Syntopical Reading

Syntopical Reading is the fourth and highest level of reading in How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, above Elementary, Inspectional, and Analytical Reading. As the book defines it, “the reader reads many books, not just one, and places them in relation to one another and to a subject about which they all revolve. But mere comparison of texts is not enough… the syntopical reader is able to construct an analysis of the subject that may not be in any of the books.” It is, the authors say, “the most active and effortful kind of reading” — and the level a good college, “if it does nothing else, ought to produce.”

The book lays out a five-step procedure: (1) finding the relevant passages — “it is you and your concerns that are primarily to be served, not the books”; (2) bringing the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology; (3) getting the questions clear; (4) defining the issues by ranging authors’ opposing answers; and (5) analyzing the discussion. Adler stresses dialectical objectivity throughout — always accompanying an interpretation of an author’s view with an actual quotation — and notes the recursive bootstrapping problem: “Unless you know what books to read, you cannot read syntopically, but unless you can read syntopically, you do not know what to read.” He also warns that novels, plays, and poems resist syntopical treatment because their essence is plot, not positions on issues. In Kyle’s notes the method connects to scripture study — Come, Follow Me is flagged as a model of the active, syntopical reading Adler describes.

Context: How to Read a Book (1940, rev. 1972) is the classic guide to active reading; its four-level scheme — elementary, inspectional, analytical, syntopical — is the framework most associated with it. “Syntopical” (Adler’s coinage) is roughly synonymous with comparative or thematic reading across a field.

Where this appears

• How To Read a Book — the book’s fourth and highest reading level, with its five-step procedure for reading across many books on one subject