If you enjoy learning from my videos, then you might enjoy learning with me in my virtual academy. Registration is ongoing, so you could join a session next week to improve your abilities to read French, German, or Spanish literature, practice spoken Latin, learn to read Medieval languages, participate in Great Books discussion seminars, or get support for teaching yourself languages, including participation in study-with-me sessions: www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/
Very nice take on Adler, Alexander. With your presentation you are taking a heavy coat off my shoulders. I finally managed to acquaint myself with Adler's great text and it's a very demanding read and even more demanding Outlook on reading. Here is my lecturing to the wall based on your presentation: 1. Read the full text inspectionally - leaving your own traces as you go (marking important sections, ideas, your questions etc) 2. Once you're through the whole text, go back to individual sections and re-read them carefully - then lecture to the wall about each. 3. Create lists: list of key terms, ideas, vocabulary used, persons that keep coming back, QUOTABLE universal statements or statements of purpose 4. Embark upon comparing a given text with other similar texts on similar subjects or from similar genres. How are they similar, how are they different, how their terms and vocabulary differ? What is most demanding about Adler is the part of Criticizing the text fairly, asking if it is true and in what sense, and then the killer one: "What of it?". Also, developing terms that are neutral and could be used across multiple texts. That is a truly intimidating project. At a mere thought of how much time and work it would require to take it seriously, I am on the brink of dropping the whole thing and getting back to simple linear reading in a one-size-fits-all fashion. Demanding stuff, Professor. Thank you for the video!
@@ProfASAr Although Adler's project (Great Books) encompasses fiction and poetry, his book about how to read is clearly about theoretical texts, since we are to take notes about arguments and compare them. Could you please make recommendations about reading imaginative literature, professor?
Thank you very much professor for this video. I normally read each book several times. If I do not have a pencil in my hand, I have the feeling that I am not reading. I underline, make notes etc etc. It is a very pleasing feeling to take a book readen some years ago and read just the notes. Ereaders are very handy but as I cannot underline and take notes at the margins, I hardly use them. I do it even in literature books. My father was an avid reader. He had thousands of books from the greek classics to cooking books. Whatever book you took, it was underlined and marked. I still have some of his books and some of his comments were so insightful...
As a lifelong reader/learner I have kept my notes in three-ring binders according to subject but I am unable to go back and find specific information easily. I came across the Zettelkasten note-taking method and I think it will be very helpful in retrieving my notes. It means slip-box as I’m sure you are aware. I will also review How to Read a Book again. Thanks for your video.
One thing to add: on the comparison chart, it would be good to include info on the author and source material for the books at hand. "Written down in X year after 200 years of oral tradition" or "Participant in the war described" or "Scholar in 1970s using archival documents to construct a historical narrative."
Watching right now! Thank you professor! Lifesaver for many of us; especially those who are more chaotic and "scribble on the margins randomly" vs taking systematic notes with an actual orderly structure to them.
Even though I have read "How to Read a Book" I hadn't taken notes from it (!). I've made notes from the video and will follow this method for the next serious book I read. Very helpful indeed, thank you for making this video
Many thanks for this summary of the best approaches to note-taking. I have slowly been getting into the habit of doing that, especially with electronic books (as that constitutes the lion's share of my book backlog), and I do try to summarise what I've read like you've always recommended in your earlier videos, but making a comprehensive list of the most important concepts, words and names is a new one for me, I'll keep it in mind for the future.
Thanks, as always, for your substantive comments, Yan. Hope to see you back in Latin soon - we are reading stories written by medieval monks at present.
@@ProfASAr Now that is intriguing, but like I said, my summer is booked, I’ll only be able to attend classes regularly starting in September, and that’s assuming all goes well, but I really do want to go back eventually.
@@meusisto That very much depends on what you're using. On Mac both Preview and the epub reader allow one to highlight any line that the software recognises as text, and if you're reading an epub you can even make notes on the "margins". I should imagine that adobe reader on Windows has something similar, but I cannot say for sure.
Great stuff! My love of the great books is the source of my interest in learning a foreign language. As of yet, I have not taken the plunge, speaking only basic Spanish. But my dream is to learn German so that I might better appreciate the great novelists, philosophers, and poets of the German tradition. A question for you Alexander: in your experience, does modern fluency of a language (say, German) enable you to comprehend the great books of the past? I know that an individual learning English as a second language would have difficulty reading Jane Austen, let alone Shakespeare. What degree of fluency allows one to begin to understand dialects from previous centuries? The dream is to read Goethe and Kant in original German.
At the same time that I also love languages for this same reason (trying to read the great books) and can read literature in (only) a few of them, this also makes me realize that it's some sort of craziness of ours. We needed to have only one civilizational language. Everything should have been in Latin for us, not learning a dozen European languages like we do now.
@@meusisto If you would have told people that the whole world should speak Latin in the early days of the Roman Republic, you would have been laughed out of town - probably in Etruscan or Greek. Languages don't come into being for the benefit of future book collectors. They spring up from people communicating with each other, and usually only spread to be "civilizational languages" at the cost of much human suffering and bloodshed. Any attempt to enforce everyone in a given territory speaking the same language is always an act of violence - see Franco's rule in Spain. Ironically, while we do seem to be moving towards English as a global language, it's all because of Germanic invaders making people stop speaking Latin.
Professor @Alexander Arguelles: When we place ourselves in front of the wall and speak, trying to "synopsize" what we noted down; do we make an effort to speak to the wall as we would with a peer; or are we in a more traditional relationship here? (i.e. that of teacher speaking to a student) The reason for the question being that, I believe (if I recall properly) Adler noting that Great Books Literatures are those which we come back to (both in terms of future time and greater maturity) only to find more there than we had thought (in our earlier readings). This seems to imply that only the peer speaking to a peer (i.e. when we role-play with the wall) is truly possible; whilst the traditional teacher-peer relation doesn't work out. How do we solve this issue Professor? Because when I try to talk to the wall; I seem to instinctively adopt the traditional mode (i.e. teacher "talking down" to student) and the synopses derived therefore from that becomes hierarchical in that way. Is there someway we can continually (in a mindful way) change our "tone" when wall-talking, or do we just practice till we become comfortable with what we are saying to the wall; so much so that it could be classified by a third party as "casual speech and tone"?
Neither, Ahnaf, you are setting up a false dichotomy. The goal in this stage is to see if you can state it in your own words, i.e., explain it to yourself.
@@ProfASAr So, it (speaking to the wall or mirror) is _not_ a role playing exercise and is not even hintingly didactic? It is just you in relationship with yourself explaining to yourself what had previously been going in during a passive receiving state?
@@ClearOutSamskaras It is you making sure that you understood what you read. Can you state, in your own words, giving your own examples, the key ideas, or summarize the content you just covered? All too often, people who read silently and swiftly, when put to this test, cannot do it. If you think you understood but cannot articulate it, then you did not understand. Once you have articulated it, then you write a form of that down. If you have someone who might like to listen to you, then you can explain to him rather than to the wall or mirror.
I have reached a level of fluency in German that I am able to read Heidegger in English. However, due to the terminology he uses, I have to resort to using a notebook to write down keywords or I quickly end up lost again.
Hugo of St. Victor on explaining to yourself, resuming it, memorizing, retrieving: De memoria hoc maxime in praesenti praetermittendum non esse existimo, quod sicut ingenium dividendo investigat et invenit, ita memoria colligendo custodit. oportet ergo ut, quae discendo divisimus, commendanda memoriae colligamus. colligere est ea de quibus prolixius vel scriptum vel disputatum est ad brevem quandam et compendiosam summam redigere, quae a maioribus epilogus, id est, brevis recapitulatio supradictorum appellata est. Memoria hominis hebes est et brevitate gaudet, et, si in multa dividitur, fit minor in singulis. debemus ergo in omni doctrina breve aliquid et certum colligere, quod in arcula memoriae recondatur, unde postmodum, cum res exigit, reliqua deriventur. hoc etiam saepe replicare et de ventre memoriae ad palatum revocare necesse est, ne longa intermissione obsoleat.
Always very high brow but that's no bad thing in this age of pandering to whatever is easier and in fashion. I've seen it in art education. Students are taught race, identity, colonialism and so on. Well, fine but the nuts and bolts, extremely hard things such as life drawing, art history are caste aside. We are breading a generations of visually illiterate people; the same I fear with literature.
If you enjoy learning from my videos, then you might enjoy learning with me in my virtual academy. Registration is ongoing, so you could join a session next week to improve your abilities to read French, German, or Spanish literature, practice spoken Latin, learn to read Medieval languages, participate in Great Books discussion seminars, or get support for teaching yourself languages, including participation in study-with-me sessions: www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/
Very nice take on Adler, Alexander. With your presentation you are taking a heavy coat off my shoulders. I finally managed to acquaint myself with Adler's great text and it's a very demanding read and even more demanding Outlook on reading. Here is my lecturing to the wall based on your presentation:
1. Read the full text inspectionally - leaving your own traces as you go (marking important sections, ideas, your questions etc)
2. Once you're through the whole text, go back to individual sections and re-read them carefully - then lecture to the wall about each.
3. Create lists: list of key terms, ideas, vocabulary used, persons that keep coming back, QUOTABLE universal statements or statements of purpose
4. Embark upon comparing a given text with other similar texts on similar subjects or from similar genres. How are they similar, how are they different, how their terms and vocabulary differ?
What is most demanding about Adler is the part of Criticizing the text fairly, asking if it is true and in what sense, and then the killer one: "What of it?". Also, developing terms that are neutral and could be used across multiple texts. That is a truly intimidating project. At a mere thought of how much time and work it would require to take it seriously, I am on the brink of dropping the whole thing and getting back to simple linear reading in a one-size-fits-all fashion.
Demanding stuff, Professor.
Thank you for the video!
Thank you for summarizing nicely, as always. The difficulty of the task is why it is best done in a group rather than an individual project.
@@ProfASAr Although Adler's project (Great Books) encompasses fiction and poetry, his book about how to read is clearly about theoretical texts, since we are to take notes about arguments and compare them. Could you please make recommendations about reading imaginative literature, professor?
@@meusisto Adler adresses also imaginative literature, poems, epics, plays etc. Take a careful look and have fun.
Thank you very much professor for this video. I normally read each book several times. If I do not have a pencil in my hand, I have the feeling that I am not reading. I underline, make notes etc etc. It is a very pleasing feeling to take a book readen some years ago and read just the notes. Ereaders are very handy but as I cannot underline and take notes at the margins, I hardly use them. I do it even in literature books.
My father was an avid reader. He had thousands of books from the greek classics to cooking books. Whatever book you took, it was underlined and marked. I still have some of his books and some of his comments were so insightful...
Thank you for confirming the value of marking the texts themselves, as well as the difficulty of doing this digitally.
As a lifelong reader/learner I have kept my notes in three-ring binders according to subject but I am unable to go back and find specific information easily. I came across the Zettelkasten note-taking method and I think it will be very helpful in retrieving my notes. It means slip-box as I’m sure you are aware. I will also review How to Read a Book again. Thanks for your video.
You are very welcome. Thank you for sharing your methods as well.
One thing to add: on the comparison chart, it would be good to include info on the author and source material for the books at hand. "Written down in X year after 200 years of oral tradition" or "Participant in the war described" or "Scholar in 1970s using archival documents to construct a historical narrative."
Thanks for the good suggestion.
Watching right now! Thank you professor! Lifesaver for many of us; especially those who are more chaotic and "scribble on the margins randomly" vs taking systematic notes with an actual orderly structure to them.
Glad to help, Ahnaf!
Even though I have read "How to Read a Book" I hadn't taken notes from it (!). I've made notes from the video and will follow this method for the next serious book I read. Very helpful indeed, thank you for making this video
Glad it was helpful, Yan!
Extremely valuable video, thank you!
You are very welcome.
excellent lecture as usual I enjoy your every video and try to implement everything right away. All pieces of advice work like a magic.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Great wisdom again from the prof
Thank you kindly.
Thanks professor... Extremely helpful
You are welcome!
Thank you for posting this very helpful video.
You are very welcome.
Many thanks for this summary of the best approaches to note-taking. I have slowly been getting into the habit of doing that, especially with electronic books (as that constitutes the lion's share of my book backlog), and I do try to summarise what I've read like you've always recommended in your earlier videos, but making a comprehensive list of the most important concepts, words and names is a new one for me, I'll keep it in mind for the future.
Thanks, as always, for your substantive comments, Yan. Hope to see you back in Latin soon - we are reading stories written by medieval monks at present.
@@ProfASAr Now that is intriguing, but like I said, my summer is booked, I’ll only be able to attend classes regularly starting in September, and that’s assuming all goes well, but I really do want to go back eventually.
@@Yan_Alkovic How do you do this effectively digitally, please? This is a problem of mine.
@@meusisto That very much depends on what you're using. On Mac both Preview and the epub reader allow one to highlight any line that the software recognises as text, and if you're reading an epub you can even make notes on the "margins". I should imagine that adobe reader on Windows has something similar, but I cannot say for sure.
Thank you! There are some really good ideas in this video.
I hope they serve you well.
Great stuff! My love of the great books is the source of my interest in learning a foreign language. As of yet, I have not taken the plunge, speaking only basic Spanish. But my dream is to learn German so that I might better appreciate the great novelists, philosophers, and poets of the German tradition. A question for you Alexander: in your experience, does modern fluency of a language (say, German) enable you to comprehend the great books of the past? I know that an individual learning English as a second language would have difficulty reading Jane Austen, let alone Shakespeare. What degree of fluency allows one to begin to understand dialects from previous centuries? The dream is to read Goethe and Kant in original German.
He just talked about this one recently. I think it was in his video from a few weeks ago about languages you've forgotten
@@ADHDlanguages Great, I'll go check it out. Appreciate it.
If you can read contemporary German well, the difficulty with Kant and Goethe will not be due to the language, but to the complexity of their thought.
At the same time that I also love languages for this same reason (trying to read the great books) and can read literature in (only) a few of them, this also makes me realize that it's some sort of craziness of ours. We needed to have only one civilizational language. Everything should have been in Latin for us, not learning a dozen European languages like we do now.
@@meusisto If you would have told people that the whole world should speak Latin in the early days of the Roman Republic, you would have been laughed out of town - probably in Etruscan or Greek.
Languages don't come into being for the benefit of future book collectors. They spring up from people communicating with each other, and usually only spread to be "civilizational languages" at the cost of much human suffering and bloodshed. Any attempt to enforce everyone in a given territory speaking the same language is always an act of violence - see Franco's rule in Spain. Ironically, while we do seem to be moving towards English as a global language, it's all because of Germanic invaders making people stop speaking Latin.
Professor @Alexander Arguelles: When we place ourselves in front of the wall and speak, trying to "synopsize" what we noted down; do we make an effort to speak to the wall as we would with a peer; or are we in a more traditional relationship here? (i.e. that of teacher speaking to a student)
The reason for the question being that, I believe (if I recall properly) Adler noting that Great Books Literatures are those which we come back to (both in terms of future time and greater maturity) only to find more there than we had thought (in our earlier readings). This seems to imply that only the peer speaking to a peer (i.e. when we role-play with the wall) is truly possible; whilst the traditional teacher-peer relation doesn't work out.
How do we solve this issue Professor? Because when I try to talk to the wall; I seem to instinctively adopt the traditional mode (i.e. teacher "talking down" to student) and the synopses derived therefore from that becomes hierarchical in that way.
Is there someway we can continually (in a mindful way) change our "tone" when wall-talking, or do we just practice till we become comfortable with what we are saying to the wall; so much so that it could be classified by a third party as "casual speech and tone"?
Neither, Ahnaf, you are setting up a false dichotomy. The goal in this stage is to see if you can state it in your own words, i.e., explain it to yourself.
@@ProfASAr So, it (speaking to the wall or mirror) is _not_ a role playing exercise and is not even hintingly didactic? It is just you in relationship with yourself explaining to yourself what had previously been going in during a passive receiving state?
@@ClearOutSamskaras It is you making sure that you understood what you read. Can you state, in your own words, giving your own examples, the key ideas, or summarize the content you just covered? All too often, people who read silently and swiftly, when put to this test, cannot do it. If you think you understood but cannot articulate it, then you did not understand. Once you have articulated it, then you write a form of that down. If you have someone who might like to listen to you, then you can explain to him rather than to the wall or mirror.
hello sir do you need a thumbnail maker for your channel i can do this
I don't understand what you mean.
@@ProfASAr i mean i can create your thumbnails for your video
@@ProfASAr he is trying to scam you
I have reached a level of fluency in German that I am able to read Heidegger in English. However, due to the terminology he uses, I have to resort to using a notebook to write down keywords or I quickly end up lost again.
Thanks for sharing this. What you are doing is most sensible.
Hugo of St. Victor on explaining to yourself, resuming it, memorizing, retrieving:
De memoria hoc maxime in praesenti praetermittendum non esse existimo, quod sicut ingenium dividendo investigat et invenit, ita memoria colligendo custodit. oportet ergo ut, quae discendo divisimus, commendanda memoriae colligamus. colligere est ea de quibus prolixius vel scriptum vel disputatum est ad brevem quandam et compendiosam summam redigere, quae a maioribus epilogus, id est, brevis recapitulatio supradictorum appellata est.
Memoria hominis hebes est et brevitate gaudet, et, si in multa dividitur, fit minor in singulis. debemus ergo in omni doctrina breve aliquid et certum colligere, quod in arcula memoriae recondatur, unde postmodum, cum res exigit, reliqua deriventur. hoc etiam saepe replicare et de ventre memoriae ad palatum revocare necesse est, ne longa intermissione obsoleat.
Thank you for the great quote. Where exactly is it from?
Always very high brow but that's no bad thing in this age of pandering to whatever is easier and in fashion. I've seen it in art education. Students are taught race, identity, colonialism and so on. Well, fine but the nuts and bolts, extremely hard things such as life drawing, art history are caste aside. We are breading a generations of visually illiterate people; the same I fear with literature.
Thank you for the appreciation. Like you, I fear the effects of the current education establishment...