NB: Skip this post if you feel like it. It's rambly.
Steve was kind enough to send an email my way in which he praised the St. John's education. He made the excellent point that one can, these days, be an expert in one's field while still having no understanding of the civilization on which that field is predicated. Biologists may not know philosophy; philosophers know just enough biology to get into trouble *coughpetersingercough*; and the great and astounding history of our sciences is related in simplified, poorly written books whilst eminently readable classics like Faraday's
Chemical History of a Candle or Euclid's
Elements languish.
This post is not, however, Johnny triumphalism. I want instead to explore the weaknesses of the St. John's experience. I am, of course, a bitter, partisan voice often choked with my own bile. But the Great Books program, as fine a paedagogical device as it is, has several immanent flaws.
It breeds generalists without real depth. It breeds elitism without bringing forth the elite. It breeds complacency in the face of real life and death, and an unexamined belief that the contemplative life is not only superior, but that the vita activa is corrupt and corrupting. It's this last quality that I want to examine most closely.
A certain fellow stalks the polis these days, declaring that all action is sinful. A sort of secular Jain, he has no advice to offer, only his criticism of any course taken. In his view, death by inanition is preferable to making an omelet, lest we break eggs.
The life of a spectator is an easy one, which is why so many of us choose it. But as distracting as this attitude is in political life, it is disastrous in the daily grind. And this attitude is fostered by the Great Books program.
Johnnies read a great number of Greek tragedies. We read Job, King Lear, and Anna Karenina. And I will claim right now that none of these works--not one--has ever helped me deal with the tragedies of my own life. Even the Greeks failed to capture the essence of the blind, murderous world we live in. I read Job on my wedding day, to calm myself. "At least I don't have boils," one can almost always say.
Instead of re-forging the bonds of humanity, reading these works let too many of us cast off those bonds, in exchange for pretend pathos, for the glib pleasure of sympathy with characters to whom we need offer neither charity nor concrete assistance. Instead of drawing us together, as I believe the tragedies must have drawn together the audiences before whom they were performed, the necessarily solitary act of reading and contemplating led me, at least, to a solitary existence.
I want to relate the most truly communal experience--not a feeling of friendship with individuals, but of being part of a collegium--I had at St. John's. It was the night before Winter Break began, and the college was showing
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and
It's a Wonderful Life. I went there with several friends of mine, and we found seats in the crowded hall.
I am a sucker for movies. I cheer every time the Death Star gets blown up. I tear up when Jim Craig rides down that hill in
The Man From Snowy River, and I think
Casablanca is the most romatic movie ever made. I make muffled shrieks when the chair is turned around in
Psycho. So it needs little thought to conclude that, by the end of
It's a Wonderful Life, I was blubbering.
But when the lights came up and I looked around, so was everyone else. The cynical, all-knowing group of college students had been transformed by what is (let us be honest) a sappy, sappy movie. Neither age nor sex was cause for exemption. Sitting next to each other, students hugged and wept.
I contrast this with the idiotic, sybaritic attitudes we most of us affected most of the time, and I conclude that some element of our education was missing. The Greek tragedies never united us in seminar, aghast at our own mortality, the way that movie did. For all the genius poured into the Great Books over millenia, not one of them can teach you how to deal with the death of a loved one. This lack would not make me quite so angry if it had not been so strongly implied that this could be taught.
A certain sort of clever person will learn to use their reading to distance themselves from anything that might affect them. They become adept at drawing parallels between life and reading, that they might reduce everything to a text, and themselves to critics. The critic's point of view, detached and near-omniscient, is a great temptation to those of us particularly susceptible to sloth. It requires no action.
I believe in an immutable, underlying reality. This belief occasionally makes me want to hit people by way of proselytization. It's difficult to refute a yop cha chirugi. I recognize this tactic as self-defeating, but that doesn't remove the temptation. The contemplative life implicitly denies those who act the right to define their own lives, by sitting in judgment on their actions.
It allows one a relaxed, superior attitude. When a friend is suffering, it's too easy for us to distance ourselves, not only emotionally but with regard to our Will, and transform the trouble into an intellectual problem. But for certain problems there is no solution. Death stands grinning at the end of every life, and all the philosophical practice in the world won't accustom you to that fact. It is a part of human nature to fear death, and to suffer as we watch the people we love die. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
I cannot adequately express my love for the people in my life who have died, let alone those who are still alive. I hope that they are gathered in the bosom of our ancestors. But that hope does nothing to alleviate the pain of death. A refusal to confront this pain in all our impotence is at the heart of the desire for a contemplative life. I assign psychological causes rarely, but this one I will stand behind.
So, having wandered far afield, to return: the St. John's education teaches a great deal of history, but does not and cannot make that history live in us. It offers what it claims are insights into the human condition, but what can also become barriers between us and the world. For every ten thousand would-be Socratics, there's not one that would share his cup.
I am cowardly in the face of suffering. It makes me want to turn inwards in fractal self-reflective thoughts. It is this tendency which is fed and nurtured at St. John's, despite the best efforts of tutors and faculty. Excellent in argument, useless in action.
Of course there are exceptions, and you mostly likely are one if you read this blog and are a Johnny (not, of course, due to any innate quality of this blog, but because I know most of you, and you are all wonderful. Hi!). St. John's does leave one in a position to gain real understanding and to make real changes in the world. But one must recognize when the time has come to act, and to act effectively. Too often we act out, trying not to accomplish anything, but to gratify ourselves emotionally.
