Is the Noet model "Classics" or "Western classics"

[Y] and Coptic

I've never made any real effort to read it at all -- but of course I have a certain advantage over you.[:)] And there is a dictionary included in the collection.

Mike Grigoni said:

The initial focus of Noet will be to serve disciplines whose core texts have been usually identified as part of the Western intellectual or Western classical tradition.

That would include Goethe and Schiller in German, Voltaire and Rousseau in French, and Dante and Petrarca in Italian.[:D]

And Arabic also used to be very much part of the Westerns classical tradition.[;)]

fgh said:

Mike Grigoni said:

The initial focus of Noet will be to serve disciplines whose core texts have been usually identified as part of the Western intellectual or Western classical tradition.

That would include Goethe and Schiller in German, Voltaire and Rousseau in French, and Dante and Petrarca in Italian.

[Y]

Greg Masone said:

It'd be great to see either the Great Books of the Western World set in Noet, or a Logos equivalent!

Yes, yes, yes!!! [Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y][Y]

I'm sure a lot of those are available already in the Harvard Classics and Fiction Collection (71 vols.), Perseus, the Loeb Classical Library offerings that have been shoping up in Community Pricing, and the new Noet offerings (which were available via CP in the past). The ones that are not yet available would mostly be the science, math, and economics ones. But there do appear to be some longer works of fiction (e.g., Moby Dick, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov) in the Great Books that are not part of Harvard Classics. But Gabe Martini recently said that a collection of the Works of Dostoyevsky is on its way (yay!).

Greg Masone said:

Mike,

It'd be great to see either the Great Books of the Western World set in Noet, or a Logos equivalent!

Agreed. We've talked about this for Noet and I hope we can make it happen someday.

Mike Grigoni said:

fgh said:

That would include Goethe and Schiller in German, Voltaire and Rousseau in French, and Dante and Petrarca in Italian.

As you probably already know, we do have a Rousseau collection on community pricing. It would be wonderful to get that into production soon (hint, hint). It's hovering around 80%.

We also plan to list an English translation of Dante's Inferno on pre-pub this summer.

You didn't read my post very well...

Scholars won't settle for translations. They need the originals.

And you've already got an English Dante. I've got it in my library. I've even got two, but one seems to be a PB.

fgh said:

Scholars won't settle for translations. They need the originals.

And you've already got an English Dante. I've got it in my library. I've even got two, but one seems to be a PB.

If market demand exists, we will eventually offer the original French for thinkers like Rousseau, and German for Goethe and so on. In terms of philosophical texts, at this point our efforts have been to get several key works in English into production and into the Logos ecosystem. That way, when the Noet app is released, we have a variety of live philosophical texts available for purchase. Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes in the Works of Hegel Collection is the probably the most recent exception to this.

And yes, we do have Dante's Inferno available as part of the Harvard Classics Collection. However, the one we will list this summer is a modern translation and should be far superior.

What is unique about buying the Classics with Noet?  Amazon offers 1,543 Classics at zero cost here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_7?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=classics+on+kindle+free&sprefix=classic%2Cdigital-text%2C233

Mike Grigoni said:

The translation we'll offer is by Tom Simone. Focus Publishing/R. Pullins is the publisher.

Hmm, wasn't familiar with it (or the publisher) but the quick look I gave it on Amazon shows me it will be fine.

Mr. Micawber said:

However, it is not nearly as easy to get one's hands on the Italian text; and I cannot think of a better "place" to tackle it than in logos, if Logos had a Dante-focused Dictionary/lexicon.

Would also love to see Logos do an Italian one that's indexed sufficiently that you could scroll it in parallel with the English translation.

MJ. Smith said:

"We"? For much of the world the classics mean Chinese, Sanskrit, Japanese, Arabic, Egytpian ... Even in the "West" those who use "classics" to mean Greek & Latin is a diminishing group

Hmmm, well I live in the West and I am a stout champion of the West - so yes, I use the word to mean Ancient Greek & Latin texts, as most in the West have in the past, and many still do.  There is nothing "narrow" about that at all; indeed, I could argue - and would argue strenuously - that "multicultural inclusion" is the narrow perspective.

Logos can't do everything well - to some degree it has to focus.  And what I am saying is, I would focus on original language texts that are important to the Western Tradition.  And it seems to me that this also works with the core biblical/Christian focus of Logos.   

MJ. Smith said:

However, I agree with you that the way to expand is through classic texts such a Beowulf, Divine Comedy, Faust, Conference of the Birds, Analects ... items frequently required in college classes.

Yes, to my way of thinking, OE & ME and so on would be immensely useful and a huge market.  

MJ. Smith said:

I'd finish it with "recognizing the influence of other cultures on the West"

Ah, yes the tyranny of "influence studies."  One can recognize formative influences without turning the appreciation into a colossal multicultural obsession that either distorts or exaggerates or obscures, by:  

1. making up influence where there isn't any (The Transmission of Brazilian Rain Forest Tribal Mythmaking via Shakespeare's King Lear, PhD thesis, by Wendy Brainless);
2. exaggerate what influence there was (The Impact of Far East Mythic Folktale Elements on Shakespeare's King Lear, PhD thesis by Brad Witless);
3. and/or spending so much time and effort tracking down and studying every bit of minutiae that might possibly be brought to bear on Shakespeare's plays that our students and scholars often end up knowing precious little about Shakespeare's plays themselves - which, presumably, is the very point of the "influence studies" to begin with, right?  Well, actually no - I suspect the point of influence studies has far more do with an ideology than it has to do with scholarship or truth.  

You started with the fighting words my friend!  [;)]  I’m just responding to you.  Not sure why you think my examples are unjustified - they are actually an accurate, albeit tongue-in-cheek, portrayal of what often passes for scholarship.  

Aristotle said that anything worth doing must meet at least one of three criteria:  

1. It's a moral good;
2. It gives you joy;
3. It's a practical good. 

Most of what you've written up there is of very, very little consequence to anyone; and even to yourself I'd wager, if you were honest with yourself. None of it is of practical value; nor would it confer any genuine joy to the pursuer; or contain a moral good that I can discern.

G.K. Chesterton wrote a novel called Manalive.  It's in part about a man who went around with a handgun to "save" people's lives. If someone was despondent, lost, or even suicidal, he would hold the gun to their head. They would then beg for their lives. Then, Innocent Smith (the man with the handgun) would say: "why should I spare you; what is it you have to live for?"

Now, if someone held a gun to your head and you really thought you were going to die, the last answer you'd give is: "please spare my life so I can discover the true origins of bronze, possibly Thai!” That would be outrageously risible. Or, "please spare my life so I can discover the influence of Eastern Literature on western hagiography!” Or, "please spare my life so I can learn about the preservation of Greek texts through Nestorian and Jacobite monks!”

Frankly, those are not reasons to live; on the other hand, they are indeed reasons to fall asleep. Were you to face a handgun, your real reasons - your "ends" - would jump right out at you; and most of what you've cited above would fade into absolute triviality. And some of it doesn’t even make sense on the face of it: so Indian scholars had grammars before the west. Who cares? Yes, grammar is obviously useful in the classics. So what?  How does my knowing that Indian scholars have a grammar change anything worth knowing? 

Multiculturalism pretends to value all cultures; but actually conceals its own preference in favor of some alleged “wisdom” and superior learning that oddly enough always stems from non-Western cultures.  Multiculturalism is an deeply pernicious ideology that pervades our language, our thought, our institutions. 

MJ. Smith said:

Aristotle is not my idea of an ideal religious teacher. If I were to go Greek, I'd lean towards the pre-Socratics. But then again, I prefer Kundrun to the  Iliad. But I find few Greco-philes even know their Aristotle e.g. that he recognized the need for modal logic and more than 2 truth values. I also find knowing my Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian and Taoist sources far more useful in evangelization than Plato - especially for the self-proclaimed atheist.

I never said Aristotle was an ideal religious teacher. Anyway, his work unwittingly provided the proverbial "floor joists" for much of Christian theology, especially in Aquinas of course.  If you have a good grasp of him, he is in fact extremely useful in apologetics - especially his logic by the way; and especially when one is dealing with nominalists, cultural/moral relativists, and “new-agers” - which is why they don’t like him. He reveals their shallowness.

However, Aristotle and Plato are widely misconstrued; even where they are often read. One needs to read them very carefully and slowly, and in the original Greek; and with an exceedingly good tutor who is himself a philosopher. Needless to say, this is rare.  

I'm not at all surprised that you prefer the Pre-Socratics. Many of them have a kind of “new-agey” openess and something vaguely “eastern” about them (“everything is change”); and many of them are nominalists and sophists, which appeals to post-modernists. But they are also, for the most part, absolutely riddled with errors (for example, “everything is change” is itself an error.) Much of this Socrates utterly discredited.

Buddhism is hardly a religion; and not much of a philosophy; I don’t know what one would really call it. Hinduism is a ghastly vision; a Pantheistic stew of awfulness that diminishes the person, etc. Now, of course, as with so much in the world, one can even find a remarkable yearning in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism for Christ. But they never quite make it out of their errors.

There is very little to learn from these “worldviews” - much less to impart to atheists, who will no doubt be drawn to the wrong things via a kind of “new-agey” view of Christianity via, say, Buddhism; unless of course, you are holding them up as deadends, as “false religions,” which I doubt.

MJ. Smith said:

Christianity has always been multicultural The question is simply whether the Western branch has adequate knowledge of the other threads. Multiculturalism as a pernicious ideology is a concept foreign to my world

You are confusing “multicultural” (a good and true thing) with “Multiculturalism” - a very pernicious ideology. And it is indeed pernicious. I cite as evidence the above preferment of yours for Pre-Socratics, and for heretical and confused worldviews over the earthshatteringly profound and (still!) revolutionary philosophies of Aristotle and Plato. Why? Because you either dont’ understand Aristotle and Plato; or because you, like many “Multiculturalists” just instinctively prefer non-western as somehow superior; or, more likely, both.

That “Multiculturalism” is a “pernicious ideology is a concept foreign to [your] world” is not surprising at all to me. It’s rather like a fish swimming in water; a fish doesn’t see the water; because water is all it knows. This is what Multiculturalism does to a person. And it is, in part, why it is an ideology that, paradoxically, narrows one’s vision, as all ideologies do. And I say “paradoxically” because it purports, in very seductive voices, to do the exact opposite.

MJ. Smith said:

how soon can I expect Anglo-Saxon and Norse? Chinese and Sanskrit?

How about some Gothic to start with: Studies on Gothic Christian Writings (3 vols.)?

(Though I would like to know the source of the claim that Gothic was once used in Sweden.)

MJ. Smith said:

See Wikipedia under Goths:

There has certainly been nationalistic times in Swedish history when people have wanted to believe that the Goths originally came from Sweden (and that Atlantis was here too), but I've never heard of any serious scholar today that takes such claims seriously.

And even if true, they would hardly have spoken Gothic. They would have spoken some kind of proto-Scandinavian, which then, after the emigration and under the influence of the new surroundings, developed into the Gothic language.

Mike Grigoni said:

There are several significant differences when it comes to reading the classics in Noet. The following question and answer is taken from the Noet.com/faq page.

How do Noet ebooks differ from ebooks in other platforms (Kindle, Nook, etc.)?

When used in the Noet mobile app, Noet ebooks support a host of unique features that allow for deeper textual engagement. These features include:

• High-powered search tools that allow you to search your entire library or an individual ebook for an English or original-language word or phrase.
• Split-screen view that allows you to sync related texts so that they scroll together as you read them. Sync Homer’s Odyssey and a commentary, so that as you turn the page of one text, the other automatically follows. Or sync a translation of the Iliad with the original Greek.
• A Look Up tool that allows you to select an original-language word and access its gloss, lemma, and morphology.
• A Word Study tool that allows you to link from an original-language word to its entry in a lexicon.
• A Text Comparison tool that allows you to compare a passage across multiple translations.

Each of Mike's points here^ are exactly why focusing on original language texts is playing to Logos' strengths.

And why hauling out public domain translations - which we can get for free elsewhere - and hawking them on Logos, is a bad idea.