What was essential for the humanities was that it preserved the knowledge of the past, and kept students informed of the seriousness of the past, and the questions it posed.
To that end, professors had to meet very rigorous demands once upon a time. Note this description of what was expected at Harvard:
I remember Professor _______ questioning me at great length about Neoplatonism when Spenser came up on my oral examination. The ordeal lasted four hours, after all. There was plenty of time to ask you about everything.
[What did you talk about?]
The usual things — Plotinus, and Plotinus’s relation to Augustinian theology, and Bembo’s speech in Il Cortegiano, and the degree to which Sidney’s argument in the Defense of Poesy was neoplatonic, and Spenser’s neoplatonism in the Amoretti. I believe someone on my committee then threw in a question about Shelley’s neoplatonism in Adonais and the Defense of Poetry. Yes, it comes back, I was asked to elucidate the differences between Sidney’s and Shelley’s neoplatonism.
I highly recommend you follow the link given above, as a Harvard PhD. in English once had to read voluminous amounts in a number of time periods determined by scholars, and prepare to discuss any of them.
The link above, though, makes the startling claim that all of this was general knowledge necessary for basic competence in the field. And that I think is the key. The claim that you can’t understand Modernism without Romanticism, etc. is being used here to argue for specialization in any number of fields, even though it’s not being thought of as specialization by the conservatives.
So the criticism that “nothing” is taught to English majors today cannot be advanced formally, for if you look at the target of the link above, a Professor Warren Hedges, he’s clearly learned an enormous amount in a specialized discipline. Look at the sheer number of theoretical paradigms; if one feels they are more important than the history of all that came before, shouldn’t one study from them?
All that’s changed is the content; the means used to preserve that content, the rigor that was expected from a PhD. candidate, hollowed out the field. The move to preserve the knowledge of the past via specializiation in everything changed, via specialization, into a revolt against the past, an attempt to found new theories that would be worked out, in time, and hopefully re-engage the whole of it.
I know that sounds sketchy, because it doesn’t seem like one could lose sight of what is most important for oneself so easily. But consider that the professors who have destroyed the academy today are the direct pupils of those who trained under the previous system. They had to have gotten lost in the means, and thus lost the ends they were seeking.
Those of us who want to rebuild the academy, then, have to do something prior to both what PhD.’s old and new are doing. We have to show learning is important in the first place, that it holds up for its own sake, that the works of both past and present are wonderfully constructed and need to be appreciated on their own terms. Only then can we demand expertise, when we know why we want to be an expert in the first place.
- Professor William Ayers and the Corruption of the Academy
- 9/11/2001
- Puff-Piece Features about Philosophy Do the World No Good: Isn’t Philosophy about asking Tough Questions?
- Decline & Fall
- Paraphrase of Fr. James Schall’s “The Obsolescence of the Colleges: On the Paperless and Placeless Institution”
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The Academy has destroyed itself because it is arrogant. The academies have rotted from the inside with the bloated egos of the “enlightened.” It will take a massive purge to alleviate that kind of constapation!
How is your friend doing? What was the prognosis? I will pray for him. Also, how was the recital on all – souls day?
All I can say is to give her time. There are many things that can set some one off. It sounds to me like a very complicated situation. I suggest apologizing. Not for having said what you said, but for having offended her. You never intended to insult her.
She may be pushing you away for a number of reasons. Maybe your return in the area makes her feel uncomfortable – why I don’t know. Just relax and let her be angry. The truth will be revealed in due time. What ever you do don’t let it bother you too much. Women are fickle – at best.
If you don’t want to be subtle I can always have some of the tough bitches I know “rough” her up a bit. Heck, I could even slash one or all of her tires. What ever makes you feel good. Revenge isn’t wrong when you are the avenger!
I wouldn’t worry about her. Like I said there are many things that a person says when under stress, any stress. She’ll come around I am sure, and if not you will have come around. Yah, it sucks. But that’s love. If it didn’t hurt, if it wasn’t difficult, it wouldn’t be worth while. Just keep giving her time.
How about Donny being left as a sacrificial lamb? Those dembs are like sharks though; once they have the scent of blood in the water they start a feeding frenzy!
God, you never know when inspiration will strike. I know this is crappy, but i am starting to think better; clearer. That I what I like. I have been stuck thinking about a person that I should allow to fade, to just be a picture in my mind. Instead I allow them to live in my mind. Pathetic!!
My Love.
My Love has gone; sailed away.
But still I look every day,
For the sails, the ships,the coming change.
And every night alone I walked
To the places we once talked
The sounds, the sights, all seem rearranged.
Each night I lie alone and cold
For I realize my soul I had sold
To You, for nothing,there was no exchange.
I think some of what you say here is right- but often lots of the academy is actually doing very good work its just unnoticed. In my degree and PHD at Oxford and Camrbidge I’ve had to discuss tons of things from Islamic growth in the seventh century to the ideologicla roots of Nixon in the twentieth. Yes I focus on the seventeenth but I bring into it insights developed from all thsoe periods and from other subjects psychology et al and I don’t think I’m unique.
Ashok I’m just returning to your post- thanks very much for replying on my blog- so that everyone else can understand I thought I’d quote the key piece of criticism you launched against my post before on this blog
“Please explain and I’m not meaning to be hostile here, just advancing a counterfactual- how your training doesn’t fall squarely under the critique advanced in this post”
What I was trying to point out was that I was educated in what you are describing as the old way of thinking. The new way that you seem to be describing- ie getting out of the past to redescribe it, getting away from specialisation to redescribe it, hasn’t been my sense of the way that academic life works.
What I’ve found is more that as a young thinker I had a lot of breadth- neccessary to understand as that Prof said Cicero etc in order to understand humanism. I suppose the education I’ve been given has gone all the time from the general to the particular- not the other way round which I take is waht you are criticising about modern academia. But it might that I’ve misunderstood your post- which I’m interested in and think is good, I’m not attacking you either- I hope that makes sense of it a bit more- I’ll come back here to see if you’ve responded- or next time respond and then email me and I’ll come along and see- that way we can have the discussion on the same page.
By the way I like this blog- but I gather from it that someone connected to it isn’t having a great time so I hope things are going better.
One of the questions I was asked during my dissertation defense was why the British like cross-dressing so much. I would have loved to have been speaking about Bembo’s speech in Il Cortegiano instead… It is never a service to anyone in education to expect less from students than one would expect from oneself.