May
28
A Speech For all Graduates, Past and Present: Is Education a Good?
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for Nancy, Joe, David, Zach, every Sarah I know, Constance and a million others who I wanted to congratulate but didn’t have the right words at the time. This is only a speech: the thoughts in here are subject to being revised, and like some of my rhetoric, certain problems are purposely not being addressed because of the situation.
In high school - at Camden Catholic - Mr. D’Antonio used to say that education was good because “it’ll enhance your life.”
My relation to that statement has wavered - sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. I hate it mainly because it does not address to what degree education is necessary, and I don’t just mean “dealing with dumb people sucks.”
I mean this: if we’re in a job where we don’t learn, we’ll call the job “dead end” and leave it. If someone puts us in a situation where they openly refuse to teach us, we’ll take it as an affront to our dignity and walk away. And if we’re with a lover who doesn’t want to explore life, we will wonder how someone who can’t love life can love us.
However: exactly what good does education provide?
We can say it provides a “variety of goods,” and therefore “education will enhance your life” is a worthwhile start for getting a grip on this question. But we can’t leave it as a “variety of goods.” Something has to unite the things we consider Good, otherwise we can’t use the word “good” for each of those things. You can see this problem in the Platonic dialogue Meno: when asked by Socrates what virtue is, Meno responds that a man has this virtue, a child has another virtue, a woman has yet another, etc.
Socrates doesn’t waste any time saying he has been given a great number of virtues, but not told anything about why the word is used in the first place. “What is virtue” is an important question, one that might be answered fully.
The “form of the Good,” which would underlie all things that are good, is a trickier proposition. To use my field as an example: the end of the Platonic/Aristotlean political project is that the Good can be understood as devotion to virtue. Hence, the Good can be comprehended (at least incompletely) as a diversity, not as a unity: we Athenians respect the Spartans because of their devotion to courage, they respect us because of our desire for prudence, the want to manage our dominion responsibly. Both cities can live in peace, respecting each other without relativism.
I used to say that there is no Form of the Good, period. Professor Parens has rightly corrected me about this, not because I wasn’t onto something, but I think because the question has to be left open. I wanted to deny it outright so the Platonic/Aristotlean project could be more easily contrasted with Christianity. It’s not as simple a contrast as that, of course: the question, slightly more refined, could be whether the Form of the Good is “beyond being” and what that means.
For Christianity, what “beyond being” means is that God - the “Good” simply - is outside of Time entirely. The beginning of philosophy: being as a whole itself is “beyond being.” Being is truth, and all we can hope for are true opinions.
I don’t want to spend too much time on the relation between Being and the Good, or more properly, on the relation of Truth and the Good. It is clear Truth is necessary for the Good, and we can already see a very dark teaching in the very setup of the problem, given that the domain of “what is” extends far beyond “what is good.”
We’re back at square one: we’re back to education being necessary. Attempting to seek out how the Good relates to all things considered goods has failed; there is no simple relation. The entire value of your education and mine and everyone else’s relies on your answer to this question: did we, in attempting to see how we use the very term “good,” waste our time?
If we did, it is possible that useless, unnecessary endeavors can be cut from learning. In fact, what can happen is not unlike the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is given extra brains by a robot and told to enjoy the rest of the years he would be in school. Why did your striving uselessly for knowledge, in some cases, teach more than memorizing everything?
The answer lies in the distinction necessary to make any sense of our inquiry. The movement from “what is” to “what is good” is a narrowing, a refinement. We’re looking for something unique, something unlike anything else. Most things we encounter are useful; the useless we have put aside entirely, it isn’t clear we could even observe the useless if we wanted to.
Now the most unique thing, the ultimate good, would be wisdom simply: the contemplation and holding of Being.
Such a good would be useless. What does one do exactly with knowledge of all there is?
We move, then, from the useless to the useful to the useless finally. It is no coincidence that education mirrors the three stages of life given to us by the Sphinx’s riddle. Only - the Sphinx implied that man is somehow less than himself in his final stage of life. Socrates in both Xenophon and Plato continually reminds his audience he would be the worse for wear if allowed to continue living.
Both are dark jokes on a danger that an uninformed piety confronts us with: we want vindication from the next life, we want vindication from how we are remembered. What about being able to live with ourselves in this life? Christian teaching is that we will be remembered by God if we remember Him here: in other words, we can go confidently knowing we have done right. The Platonic/Aristotlean teaching is the same - we can know what is right, by starting from considerations of our life, our dignity, and our love. We can live without external vindication, for each true opinion mirrors the nature of Being not imperfectly, but truly, with an eye to something Being itself cannot grasp: the Good within.
May
23
Brief Incomplete Comment on Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus Rex)
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Adapted from an e-mail I sent recently; I am aware this doesn’t address Benardete’s “trapdoors,” it’s not meant to.
What is below is mostly from the essay “On Oedipus Tyrannus,” by Seth Benardete, in the book Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Leo Strauss. You can deduce how this reading came about by thinking through Teiresias and Creon. In rejecting the prophet as self-interested and attacking a member of his own family as only interested in overthrowing him, Oedipus demonstrates his impiety, his ‘hubris,’ his attempt to be more than the gods and everyone else. But why does Oedipus want to be more than the gods? Is he a bad guy?
The real irony of Oedipus Tyrannus is that he is a good guy, but his claim to rule is fundamentally corrupt. For the Greeks, kingship was lawful rule, where one became king because the law said so. Tyranny was rule by means of merit - one could be a tyrant merely because one is stronger and willing to use violence, or, in Oedipus’ case, one was stronger by putting the burdens of a people on himself.
Oedipus’ claim is that human rule alone is possible. Benardete wonders if Oedipus beings the play leaning on a stick, because of his initially swollen feet. If so, he solves the riddle of the Sphinx (you have to look this up, it’s outside the play) by merely recognizing two stages in his own life: the baby (walks on fours) and the old man (walks on 3, two legs and a cane) aren’t the answer to the riddle but distractions. This means Oedipus never really solves the riddle, for he never recognizes what man as man - man standing upright and seeing for himself - truly is. “Seeing” explains the end of the play: Oedipus sees truly when he finds out the awful truth, and thus chooses never to see any more.
The true awfulness is in what it takes to be a tyrant, to believe that we alone can rule each other. Piety and family (dependent on piety: all the Olympians are related) have to go if merit is the sole criterion for rule. So it makes sense metaphorically that Oedipus would marry his mother and kill his father - in a world where merit alone rules, and there are only pious guidelines preventing incest and parricide, why not? The world merit alone rules in is introduced by Oedipus himself.
Again, note that Oedipus is not wholly bad. If he is mistaken, he may be mistaken in a way that Sophocles himself might be in error. After all, Strauss says that in the Odyssey Hermes gives Odysseus a plant to avoid Circe’s spell. He doesn’t snap his fingers or just will Odysseus as stronger: rather, it seems, the gods are those who know how all things work. The Greek gods are human reason perfected. Oedipus, in not understanding the relation between man and seeing, cannot be reasonable. But if one truly sees, then Sophocles’ argument for piety and family as simple goods doesn’t quite hold up - it is because we see that we have questions about such things.
May
22
On Grace: Dickinson’s Poem #904 ("Had I not This, or This, I said…"), Revisited
Filed Under dickinson, poetry | Leave a Comment
I don’t want to take back what was said in the earlier discussion, but I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this poem and need to clarify something. Here’s the poem again:
Had I not This, or This, I said,
Appealing to Myself,
In moment of prosperity -
Inadequate - were Life -
“Thou hast not Me, nor Me” - it said,
In Moment of Reverse -
“And yet Thou art industrious -
No need - hadst Thou - of us?”
My need - was all I had - I said -
The need did not reduce -
Because the food - exterminate -
The hunger - does not cease -
But diligence - is sharper -
Proportioned to the Chance -
To feed upon the Retrograde -
Enfeebles - the Advance -
And here’s the problem: last time we talked about this I emphasized the advance of the intellect. “This, or This” is reduced to “need,” and that combined with “proportioned” (what measures proportion, pray tell?) implies that Mind emerges from our Earthly, random situation.
What I need to emphasize now is that this is not necessarily a good thing. Last night I was thinking about how blessed I am and how blessed those around me are. Many of those I know are free from want.
What we’ll typically say to others who have anything that resembles a grace in their life - i.e. they’re eating well, they have a place to live, etc. - is that they ought to make more of their life because they have what seems good to us.
“Judge not lest ye be judged” couldn’t be truer in correcting our want to reprimand others. I’ve been thinking of several people I know who have all sorts of blessings but need far more fundamental goods - they have food and shelter, but need a stable home life; they have work, but lack the protection of the law. They’re “diligent,” and most certainly not feeding upon the “Retrograde.” Why not?
We note the link between the 2nd and 4th stanzas. The “Moment of Reverse” seems to link up well with the term “Retrograde.” Given that the “need” is all our speaker has, a “need” that does not “reduce,” it looks like the objection of the second stanza is refuted decisively.
What was the objection of the second stanza? The personification of “it” gives a clue: the objection probably was that the speaker can live without love, as she is “industrious.” She’s not feeding upon the “Retrograde” of mourning her own situation; she’s moving ahead pained still.
And that brings us to what this entry is all about. It isn’t enough to have a good thing happen here or there in life. If our minds are rightly directed, while we will make more of the world, some goods here and there cannot suffice. One might say since wisdom is always incomplete for an individual, and wisdom is the greatest good, that the speaker’s need is only ironic: she has her reward.
But we know better when we look at “Enfeebles - the Advance.” Someone truly attuned to the Good wants this journey to end at some point, or at least wants to know where exactly they’re going. Wisdom may start from little things, but always involves contemplation of proper ends. It is strange how something resembling Providence has to lie at the root of anyone’s engagement with the world, it seems, and Dickinson has done a nice job of illustrating how dark a fact that may be: where we are may be truly beyond us.
May
20
- An excellent article that suggests our very notion of love has been marketed to us. Exactly why does an 8 year old need to know about relationships and break-ups? And what does it say about us that unchecked cliches make money over and over?
- OMG u kan n0t b srs! (I think that’s misspelled even in lolcat).
- This isn’t the greatest article, but the idea of “message discipline” makes my heart sink, esp. when one of the arguments of this blog is that a better politics comes from a people that can disagree articulately and thoughtfully.
May
18
Going. Back?
Filed Under education, personal | Leave a Comment
Every time I leave campus it feels like nothing will be the same again.
- I don’t mean that for the people I know here personally: they know me and I know them, and it will always be the same in a good way. But we’ll always be in touch whether “here” exists or not -
But one does relate to an institution. One is a product of one’s school, whether for good or ill. And that means the current state of the school and its graduates is of primary concern.
I could rant about the administration here and how they don’t “get it.” About how the core curriculum, our way of reading and communicating, is more endangered than ever. About how the faculty is marginalized for absolutely no reason except a few pennies. About the future of all of these young people, who went and got an education and are risking a lot for doing so - if they went to DeVry, they’d be more competitive in this economy, we all know that.
But I think the most telling thing concerns me. I’ve seen this brand of education work. Those who know and relate to me are affected by it whether they know what I know or not. And surely they’re better for it.
When I’m home, weirdly enough, the real work begins again. Yes, the most crucial parts of the dissertation are getting done, and the plan is sound. Yes, a million other things got done here. The real work is preserving the spirit of the school, making sure it is alive and well no matter where I am.
Part of me thinks of being on campus, despite the fact I spent most of my time reading and writing, as a vacation. That might be the most telling sign this school is in trouble: any place that can’t make the most of my talents is a place more concerned about itself than the people within (Note: I’m not blaming anyone exclusively for this. It’s just that I’ve seen places where opportunities open up for many. Here, the word “few” would be generous, and again, I don’t think that’s anyone’s fault). That’s the surest sign of a decline, one which is beyond my power to reverse.
What I wish for as I leave: that I can keep in touch with my friends here, and give appropriate credit through my speech and deeds to my professors and teachers. - I can’t afford to think about this institution in the abstract. -