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How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

Part 1: The Dimensions of Reading

Chapter 1: The Activity and Art of Reading

• We do not need to know everything about something in order to understand it. Too many facts are often as confusing as too few.

Active Reading

• Successful communication is when what the writer wanted to have received finds its way into the reader's possession. The writer's skill and the reader's skill converge upon a common end.
• Active reading entails means one can read something better by first reading it more actively, and second by performing each of the acts involved more skillfully.

The Goals of Reading: Reading for Information and Reading for Understanding

• Your success in reading is determined by the extent to which you receive everything the writer wanted to communicate.
• The art of reading is whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no outside help, elevates itself by the power of its own operations.
• By performing the various acts that make up the art of reading, the mind passes from understanding less to understanding more.
• Reading for understanding happens when the writer is "superior" to the reader in understanding, and the reader is able to overcome this inequality in understanding by some degree.

Reading as Learning: The Difference Between Learning by Instruction and Learning by Discovery

• To be informed is to know that something is the case. To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about.
• Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
• Being informed is a prerequisite to being enlightened. But you should not stop at being informed.
• Learning by instruction happens when one teaches another through speech or writing. Learning by discovery happens when one learns something by research, by investigation, or by reflection, without being taught.
• Instruction is really "aided discovery" – although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning.
• Unaided discovery is the art of reading nature or the world, as instruction is the art of reading books or, to include listening, of learning from discourse.
• The art of reading includes all the same skills as the art of unaided discovery: Keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and intellect trained in analysis and reflection.

Present and Absent Teachers

• Listening is learning from a teacher who is present, while reading is learning from one who is absent.
• If you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world.

Chapter 2: The Levels of Reading

• There are four levels of reading which are cumulative, where higher levels include all the lower ones:
• The first level is Elementary Reading, where the reader asks "What does the sentence say?" And this is asked in the simplest sense.
• The second level is Inspectional Reading, where the goal is to get the most out of the book within a short period of time. By definition, it is too short a time to get out of the book everything that can be gotten.
• Inspectional reading is the art of skimming systematically, and the reader asks "What is this book about?"
• Readers who don't employ inspectional reading must achieve superficial knowledge of a book at the same that they are trying to understand it, compounding the difficulty.
• The third level is Analytical Reading, which is the best and most complete reading that is possible given unlimited time.
• Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding. The reader must ask many, and organized, questions of what he is reading.
• The fourth level is Syntopical Reading, where the reader reads many books and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve.
• The syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.

Chapter 3: The First Level of Reading: Elementary Reading

Stages of Learning to Read

• There are at least four distinguishable stages in the child's progress toward what is called mature reading ability.
• The first is "reading readiness," and spans from birth until age six or seven. It includes physical readiness, intellectual readiness, language readiness, and personal readiness.
• The child who is not yet ready to read is frustrated if attempts are made to teach him, and he may carry over his dislike for the experience into his later schooling or adult life.
• In the second stage, children read simple materials. We learn a few sight words and master perhaps 300 to 400 words by the end of the first year.
• The transformation of words as meaningless symbols to having meaning takes only two to three weeks. Most of us do this before seven years old.
• The third stage is characterized by rapid progress in vocabulary and by increasing skill in "unlocking" the meaning of unfamiliar words through context clues.
• The fourth stage is characterized by refinement and enhancement of previous skills, where the reader can carry over concepts between writings, and can compare the views of different writers on the same subject.
• This final and mature stage of reading should be reached by young people in their early teens.

Stages and Levels

• The four stages of reading outlined above are all stages of the first level of reading, as outlined in the previous chapter.
• Typically the four stages of elementary reading are attained with the help of living teachers.

Higher Levels of Reading and Higher Education

• Remedial reading instruction only brings students up to a level of maturity in reading that they should have attained by the time they graduated from elementary school.

Chapter 4: The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading

• There are two levels of inspectional reading, and the experienced reader learns to perform both steps simultaneously.

Inspectional Reading I: Systematic Skimming or Pre-reading

• Skimming or pre-reading is the first sublevel of inspectional reading.
• Your main aim is to discover whether the book requires a more careful reading. It can also tell you many other things about the book, even if you don't read it with care.
• To do it:
  • Read the title page and its preface, if it has one, quickly.
  • Study the table of contents to obtain a general sense of the book's structure.
  • Check the index if it has one. When you see terms that look crucial, look up some of the passages cited. Those passages may contain the crux that is key to the author's approach and attitude.
  • Read the publisher's blurb. It is not uncommon for authors to try and summarize as accurately as possible the main points of their book on it.
  • Look at the chapters that seem to be pivotal to the book's argument. If they have summary statements in their opening or closing pages, read them carefully.
  • Turn the pages, dipping in here and there to read at most a paragraph or two, or several pages in sequence, but never more than that. Always read the last two or three pages of the book.
• Skimming the book systematically is actually a very active sort of reading.

Inspectional Reading II: Superficial Reading

• In tackling a difficult book for the first time, read through it without ever stopping to look up or ponder the things you do not understand right away.
• Go reading right on past the point where you have difficulties in understanding, and you will soon come to things you do understand. Concentrate on these.
• What you understanding reading the book beginning to end will help you when you make the additional effort later to go back to the places you passed by on your first reading.
• When we prematurely stop to understand what we don't understand, this only impedes our reading instead of helping it.
• In your effort to master the fine points of a book, you will miss the big points.

On Reading Speeds

• Many books are hardly even worth skimming; some should be read quickly; and few should be read at a slow rate that allows for complete comprehension.
• It is wasteful to read a book slowly that deserves only a fast reading; speed reading skills can help you solve that problem.
• The ideal is not merely to be able to read faster, but to read at different speeds – and to know when the different speeds are appropriate.
• Every book, no matter how difficult, contains interstitial material that should be read quickly. And every good book also contains matter that is difficult and should be read slowly.

Fixations and Regressions

• The eyes of young or untrained readers "fixate" as many as five or six times in the course of each line that is read. (The eye is blind when it moves; it can only see when it stops.)
• Eyes of incompetent readers regress as often as once every two or three lines – that is, they return to phrases or sentences previously read.
• The mind can grasp a sentence or even a paragraph with only a "glance," and so the primary task of all speed reading courses is to correct the fixations and regressions that slow readers down.
• To break eye fixations, sweep your thumb and first two fingers across a line of type, a little faster than is comfortable for your eyes. Force yourself to keep up with your hand.

The Problem with Comprehension

• The hand used as a timer not only increases your reading rate, but also improves your concentration on what you are reading.
• Concentration is another name for what we have called activity in reading – the good reader reads actively, with concentration.
• You cannot comprehend a book without reading it analytically; analytical reading, as we have noted, is undertaken primarily for the sake of comprehension (or understanding).

Summary of Inspectional Reading

• Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.
• Do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading.
• Systemic skimming anticipates the comprehension of a book's structure. Superficial reading is the first step in the interpretation of a book's contents.

Chapter 5: How to Be a Demanding Reader

The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic Questions a Reader Asks

• The heart of active reading is to ask questions as you read – questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.
• There are four main questions that you must ask about any book:
  1. What is the book about as a whole?
  2. What is being said in detail, and how? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message.
  3. Is the book true, in whole or part? You must make up your own mind – knowing the author's mind is not enough.
  4. What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. And if the book has not only informed but enlightened you, you must seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows.
• Reading a book beyond the elementary level is essentially an effort on your part to ask it questions and then answer them to the best of your ability.
• The undemanding reader asks no questions, and gets no answers.
• You must remember to ask the questions as you read; the habit of doing so is the mark of a demanding reader. And you must know how to answer them precisely and accurately.

How to Make a Book Your Own

• Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it.
• Marking a book, first, keeps you awake; second, allows you to express your thinking, which is activity; and third, helps you remember your thoughts about the author.
• Marking a book is an expression of your agreements and disagreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
• Devices for marking a book intelligently include:
  • Star or asterisk in the margin to emphasize the ten or dozen most important statements or passages in a book.
  • Number of other pages in the margin to indicate where else in the book the author makes the same points, or points relevant to or in contradiction of those here marked.
  • Writing in the margin to record questions raised in your mind, to reduce a complicated discussion to a simple statement, or to record a sequence of major points right through the book.

The Three Kinds of Note-making

• The questions answered by inspectional reading are: What kind of book is it? What about it as a whole? What is the structural ordering of the work whereby the author develops his understanding of that general subject matter?
• Structural notes answer these questions. The best place to make them is on the contents page or the title page.
• Conceptual notes are made during an analytical reading, and they answer questions about the truth and significance of the book.
• Dialectical notes are made during syntopical reading, and they pertain to the shape of the discussion, or the discussion that is engaged by all of the authors.

Forming the Habit of Reading

• The art as something that can be taught consists of rules to be followed in operation.
• The art as something learned and possessed consists of the habit that results from operating according to the rules.

From Many Rules to One Habit

• Each separate act while reading requires your full attention while you are doing it.
• After you have practiced the parts separately, you can not only do each with greater facility and less attention but can also gradually put them together into a smoothly running whole.
• It is hard to think of mental acts as the beginning analytical reader must do: He is thinking about his own thoughts, and most of us are unaccustomed to doing this.

Part 2: The Third Level of Reading: Analytical Reading

Chapter 6: Pigeonholing a Book

The Importance of Classifying Books

• Rule 1 of analytical reading: You must know what kind of book you are reading, and you should know as early as possible – preferably before you begin to read.
• An expository book is one that consists primarily of opinions, theories, hypotheses, or speculations, and for which the claim is made more or less explicitly that they are true in some sense, conveying knowledge.
• The first rule of analytical reading applies particularly to nonfictional, expository works.

What You Can Learn from the Title of a Book

• One reason why titles and prefaces are ignored by many readers is that they do not think it important to classify the book they are reading.
• The main distinction discussed is between works of fiction, on one hand, and works conveying knowledge, or expository works, on the other hand.

Practical vs. Theoretical Books

• The practical has to do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood.
• To make knowledge practical we must convert it into rules of operation, thereby providing a method for its application.
• Theoretical books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something you want to do or think you should do.
• Any book that tells you either what you should do or how to do it is practical.
• Anyone who writes practically about anything not only tries to advise you but also tries to persuade you to follow his advice.
• A practical book will reveal itself by the frequent occurrence of "should" and "ought," "good and "bad," "ends" and "means." A theoretical book keeps saying "is," not "should" or "ought."

Kinds of Theoretical Books

• The traditional subdivision of theoretical books classifies them as history, science, and philosophy.
• The essence of history is narration, where the historian colors his narrative with comment on, or insight into, the significance of events.
• The scientist seeks laws or generalizations. He wants to find out how things happen for the most part or in every case.
• If a theoretical book emphasizes things that lie outside the scope of your normal, routine, daily experience, it is a scientific work. If not, it is philosophical.
• A philosopher refers the reader to his own normal and common experience for the verification or support of anything the writer has to say.
• We say that science is experimental or depends upon elaborate observational researches, whereas philosophy is merely armchair thinking.
• To prove their conclusions, the scientist points to the results of his special experiences, while the philosopher points to experiences that are common to all.
• Just as there is a difference in the art of teaching of different fields, so there is a reciprocal difference in the art of being taught.

Chapter 7: X-raying a Book

• Rule 2 of analytical reading: State the unity of the whole book in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a short paragraph).
• This means that you must state what the book is about as briefly as possible.
• To find out what a book is about in this sense is to discover its theme or main point. Do not feel satisfied with unity that you cannot express.
• Rule 3: Set forth the major parts of the book, and show how these are organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and to the unity of the whole.
• Each major part of a book has a certain amount of independence, but it must be connected to the other parts or else it would not contribute its share of intelligibility to the whole.
• The most readable book is an architectural achievement by the author, and the best books are those that have the most intelligible structure.

Of Plots and Plans: Stating the Unity of a Book

• Sometimes the author tells you the unity of his plan in his preface.
• Many readers pay little attention to the author's introductory words, but frequently the author will use this part to state their plan for the book.

Mastering the Multiplicity: The Art of Outlining a Book

• The major parts of a book are usually complex and have an interior structure that you must see.
• This requires outlining them – treating them as subordinate wholes, each with a unity and complexity of its own.
• No book deserves a perfect outline because no book is perfect. It goes only so far, and so must you.
• When outlining a book, you do not need to follow the apparent structure of its chapter divisions. That structure may be better than the outline you develop, but it may also be worse.
• Rule 2 – stating the unity of a book – cannot be effectively followed without obeying Rule 3 – the requirement that you state the parts that make up that unity.
• The requirement that you outline the parts of a book, and show how they exemplify and develop the main theme, is thus supportive of your statement of the book's unity.

The Reciprocal Arts of Reading and Writing

• The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up, concealing the skeleton artistically.
• The "flesh" of a book is essential because most readers cannot read outlines, and because the flesh adds an additional dimension.
• Good writing is clear and coherent. What is clear is so by the distinctness of its outlines, and what is coherent hangs together in an orderly disposition of parts.

Discovering the Author's Intentions

• Rule 4 of analytical reading: Find out what the author's problems were. The author of a book starts with a set of questions, and the book ostensibly contains the answers.
• Do not fall into the intentional fallacy, or the fallacy of thinking you can discover what was in an author's mind from the book he has written.
• Without asking what the author's problems were, you will fail to see why the book has the unity it has, and your grasp of the skeletal structure will lack comprehension of the end that it serves.

The First Stage of Analytical Reading

• These four rules together provide the reader who applies them with a knowledge of the book's structure.
• Applying these four rules helps you answer the first basic question about a book, namely: What is the book about as a whole?

Chapter 8: Coming to Terms with an Author

• Unless the reader comes to terms with the author, communication of knowledge does not take place. For a term is the basic element of communicable knowledge.

Words vs. Terms

• For communication to be successfully completed, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings – in short, to come to terms.
• A term is a word used unambiguously.
• When writer and reader manage to use a word with one and only one meaning, then during that time of unambiguous usage, they have come to terms.
• We can think of terms as a skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge.
• Rule 5 of reading: Find the most important words and through them come to terms with the author.
• A good writer will try to reach us through the barrier language inevitably sets up, but she cannot do the job all by herself. We must meet her halfway.
• If language is used without thought, nothing is being communicated. And thought or knowledge cannot be communicated without language.
• One word can be the vehicle for many terms, and one term can be expressed by many words.

Finding the Key Words

• Given a passage that you do not fully understand, mark the words that trouble you. You may hit the very words the author is using specially.
• From your point of view as the reader, the most important words are those that give you trouble.

Technical Words and Special Vocabularies

• The most obvious sign of a word being important is the explicit stress that the author puts on it, but not others.
• The author may do this using italics or quotation marks, by calling attention to it explicitly, or by defining the thing that the word is used to name.
• Every field of knowledge has its own vocabulary, and that vocabulary must be discovered by the reader.
• Knowing what kind of book it is, what it's about as a whole, and what its major parts are, will aid you in separating the technical vocabulary from the ordinary words.
• You can spot words belonging to the vocabulary positively by having some acquaintance with the field, or negatively by identifying them as not ordinary.
• When you find an author telling you how a particular word has been used by others, and why he chooses to use it otherwise, you can be sure that word makes a great difference to him.
• The relatively small set of words that express an author's main ideas and leading concepts constitutes his special vocabulary. They carry his analysis and argument.
• Most readers do not pay enough attention to words to locate their difficulties, failing to distinguish words they don't understand from those they do.

Finding the Meanings

• For a word that troubles you, either the author is using it in a single sense throughout, or he is using it in two or more senses and shifting his meaning between places.
• You have to discover the meaning of a word you don't understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand.
• A book comes to you with a large number of words already in place. A word in place is a term.
• The better you understand the picture that the words so far in place already partially reveal, the easier it is to complete the picture by making terms of the remaining words.
• If the author uses words ambiguously you cannot find out what he is trying to say. You can only find out that he has not been precise.
• To use a word ambiguously is to use it in several senses without distinguishing or relating their meanings. The author who does that has not made terms that the reader can come to.
• Good authors may substitute different words having the same or very similar meanings for important words in their text. One term is represented by multiple words used synonymously.
• The words are different, but there is only one term for you as a reader to grasp.
• All the relations that exist between words and terms hold between terms and phrases.
• A phrase is less likely to be ambiguous than a word. Because it is a group of words, each of which is in the context of others, the single words are more likely to have restricted meanings.

Chapter 9: Determining an Author's Message

• A proposition in a book is also a declaration. It is an expression of the author's judgment about something.
• The reader must usually come to terms with the author first, before he can find out what the author is proposing, what judgment he is declaring.
• The author's propositions are nothing but expressions of personal opinion unless they are supported by reasons.
• We want to know not merely what the author's propositions are, but also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.
• Arguments are indicated by other words that relate statements, such as: if this, then that; or since this, therefore that; or it follows from this, that this is the case.
• A conclusion may not be true since one or all of the premises that support it may be false.
• The two processes of outlining and interpretation meet at the level of propositions and arguments.
• You work down to propositions and arguments by dividing the book into parts. You work up to arguments by seeing how they are composed of propositions and ultimately terms.

Sentences vs. Propositions

• Sentences and paragraphs are grammatical units. They are units of language. Propositions and arguments are logical units, or units of thought and knowledge.
• The greatest error you can make in applying these rules is to suppose that a one-to-one relationship exists between the elements of language and those of thought or knowledge.
• Propositions are the answers to questions. They are declarations of knowledge or opinion.
• Not all declarative sentences can be read as if each expressed one proposition for at least two reasons:
  • First, it is possible for the same sentence to express different propositions if there is a shift in the terms the words express.
  • Second, a compound sentence can express multiple propositions related in the form of an argument. Such sentences can be very difficult to interpret.
• Unless you recognize the distinct propositions in a complicated sentence, you cannot make a discriminating judgment of what the writer is saying.
• Rule 6 of reading: Mark the most important sentences in a book and discover the propositions they contain.
• Rule 7 of reading: Locate or construct the basic arguments in the book by finding them in the connection of sentences.

Finding the Key Sentences

• The sentences important for you as the reader are those that require an effort of interpretation because, at first sight, they are not completely intelligible.
• These are likely to be the most important for the author because you are likely to have the greatest difficulty with the most important things the author has to say.
• From the author's point of view, the important sentences are the ones that express the judgments on which the whole argument rests.
• The heart of an author's communication lies in the major affirmations and denials she is making, and the reasons she gives for so doing.
• An essential part of reading is to be perplexed and know it. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
• Principal propositions must belong to the main argument of the book. They must be either premises or conclusions.
• If you can detect those sentences that seem to form a sequence, in which there is a beginning and an end, you probably have put your finger on the important sentences.
• When reading at different speeds, you should pause over the sentences that puzzle you and not over the sentences that interest you.

Finding the Propositions

• You discover terms by discovering what a word means in a given usage. You discover propositions similarly by interpreting all the words that make up the sentence, especially its principal words.
• There are only two differences between finding the terms that words express and the propositions that sentences express:
  1. You employ a larger context in the latter case.
  2. Complicated sentences usually express more than one proposition. You have not completed your interpretation of an important sentence until you have separated out of it all the different, though perhaps related, propositions.
• "State in your own words" is the best test for telling whether you have understood the proposition or propositions in a sentence.
• If you cannot get away at all from the author's words, it shows that only words have passed from him to you, not though or knowledge.
• The reader who cannot see through the language to the terms and propositions will never be able to compare related works.
• If you cannot do anything to exemplify or illustrate the proposition, either imaginatively or by referring to actual experiences, then you do not know what is being said.
• Unless you can show some acquaintance with actual or possible facts to which the proposition refers or is relevant somehow, you are playing with words, and not dealing with thought or knowledge.
• "Verbalism" can be defined as the bad habit of using words without regard for the thoughts they should convey and without awareness of the experiences to which they should refer.

Finding the Arguments

• Another formulation of Rule 7: Find if you can the paragraphs in a book that state its most important arguments; but if the arguments are not thus expressed, your task is to construct them, by arranging a sequence of sentences across multiple paragraphs that state the propositions that compose the argument.
• To mark such sentences, put marks in the margin to indicate where the sentences occur that should be tied together in a sequence.
• By inspecting a book before reading it analytically, you will know whether the summary passages exist and if they do, where they are.
• If your mind works at all during the process of reading, if it comes to terms with the author and reaches his propositions, it will see his arguments as well.
• If you find the conclusion first, look for the reasons. If you find the reasons first, see where they lead.
• Observe what things the author says he must assume, what he says can be proved or otherwise evidenced, and what need not be proved because it is self-evident.
• There are two ways to start an argument:
  1. With assumptions agreed on between reader and writer.
  2. With what are called self-evident propositions, which neither the writer nor reader can deny.
• In a tautology, the proposition is contained in the definition of the words.
• Self-evident propositions have the status of indemonstrable but also undeniable truths. They are based on common experience alone and are part of common-sense knowledge, because they belong to no organized body of knowledge.
• Euclid called such self-evident propositions "common notions."

Finding the Solutions

• Rule 8 of imperative reading: Find out what the author's solutions are.
• By applying this rule and the three rules that precede it in imperative reading, you can feel sure that you have managed to understand the book.
• From this point on, you are going to have a chance to argue with the author and express yourself.

The Second Stage of Analytical Reading

• The second stage of analytical reading answers the second basic question about a book, namely: What is being said in detail, and how?

Chapter 10: Criticizing a Book Fairly

• Reading a book is a kind of conversation where the reader has the last word. The author has had his say, and then it is the reader's turn.
• We must observe an intellectual etiquette in this conversation. Without it, conversation is bickering rather than profitable communication.
• The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging.

Teachability as a Virtue

• There is no book so good that no fault can be found with it.
• The author does what he can to make the readers his equal. He deserves that they act like his peers, that they engage in conversation with him, that they talk back.
• Teachability is an extremely active virtue. No one is really teachable who does not freely exercise his power of independent judgment.
• The most teachable reader is, therefore, the most critical.
• The third group of rules for reading is a guide to the last stage in the disciplined exercise of teachability.

The Role of Rhetoric

• You must be not only a responsive but a responsible listener:
  • You are responsive to the extent that you follow what has been said and note the intention that prompts it.
  • You also have the responsibility of taking a position. When you take it, it is yours, and not the author's.
• On the part of the speaker or writer, rhetorical skill is knowing how to convince or persuade.
• Reciprocally, on the part of the reader or listener, rhetorical skill is knowing how to react to anyone who tries to convince or persuade us.

The Importance of Suspending Judgment

• Rule 9 of reading: You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, "I understand" before you can say "I agree," "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment." These three remarks exhaust all critical positions you can take.
• To agree is just as much an exercise of critical judgment on your part as to disagree.
• To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.
• If someone cannot repeat what you said in their own words, then you know they do not understand, and you are entirely justified in ignoring all their criticisms.
• All criticism that is not based on understanding is irrelevant.
• Equally bad as disagreeing with something you do not understand is agreeing to a position that you cannot express intelligibly in your own words.
• You should hesitate before you say "I understand," for you have a lot of work to do before you can make that declaration honestly and with assurance.
• To say "I don't understand" is also a critical judgment, but only after you have tried your hardest does it reflect on the book rather than yourself.

The Importance of Avoiding Contentiousness

• Rule 10 of reading: When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.
• Whoever regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong.
• A reader should be as prepared to agree as to disagree. Whichever she decides should be motivated by only the facts, or the truth about the case.

On the Resolution of Disagreements

• Disagreement is futile agitation unless it is undertaken with the hope that it may lead to the resolution of an issue.
• The great majority of disagreements can be resolved by the removal of misunderstanding or of ignorance, but neither cure is easy.
• No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.
• Disagreements are arguable matters. And argument is empty unless one supposes that there is an attainable understanding that, when attained by reason in the light of all the evidence, resolves the original issues.
• Rule 11 of reading: Respect the difference between knowledge and mere professional opinion by giving reasons for any critical judgment you make.
• Knowledge consists of those opinions that can be defended, opinions for which there is evidence of some kind. But ordinary opinion is just unsupported judgment.

Chapter 11: Agreeing or Disagreeing with the Author

• To the extent that a reader can support his charge that the book is unintelligible, he has no further critical obligations.
• If in addition to understanding the book, you agree thoroughly with what the author says, the work is over and your analytical reading is completely done.
• Not simply by following an author's arguments, but only by meeting them as well, can the reader ultimately reach significant agreement or disagreement with his author.
• The author makes claims about the world we live in. His claims are justified only to the extent that he speaks truly, to the extent that he says what is possible in the light of evidence.
• Because of your meeting the author's mind through a sound interpretation of his book, you are able to make up your own mind as concurring in or dissenting in his position.

Prejudice and Judgment

• There are three conditions to be satisfied if controversy is to be well conducted:
  1. Acknowledge the emotions you bring to a dispute, or those that arise in the course of it. Otherwise you are likely venting feelings, not stating reasons.
  2. Make your assumptions explicit. You must know what your prejudices are, otherwise you are not likely to admit that your opponent may be equally entitled to different assumptions.
  3. Attempt impartiality to counteract the blindness of partisanship. Each disputant should at least try to take the other person's point of view.
• To talk back to the author, after you say "I understand but I disagree" you can make the following remarks to the author:
  1. "You are uninformed"
  2. "You are misinformed"
  3. "You are illogical – your reasoning is not congruent"
  4. "Your analysis is incomplete"

Judging the Author's Soundness

• To say the author is uninformed means he lacks some piece of knowledge that is relevant to the puzzle he is trying to solve.
  • You must be able yourself to state the knowledge that the author lacks and show how it is relevant, how it makes a difference to his conclusions.
• To say the author is misinformed means he asserts what is not the case, meaning he is proposing as true or more probable what is in fact false or less probable.
  • You must be able to argue the truth or greater probability of a position contrary to the author's.
• To say the author is illogical means he has committed a fallacy in reasoning.
  • The first type of fallacy is the non sequitur, meaning what is concluded simply does not follow from the reasons offered.
  • The second type of fallacy is the occurrence of inconsistency, meaning the author has tried to say two things that are incompatible.
  • You must be able to show the precise respect in which the author's argument lacks cogency.

Judging the Author's Completeness

• If you have not been able to show that the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, then you cannot disagree without relying on emotions or prejudices.
• To say the author's analysis is incomplete means he has not solved all the problems he started with, or that he did not see all their implications and ramifications, or that he failed to make relevant distinctions.
• You can only make this remark if you can define the inadequacy precisely.
• This fourth point is not a basis for disagreement. It is critically adverse only to the extent that it marks the limitations of the author's achievement.
• Structural outlining reveals how adequately the author has stated his problems, while interpretation measures how satisfactorily he has solved them.

The Third Stage of Analytical Reading

• If you are reading for enlightenment, then there is no end to the inquiry that, at every stage of learning, is renewed by the question "What of it?"
• We often use "well read" to mean the quantity rather than the quality of reading. But a person who has read widely but not well deserves pity, not praise.
• Many books are worth reading well, and many more should only be inspected.
• Being well-read means knowing how to use whatever skill one possesses with discrimination – and by reading every book according to its merits.

Chapter 12: Aids to Reading

• Do all that you can by yourself before seeking outside help. If you act consistently on this principle, you will find that you need less and less outside help.
• Seek outside help when a book remains unintelligible, either in whole or part, after you have done your best to read it according to the rules of intrinsic reading.

The Role of Relevant Experience

• Common experience does not have to be shared by everyone in order to be common. Common is not the same as universal.
• Common experience is most relevant to the reading of fiction and to the reading of philosophy.
• Special experience is mainly relevant to the reading of scientific works.
• The surest test of understanding is to ask yourself whether you can give a concrete example of a point that you feel you understand.

Other Books as Extrinsic Aids to Reading

• Not only are many of the great books related, but also they were written in a certain order that should not be ignored.
• Just as the whole book is the context for any of its parts, so related books provide an even larger context that helps you interpret the book you are reading.
• We must read the great books in relation to one another, and in an order that somehow respects chronology.

How to Use Commentaries and Abstracts

• Such works should be use sparingly for two reasons:
  1. Commentators are not always right in their comments on a book.
  2. Even if they are right, they may not be exhaustive. Reading a commentary, especially one that is very self-assured, tends to limit your understanding of a book.
• Whereas you should read an author's preface and introduction before reading a book, you should not read a commentary by someone else until after you have read the book.
• Reading a commentary before the book will distort your reading: You will tend to see only the points made by the scholar or critic, and fail to see other points that may be just as important.
• If you rely on commentaries and habits too often, you will be totally lost if you cannot find one. You will be a worse reader.

How to Use Reference Books

• To use a reference book well:
  1. You must have some idea of what you want to know. That is, you must be able to ask the reference book an intelligible question.
  2. You must know where to find out what you want to know.
  3. You must know how the particular work is organized. By reading its introduction and preface, the editor should communicate to you how to use it.
• Unsupported opinions have no business in reference books. Only those things that we generally and conventionally agree upon are to be found in them.
• A fourth requirement of using a reference book well: You must know what is considered knowable by the authors of the book.

How to Use a Dictionary

• A dictionary captures the growth and development of language. Pay attention not only to the variety of meanings for each word, but also to their order and relation.
• If you have to look up too many words at the beginning of a book, you will lose track of the book's unity and order.
• Resist looking up new words during your first reading of a good book unless they seem to be important to the author's general meaning.
• Words can be looked at four ways:
  1. Words are physical things – writable words with speakable sounds.
  2. Words are parts of speech.
  3. Words are signs. They have multiple meanings, and through their meanings, words are related to one another.
  4. Words are conventional. They are man-made signs, and so every word has a history.
• A good dictionary will answer all of these four different kinds of questions about words.

How to Use an Encyclopedia

• All knowledge was once ordered in relation to the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the trivium; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, the quadrivium.
• The best encyclopedia would be one that has both a topical and an alphabetical arrangement.
• A table of contents is a topical arrangement of a book, whereas an index is an alphabetical arrangement.
• Facts should never be argued about in the first place, and encyclopedias should be used to end disputes about matters of fact as quickly and permanently as possible.
• An encyclopedia is about facts as a dictionary is about words. Some points:
  1. Facts are propositions.
  2. Facts are "true" propositions, not opinions. When someone says "it is a fact that" she means that it is generally agreed that such is the case.
  3. Facts are reflections of reality. They may be either informational singulars or relatively unquestioned generalizations.
  4. Facts are to some extent conventional. They can change, as any proposition that we take to be true can be falsified by more patient and more accurate observation and investigation.
• The art of using an encyclopedia as an aid to reading is the art of asking the proper questions about facts.

Part 3: Approaches to Different Kinds of Reading Matter

Chapter 13: How to Read Practical Books

The Two Kinds of Practical Books

• A practical book can never solve the practical problem with which it is concerned. A practical problem can only be solved by action itself.
• To make a book applicable in practice, the reader must add her knowledge of the particular situation and her judgment of how the rule applies to the case.
• Practical books fall into two main groups:
  1. Books like this one, or a cookbook, or a driver's manual, are primarily presentations of rules.
  2. Other books are concerned with the principles that generate rules. Most of the great books in economics, politics, and morals are like this.
• A practical book is different from a theoretical book in that it is always about a field of human behavior in which men can do better or worse.
• In reading a practical book that is primarily a rule book, can always recognize a rule because it recommends something as worth doing to gain a certain end.
• The arguments in a practical book of this sort will be attempts to show you that the rules are sound.
• The practical books that deal with the principles underlying rules will contain major propositions and arguments that look like those in a purely theoretical book.
• The reader must try to see the rules that may not be expressed but can still be derived from the principles. He figures out how to apply the rules in practice.
• A rule of conduct is practically true on two conditions: that it works, and that its working leads you to an end that you desire.
• In judging a theoretical book, the reader must observe the relation between her own principles or assumptions and those of the offer. In judging a practical book, everything turns on the ends or goals.

The Role of Persuasion

• You must ask yourself two major questions when reading any practical book:
  1. What are the author's objectives?
  2. What means for achieving them is he proposing?
• Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind will put the mind out of business.
• The person who reads a practical book intelligently, who knows its basic terms, propositions, and arguments, will always be able to detect its oratory.
• Only when you are aware that you are the subject of persuasion can you do something about weighing its appeals.

What Does Agreement Entail in the Case of the Practical Books?

• Rule 4 adapted for practical books is Find out what the author wants you to do. Rule 8 for practical books is Find out how he proposes that you do this.
• Your main consideration is whether the author's objectives align with your conception of what is right to seek, and of what is the best way of seeking it.
• Given a practical book, agreement with the author's ends and acceptance of his means implies action on your part.
• An exception to this contention is if the end is selective, meaning it applies to only a certain class of people, and if the reader decides he does not belong to that class.
• But the reader may be fooling himself, or misunderstanding his own motives, in deciding that he does not belong to the class to which the end is relevant.