Non-Masonic Reading

The Most Complete Reading List, Ever

I stumbled upon this reading list on the website of St. John’s College. I cannot say enough about this reading list, with the exception of a few choice Eastern works, this is probably the most complete reading list I have ever come across.

This reading list essentially covers all the necessary exoteric lessons of the Fellowcraft Degree. Not to mention that the name of the school has some nice Masonic overtones.

PART I

• HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
• AESCHYLUS:: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
• SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
• THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
• EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
• HERODOTUS: Histories
• ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
• PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
• ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
• EUCLID: Elements
• LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
• PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
• NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
• LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
• HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood

PART II

• THE BIBLE
• ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
• APOLLONIUS: Conics
• VIRGIL: Aeneid
• PLUTARCH: “Caesarâ€? and “Cato the Youngerâ€?
• EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
• TACITUS: Annals
• PTOLEMY: Almagest
• PLOTINUS: The Enneads
• AUGUSTINE: Confessions
• ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
• AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
• DANTE: Divine Comedy
• CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
• DES PREZ: Mass
• MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
• COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
• LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
• RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
• PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
• MONTAIGNE: Essays
• VIETE: “Introduction to the Analytical Artâ€?
• BACON: Novum Organum
• SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
• POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
• DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
• PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
• BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
• HAYDN: Quartets
• MOZART: Operas
• BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
• SCHUBERT: Songs
• STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms

PART III

CERVANTES: Don Quixote

GALILEO: Two New Sciences

DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind

MILTON: Paradise Lost

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes

LA FONTAINE: Fables

PASCAL: Pensees

HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact

ELIOT: Middlemarch

SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government

RACINE: Phaedre

NEWTON: Principia Mathematica

KEPLER: Epitome IV

LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace

SWIFT: Gulliver’s Travels

HUME: Treatise of Human Nature

ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality

MOLIERE: The Misanthrope

ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations

KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals

MOZART: Don Giovanni

JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice

DEDEKIND: “Essay on the Theory of Numbers�

PART IV

Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States

Supreme Court opinions

HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers

DARWIN: Origin of Species

HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, “Logic� (from the Encyclopedia)

LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels

TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America

LINCOLN: Selected Speeches

KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling

MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology

DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov

TOLSTOY: War and Peace

MELVILLE: Benito Cereno

TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

O’CONNOR: Selected Stories

FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings

DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk

HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?

HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory

MILLIKAN: The Electron

CONRAD: Heart of Darkness

SUN TZU: The Art of War

THE ZoHAR