How To Use This Path
Read in order inside each branch. If you want a single linear route, follow the recommended order below. The list is designed to teach history and values together, even when those values are disputed or uncomfortable.
The Odyssey → The Republic → The Aeneid
Nicomachean Ethics → On Duties → City of God
Machiavelli → Locke → Tocqueville → Federalist
Recommended Linear Order
- The Odyssey → The Republic → The Aeneid
- Nicomachean Ethics → On Duties → Letters from a Stoic → Enchiridion → Meditations
- The Histories (Herodotus) → Thucydides → Parallel Lives → The Annals
- Metamorphoses → City of God → Divine Comedy → Paradise Lost → Shakespeare
- Summa Theologica (selected) → Meditations on First Philosophy
- The Prince → Leviathan → Social Contract → Two Treatises → Democracy in America → Federalist Papers
- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals → Beyond Good and Evil → Jung → Campbell
- The WEIRDest People in the World
Library With Levels
The Odyssey
Homer
Pairs with: The Aeneid
The Republic
Plato
Prereq: none
The Aeneid
Virgil
Prereq: The Odyssey
Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
Pairs with: On Duties
On Duties
Cicero
Prereq: Nicomachean Ethics
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Pairs with: On Duties
Enchiridion
Epictetus
Pairs with: Letters from a Stoic
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Prereq: Enchiridion
The Histories
Herodotus
Prereq: none
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides
Pairs with: The Histories (Herodotus)
Parallel Lives
Plutarch
Pairs with: Roman history
The Annals
Tacitus
Prereq: Parallel Lives
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Pairs with: The Aeneid
City of God
Augustine
Prereq: Roman history basics
The Divine Comedy
Dante
Prereq: City of God
Paradise Lost
John Milton
Prereq: Divine Comedy
Summa Theologica (selected)
Thomas Aquinas
Prereq: City of God
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes
Prereq: Aquinas
Selected Plays
William Shakespeare
Suggested: Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar
The Prince
Machiavelli
Pairs with: Two Treatises
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
Prereq: The Prince
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Prereq: Leviathan
Two Treatises of Government
John Locke
Prereq: The Prince
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
Prereq: Locke
The Federalist Papers
Hamilton, Madison, Jay
Pairs with: Democracy in America
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Immanuel Kant
Prereq: Rousseau
The WEIRDest People in the World
Joseph Henrich
Prereq: Modern West branch
The World as Will and Representation
Arthur Schopenhauer
Pairs with: Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
Prereq: Schopenhauer
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
C. G. Jung
Prereq: Nietzsche
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
Pairs with: Jung
Wheelock's Latin
Frederic M. Wheelock
Use alongside: Aeneid