Of Interest to the Academic:
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," a book that electrified the debate about the extirpation of the so-called 'Great Books' canon in the American university in favor of a multi-cultural collocation of texts. The canon debate raged through the 90s, with some admirably self-righteous performances from politicians from both the right and left, like Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson who, on the Stanford campus in 1988, led a rally against a required Western civ course. The protest chant was, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture's got to go!"
A new essay on Bloom's fiery work and legacy by Rachel Donadio, editor of the New York Times Book Review, came out in the 9/16 issue. She traces the contours of the evolving debate over the liberal arts education, showing that it now has as much to do with a widespread concern over the decline in the number of liberal arts baccalaureates as about what a liberal arts major should be taught. I don't know if the numbers bear this out, but I will say that it seems obvious the perpetually increasing cost of higher education could discourage people from less lucrative majors.
But I think Donadio, like Bloom, does not separate two different subjects: the quality of the education of liberal arts majors, and the dissolution of the core curriculum offering survey courses for undergrads. She talks about the "invasion of politics" in the humanities, particularly the literature curriculum. But she also interviews Tony Judt, who speaks of undergrads fresh from high school who want broad survey courses that are not offered anymore. Louis Menand gives one of the more striking statements: "The big question for humanists is, How do we explain why what we do it important for people who aren't humanists? That's been really, really tough."
Bloom focused mainly on liberal arts majors, saying they no longer were intellectually curious; were being taught politically correct, but not enlightening texts; were the products of divorce, which made them cynical but less questioning; and were more interested in shallow but accessible cultural forms like movies and rock. Also, apparently the loosening of sexual mores deflated the desire to learn in some way (by apparently removing the 'erotic'--according to Plato, mind you--mystery of and longing for knowledge).
All of this may or may not be or have been true, but what is important, I think, is demanding a basic (Great Books) foundation for all students, not just liberal arts majors. This means reinstating the core curriculum. In order to back up this assertion, I need to 1) Prove the worth of the humanities in general and 2) Prove the worth of the Great Books as the best embodiment of the humanities.
I will allow Tolstoy to give us the reason why the humanities are important: "Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: 'What should we do? How shall we live?'" In other words, science (and I may add business), is only good as a means to an end, as the tool of political and social action. But science cannot give us the reason for doing anything; it cannot tell us how to live as a nation or as individuals. Our political and social institutions, as well as our lives, must run smoothly, with as little disturbance from nature as possible. This is science's function. But we must know, as individuals, how to make decisions. This requires us to have an ethical framework for evaluating life. The richer, the more well-considered this framework, the better our decisions as individuals, and the better our political and social institutions, will be. For the ends of institutions are determined by individuals, and are ultimately moral ends. Some are content with living by the values of their parents, but for those who want to make up their own minds, the only way to attain an Archimedean point from which a person can examine his own values critically is education.
The humanities are the best source of this ethical framework of life. This is because, unlike religious sources, the humanities do not present one, immutable answer to all ethical problems. Reading the Great Books of history challenges you to consider critically many different moral systems. Similarly, in life we are presented with greatly varying alternatives when called upon to act, and must choose the one we consider the best. The power to critically examine alternatives, as well as the moral criteria for choosing a certain way to act, are provided by the humanities. And in a democracy, where everyone needs to make moral judgments not just for themselves but for the nation, these abilities are absolutely critical. I need hardly argue with those who claim that novels or histories do not, like books of moral philosophy, encourage people to weigh differing moral choices. Most fictional works, from Sense and Sensibility to The Little Engine That Could, hinge upon some moral crisis depicted with varying degrees of subtlety. And as Barbara Tuchman said, "To take no sides in history would be as false as to take no sides in life." Because all people, not just liberal arts majors, must be moral agents, it is only right that all students should be required to take a survey course in the humanities.
Now, as to the importance of the Great Books over more recent works by women or minorities, I make the bold claim that by and large the so called Great Texts--The Bible, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Ethics, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Kant's ethics, Jane Austen, the list goes on--address human questions on a far deeper level than many of the more recent writers, both black and white, both male and female. This is not necessarily because the writers of old were "better." They had a different goal when setting out to write; a grander vision of the purpose of literature. What I mean by this is that writers of today, especially those that address gender and racial issues but not exclusively these, strive to develop an original voice. They want to contribute to the plurality of distinct expressions. This is, by far, their greatest preoccupation. This is noble. But writers of old, and not just Western ones, wrote as if they were writing for mankind, or at least for a civilization. This may be an arrogant presumption, but its fruits cannot be denied. Dante knew he was writing the greatest poem in the Italian language. Shakespeare wanted to present the problems of mankind, conflicts of ideas and personalities with universal resonance. The great writers had not a more ambitious, but certainly a more panoramic approach to literature. Nevertheless, there are some modern writers who should be taught because they are great, and even some modern writers who are purely interesting for their ethnic or sex "identity" value. But this value should not be a criterion for deciding what books should be taught to all students in a core curriculum. And since by and large nothing can replace the older texts in their deep, rich illumination of the fundamental problems that plague all human beings, including poverty (look at the Bible, Aristotle's Ethics, Shakespeare...) and ethnicity (Merchant of Venice and Othello, anyone?), they cannot and should not be replaced.
Some may complain that my given reason for the value of the humanities is too utilitarian, that it vulgarizes the very books I'm defending. I couldn't disagree more. I'm not saying that these books are didactic (although the Bible, if not approached as a work of literature, is) or sententious or morally simplistic. In fact, they are valuable precisely because they are morally interrogative, not prescriptive. They make us think. This is not vulgar. But it is true that I don't need everyone to appreciate the beauty of Homer's verse or Plato's logical flights of fancy. I want them to derive from the books a framework for considering the problems of human life, and a suggestion of the answers.
I think my ethical argument applies for liberal arts majors as well as general survey courses, although to a lesser degree in some cases. I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a full argument about the value of every branch of humanities study.
As for Allan Bloom's analysis, I think his incisiveness was marred by the superfluous elements he was ideologically inclined to include. The loosening of sexual mores has nothing to do with the thirst for knowledge. Many of the great Greek thinkers were not exactly models of sobriety and abstemiousness. Judging from his sonnets, Shakespeare had a penchant for letting his cod out of his piece and had few scruples about it. Above all, Homer's world-view exalts pleasure and wealth. There are innumerable other examples of sexually active, even perverse intellectuals and artists who had few moral qualms about their own sex lives. Although the legacy of the Victorian era causes us to believe sexual mores were never so indulgent as in our own time, in fact in many parts of the world at many times sexuality has been as open as it is now.
That the divorce rate produces less inquisitive liberal arts students is also an entirely conjectural claim. I believe divorces, which indeed have increased over the years, have a variable affect on children, which can't be adequately summed up by pat generalizations, at least ones asserted without study of the subject. The same goes for all "alternative" family arrangements.
I believe that liberal arts majors should be free to pursue their interest in ethnic studies or gay literature or whatever, as long as the atmosphere of study is not politicized, as Allan Bloom lamented. I don't think the question is "Great Books or Race Books?" If liberal arts majors were required to take two years of core, introducing them to the Great Books, I have no problem with them moving on to more esoteric pursuits. In fact, American literature, which does not have a well-established canon, can only be improved by the inclusion of works by minorities and women. After all, African-Americans gave us our only uniquely American music, jazz, and most of what distinguishes our language from England's. It is only natural, with such an accomplished history despite everything, that they should turn out to give the most harrowing, insightful and original accounts of American life in literature as well.
But I'm not going to mince words. To be a better human being, a person has to read the Great Books. I have no problem adding Confucius or some other Eastern thinker (in fact I think a Hindu text would be very good). I'm not saying that you can't improve yourself by other means, but you must have recourse to something that engages you as a human being, and not as a black woman, a gay man, or whatever. I hope that we haven't reached the point where we cannot acknowledge that human beings all have similar ends, although we disagree about the means.
4 comments:
You observe that the "writers of old had a different goal when setting out to write; a grander vision of the purpose of literature." While this conclusion is founded on a powerful observation, it requires some clarification. In most humanities classes, the new works we read are written for intellectuals, by intellectuals. But most of the classics you mention (Homer and Shakespeare are good examples) were written for popular audiences! Only after several centuries have they become the exclusive terrain of the classroom. So maybe the difference you identify is less between old and new art than between art intended for intellectuals and art intended for popular audience. It would come as no surprise that popular art seems "grander"--intellectuals tend to value originality over grandeur.
So if we compare the great popular art from our time to the classics we read in the humanities, we might find the artists' goals more similar. More films than books come to mind: the Godfather trilogy is a personal favorite. In music I think of the Beatles. These works are scoffed at in university classrooms as "shallow," but in 500 or 1000 years they may be considered the great art of the 20th century.
aaron-first and foremost, thank you for taking the time to read my post. As for your observation that older works were written for mass audiences, I must disagree with you. Although you are right to a certain extent that Shakespeare, Homer, and Dante were written for mass audiences, other great works that I mentioned, including Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, Kant, etc, were written for a select coterie of academics or people in the political and social elite. Aristotle was preaching to the choir in his ethics, for example, when he said that certain virtues, such as magnanimity, were greater than mere generosity and could only be practiced by the rich. Nevertheless, I feel that his works are some of the great books of Western civilization. Now, the problem is there are so many great works that it's difficult to define a curriculum.
Also, it's clear that at least in Shakespeare's case, and probably in Dante's, the books operate on many different levels. There are things in it that would appeal to the theatre-going masses, but there are also things that clearly would have gone over their heads.
As for your use of the Beatles as an example, I believe that actually many academics view them as outstanding musicians. Of course when you talk about "depth" or "value" in music it is entirely different from books. The Godfather trilogy, on the other hand, I don't really know about.
I think the intellectual/non-intellectual distinction you're making may not be the most useful when choosing your categories. After all, it's like saying intellectuals have had nothing to say to people. But Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Copernicus, Einstein...the list goes on. These people have created the very texture of our lives.
Fair enough. So allow me to scratch the bipolar distinction between "intellectuals" and "masses," and instead make a broader statement: older works seem to have a "grander" or "panoramic" appeal partly because they're old.
For example, in 17th century England "Paradise Lost" was a deeply political work--Milton himself worked for Oliver Cromwell, and produced a great deal of political writing. It was also a racial work: Milton's stated ambition was to write the poem that would be for England what Homer was for Greece and Virgil for Italy. (He had been planning since the 1640s to write an epic poem based on Arthurian legend, an authentically English source, but needless to say he switched subjects.)
As time has passed, the racial and political pressures of 17th century England have faded while the fundamental human aspects of "Paradise Lost" have not. In 2007, while we can still read "Paradise Lost" in the context of 17th century English politics, we can also divorce it completely from that context and read it as a book for all mankind. But we can do this partly because it's been over 300 years since Cromwell's revolution.
Books have a way of shedding their politics (and racial specificities) across the centuries. Today's "Race Books" might be considered "Great Books" in a few hundred years. Most works are political/racial in their own time, including many that claim not to be. That's no basis to exclude them from our canon, even if it does make us feel that their scope is not as broad as that of the old classics.
All of that said, I actually agree quite strongly with your general thesis and conclusion: "To be a better human being, a person has to read the Great Books." The same classical canon, even as it grows and evolves, has been the centerpiece of Western culture for all of history. You have to read those books. They've been around too long and influenced too much to be substituted for.
I also agree that it's sad to see people identifying according to race or sexual orientation before identifying as human beings. (Every time I see a gay newspaper for mainstream issues I wonder about this. Isn't the war in Iraq the same problem no matter who or what you fuck?) Needless to say a lot of conflict could be avoided if people spent the energy on what we share that we now spend on what we don't.
Well, I would agree with you partly there. I can't deny that most great books had a very parochial, even polemical value for contemporaries. That is certainly true of Milton, as you point out, and probably true of Homer, of St. Augustine's "The City of God" without a doubt, about Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica..." etc, etc. However, I feel that while many read those works for their political value, many even at that time saw the great ambition of these works in addressing fundamental human problems. That is why "City of God" and "Summa Theologica" became part of the Catholic intellectual arsenal for all time, despite being created under specific political and social circumstances. People recognized the great lasting value and scope of these works even in their own time. The same goes for Shakespeare. What is "The Tempest" but an allegory of Europe's expansion into the New World? But why does it still work today? He knew the problems arising from a specific instance are general problems. I'm not so sure all of today's writers know this. In seeking to find the unique voice of a character, they sometimes neglect the generalizable.
I can't, of course, predict whether some books will be considered great in the next one hundred or two hundred years. I don't think there's anything wrong with updating the canon. I just think that we can't do it at the expense of jettisoning the older books. So much of our culture is built on these works, it isn't even possible to understand our culture and literature today without looking at the books of the past. That's another, related ethical aspect of reading the great books: you get to know yourself better. This helps you, again, judge your own values from a distance. We can only understand ourselves in the bright light of Western tradition.
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