante nella prima edizione. Una quantità di libri pre-XX secolo furono inoltre aggiunti, mentre quattro vennero eliminati: On Conic Sections di Apollonius, Tristram Shandy di Laurence Sterne, Tom Jones di Henry Fielding, e Analytical Theory of Heat di Joseph Fourier. Adler in seguito espresse disappunto per l'esclusione dei capitoli On Conic Sections e Tom Jones. Adler inoltre dichiarò la sua contrarietà per l'aggiunta di Candide di Voltaire, e affermò che il Syntopicon avrebbe dovuto comprendere riferimenti al Corano. Ribatté anche alle critiche che indicavano la serie come troppo europeo-occidentale e non sufficientemente rappresentativa di autori femminili o appartenenti a minoranze.
Libri pre-XX secolo aggiunti per la seconda edizione (la numerazione dei volumi non risulta compatibile con la prima edizione a causa del riordinamento di alcuni libri—vedi la tabella completa dei contenuti):
Volume 20 2^ John Calvin