Great Conversation

{{Short description|Concept in the philosophy of literature}}

{{For|the Catholic apologetic concerning Purgatory|Great Conversation (Catholicism)}}

File:The Great Conversation, spine.jpg]]

The Great Conversation is the ongoing process of writers and thinkers referencing, building on, and refining the work of their predecessors. This process is characterized by writers in the Western canon making comparisons and allusions to the works of earlier writers and thinkers. As such it is a name used in the promotion of the Great Books of the Western World published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1952. It is also the title of (i) the first volume of the first edition of this set of books,{{Cite web |last=Hutchins |first=Robert M. |date=1 April 2018 |title=The Great Conversation Vol I |url=https://archive.org/details/greatconversatio030336mbp |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. |via=Internet Archive |accessdate=1 April 2018}}{{Cite book |last=Hutchins |first=Robert Maynard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gWANAQAAMAAJ |title=The great conversation: the substance of a liberal education |date=1 April 2018 |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica |isbn=9780852291634 |via=Google Books |accessdate=1 April 2018}} written by the educational theorist Robert Maynard Hutchins, and (ii) an accessory volume to the second edition (1990), written by the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.

According to Hutchins, "The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day".The Great Conversation, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952. Adler said,

What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.Mortimer Adler: "The Great Conversation Revisited," in The Great Conversation: A Peoples Guide to Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1990, p. 28.