What is the Western Canon Good For?

[...]they will be able to make at least some productive headway with exemplary products of human thought. Aside from highlighting texts by women where available, I have tried to address student concerns by placing much greater emphasis on Islam as an integral part of the broad debate that grows out of the intersection of monotheistic religion and the Greek philosophical tradition. [...]more generally, I have sought to highlight conflict and contingency in the tradition, dispelling the myth that the trajectory from Homer to the Hubble Space Telescope is a predetermined narrative of ever greater progress and awesomeness. [...]if we must have a canon, we could do much worse than the traditional Great Books of the Western World. [...]that means that the Bible is effectively not a repository of final answers, but a required reference point for argument and debate-a reference point that gives even the most marginal position an entry point into the conversation and a claim to attention and provisional legitimacy. [...]I study rather than practice religion, and my investigation of scriptural traditions in all of the great monotheistic religions shows the same pattern: far from the parodied view according to which the fundamentalist robotically does whatever is written down in scripture, the scriptural canon is always the starting point for reasoned deliberation, even in communities that want to believe that they are literally following scripture.