Prologue
Like so many players in a traveling
company—the simile is from Nabokov, of course—wandering up hill and down dale, from
our lofty stage we look out over the audience as our various plays unfold. For it
is our purpose that those in attendance should be informed, moved, and inspired
by our dialogue and our play. To wax lyrical in Bard-ese: thus
do “we lay our scene, […which] is now the [two-part] traffic of our stage.”
Humanities, Crisis,
& Inhumanities
We assume the following to be the
case in the prima pars of this two-part
essay. First, that it is predominately those areas of academic study leading to
jobs and job placement that enjoy intellectual and financial institutional
preference. Generally speaking, fields in the Humanities do not lead to jobs. Second,
there are limited academic funding resources, all sources combined, and,
generally speaking, it is those fields of study that lead to empirically
measurable Results&Benefits (e.g., science/medicine, military, economics),
which will receive systematic funding from our universities; those same fields
that will, in turn, become sources of funding revenue for our universities.
Finally, modern cultural values, such as globalization, diversity, and the
like, must, in the final analysis, create societies that are fragmented and
relativistic (i.e., diversified), which will necessarily result in the
fragmentation of the classical or traditional (so-called elitizing) agenda that,
according to some, presently hovers over and around the study of Humanities.
These assumptions address, to some
degree at any rate, many of the ‘Problems in the Humanities’ that are commonly
advanced in the literature: that they are 1) intellectually marginalized in our
institutions; 2) that funding for Humanities programs is constantly threatened;
and 3) that there are tensions between classical or traditional Humanities, and
the more recent cultural and critical orientation of some Humanities programs.
Now questions of funding aside
(#2)—although they are certainly not unrelated to the argument of this essay—while
it may seem apparent that scholars engaged in the various disciplines of
Humanistic studies are desirous of harmonizing the Humanities, i.e., of
defining an overarching and common agenda for the study of Humanities in
America, it would seem equally obvious that most of these traditional attempts
will end in failure. It shall be our task to explain why this must be so.
Plato's Euthyphro: An
Ancient Drama of Religion and Politics
I propose
both as an explanation and a metaphor for at least some elements linked to
crisis in the Humanities, the various “FAILURES” that were experienced by the
great ethicist Socrates, and especially the striking failure so dramatically
represented by Plato in the Euthyphro.
Because frankly, and perhaps naively, I see little hope of success latterly where
Socrates so obviously failed formerly.
Using as
our springboard James Arieti’s rather original and certainly provocative
readings of the Platonic dialogues as drama (Interpreting Plato, Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), it would seem that
in the Euthyphro Plato stages for our
consideration the inevitably unproductive and entirely modern dialectic between
the flexible spirit of inquiry (Socrates) and the adamantine cocoon of
willfully ignorant belief (Euthyphro). The readers of the Euthyphro, because it is a dialogue in philosophy, are entitled to think
that an honest attempt is being made by the protagonists in the dialogue to
dis- or un-cover some truth concerning the discursive subject, which is traditionally
held to be piety and the gods. And yet we are not so fortunate in this case. For
as a work of independent philosophy the Euthyphro
is ultimately, and very obviously, inconclusive. Socrates is unable to bring
Euthyphro to ‘see’ his ignorance concerning the gods, which means that
Euthyphro will not, and if we may anticipate upon this young fellow’s future,
will probably never question the piety of his own suit against his father for
the wrongful death of his (Euthyphro’s) slave. Thus, in following out the
metaphor of our argument, Socrates’ failure to persuade the willfully ignorant
Euthyphro on the question of piety also foreshadows his soon to be demonstrated
inability to persuade the jury at his own trial for impiety, which will, in
turn, serve to confirm us in further concluding that the second charge Meletus
brings against Socrates during his trial (viz. corrupting the youth of Athens),
is highly implausible. For how could Socrates corrupt where he was so obviously
unable to persuade?
So at this point we need to step
back in an attempt to get Plato’s ‘big’ picture concerning the importance of
Socrates as a philosophical teacher, in order to understand how the successes
and failures of Socrates might apply to us today as we attempt to solve the
riddles brought to light by the various types of discourse with which the
Humanities engage. Because from a straight-forward reading of Plato’s Socratic
narratives, we are left to suppose that, in reality, Socrates had no more
general success in corrupting the minds of the Athenian youths than he had,
specifically, in getting Euthyphro to see the obvious errors in his thinking
about piety and the gods. Secondly, when read against the background of the Apology, Plato’s Euthyphro seems to problematize the specific futility of an inquiring
Socrates who is trying to reason with an ‘un-inquiring’ Euthyphro, which seems
perhaps to suggest the general futility of attempting to engage in honest
inquiry with anyone of faith. Indeed, at the end of the dramatic action the
audience is left wondering what good Socrates has really accomplished in the polis, and whether, in fact, we may not
conclude that his life was really, at least in terms of its philosophical
import, a series of failures— failure to find philosophical answers to
philosophical questions concerning piety and the gods, failure to encourage
Euthyphro to a clearer and more appropriate way of reasoning, failure to
persuade the jury of his innocence, failure finally either to teach, or even to
corrupt, the youth of Athens.
On this
reading, does not Plato lead us to the conclusion that genuine “Socratic” dialogue,
which should ideally lead us to convert intellectually to the ‘good life’ and
thereby transform us into wise men, is in fact futile when confronted with an
audience that is disposed neither to conversion nor to wisdom? And by metaphorical
extension, are we not guided toward the same conclusion of futility when we
consider that the same insurmountable obstacles that faced and finally crushed
Socrates, continue to face those who engage in the modern humanistic pursuits?
Now assuming the plausibility both
of our argument and of the metaphor, there are obviously a variety of possible
responses to the question of how the Humanities might position themselves
vis-à-vis changing times; but for the most part these responses are ultimately
unsatisfactory. There are, for example, metaphorical responses to our metaphor,
one of which might be derived from a hopefully optimistic reading of Plato’s Theaetetus. On this reading, for
example, there will inevitably be some searching, inquiring minds ‘out there’,
and we teachers of the Humanities must simply persevere for the sake of those few
who may one day come along, such as the humble Theaetetus, in their search for
truth-in-the-world. This hopeful optimism is ubiquitous in the Humanities, and
is reflected famously in Nietzsche’s bold epigraph to
the Antichrist: “Dies Buch gehört den
wenigsten. Vielleicht lebt selbst noch keiner von ihnen. (This Book belongs to
the very few. And it may well be that none of them are even alive yet.)”
However, if we actually and publically dare to formulate this elitizing
argument in our various Humanities disciplines, then we must surely also be
prepared to accept that, given the democratic accessibility generally underpinning
entrance to America’s universities, and the politically correct environment of
the modern intellectual and cultural arenas, the vast majority of our
universities, distaining this unseasonable discourse, will continue to consider
Humanities departments second class intellectual disciplines, and will continue
to throw toward the Humanities only the crumbs of financial support.
However,
leaving behind otherwise unsatisfactory “Theaetetian” rejoinders to my
Euthyphro-as-metaphor argument, there are also other, certainly more practical
interpretations of the role of the Humanities in the modern intellectual arena.
What if we assume, for example, that the type of dilemma Plato frames in the Euthyphro does not speak to the current
issues addressing the Humanities, and that the over-arching purpose of the
Humanistic discourse is in fact rather more practical than philosophical or
theoretical? An illustration of one such practical interpretation is the
archiving role of the Humanities as suggested by, inter alia, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451 or Ayn Rand’s Anthem. From
this point of view, it may be said that the broader picture of what we do in
the Humanities is to encompass, to archive, and to transmit all facets of human
experience and knowledge, both empirical and beyond.
But while
this is clearly an accurate depiction of what happens in the various
disciplines of Humanistic studies, nonetheless, to consider the Humanities
solely, or even only largely, under these auspices still fails to provide
adequate answers for the difficult questions concerning why the Humanities are
intellectually marginalized; why funding for Humanities programs is constantly
threatened; and why there are tensions between classical or traditional
Humanities & the more recent cultural & critical orientations of some
Humanities programs.
There are obviously philosophical
responses to our Euthyphro-as-metaphor argument. Pierre Hadot is
to a large
degree responsible in the modern generation for the rekindled interest in philosophy
as a servant to the philosophical life, as an exercise in correct thinking and
self-examination that helps us to transform our lives into philosophical art.
Following in the tradition of the Stoics, the early Christians, Ignatius of
Loyola, et al, Hadot suggests a “stoic” impetus that sees value in the practice
of a life lived philosophically, and argues that the philosophical practice of
life is persuasively reasonable because the life of the mind is the sole means
for the individual to arrive at happiness.
From
among the plurality of possible life-options that society, which is both
fragmented and relativistic, opens out before us, the philosophical life of the
mind must certainly be more desirable than the life of men lived as brute beasts.
This affirmation is anticipated even in the more traditional, albeit
impoverished interpretations of Plato’s Theaetetus,
where both the humble Theaetetus as well as the wise Socrates fail to present a
solution to the aporia concerning
human knowledge, but where Plato’s readers are left with the idea that the
dramatic action of life does not necessarily lie in abstractly understanding or
interpreting and resolving specific intellectual problems, but is manifest rather
in the simple philosophical practice of coming together to reason and to speak
about reality and the human experience. At the very least, goes this argument,
this process increases human understanding about the human condition. Yet this idealization
of human inquiry as the goal of the humanities, especially when the student of
ideas begins to understand that on this reading human inquiry does not lead
necessarily to increase of knowledge, still falls short of addressing
meaningfully the hard questions concerning the value of the humanities in
higher education.
While no interpretation of Plato’s dramatic Socrates may
provide a totally unequivocal description and response to problems presently
confronting the Humanities, and especially in the American Academy, there does
yet remain an American philosophical response to these difficult questions. One
persuasive response, which is at once meaningful, intellectually satisfying,
and relevant to the specifically American evolution of studies in the
Humanities, is the principle of education proposed by Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia. Unlike the philosophical exercise of wisdom traditionally embraced by
the western and profoundly Platonized intellectual tradition, in the new experiment
in self-governance called America, argues Jefferson, the people need to be
generally educated in order to watch over and safeguard the orderly outworking
of governance by the people—the people need to be educated in order to protect
against the corruption of political power into tyranny. “The most effectual means of preventing [the
perversion of power into tyranny]”, suggests Jefferson, are,
to
illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more
especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that
possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be
enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their
natural powers to defeat its purposes (Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526).
Quite distinct from the paideia of the Greeks, the type of
education to which Jefferson alludes constitutes in fact the bedrock of a
distinctly American liberal education, namely politics, history, and the study
of philosophy for virtue. Jefferson speaks of a People even more broadly
conceived, though, a People that is at once wise and honest, happy and
virtuous.
Laws
will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form
and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for
promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature has endowed with
genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and
able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow
citizens... (Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion
of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:527).
So, although the metaphors and reflections that have been
suggested in this essay do not necessarily elucidate the varied problematic of
Platonic interpretation, they yet serve the purpose of demonstrating, by a
consideration of Socrates’ dramatic dialogues, the insufficiencies of classical
western thought to solve the difficulties presently confronting humanistic studies.
This allows us to consider in perhaps a new light the radical educational
propositions of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and to envision a Jeffersonian
response to the questions concerning the role, value, and purpose of the study
of the Humanities in the American society. At the very least, such a response
must include the idea that all teachers of the Humanities must be engaged in
the struggle to ensure that humanistic studies represent, finally and
definitively, the core of all education in
America. Education must be liberal.
Jefferson did not conceive of an
America in which the study of the Human Sciences would be in crisis, and in
which the Humanities would have to skirmish with the “hard” sciences for
institutional approval and funding dollars. In present-day America, among the
very first subjects to be funded are the harder sciences, and among those to be
cut in times of budget deficit, subjects in the Humanities and the Arts. In
Jefferson’s vision of American, however, the education of the people does not
lie in the furtherance of the hard or social sciences; but in the general
improvement of the individual gatekeepers of democracy, which has always been
the interest and specific goal of the Humanities.
The value of science [i.e., general and liberal knowledge] to
a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds
of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it
inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations
foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and
happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive
taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with
their just weight. (Thomas Jefferson: On
the Book Duty, 1821).
To a very large
degree indeed, the continuity of a nation’s political, social, and cultural
heritage is established and guaranteed by the ties that bind students to their
teachers. So to enable a Jeffersonian vision, which strives after the
ongoing improvement of democracy’s gatekeepers, teachers of Humanities must
continue to argue and to militate for the study of those subjects that keep our
eyes riveted upon Power of all sorts, and, how much more, upon the subtle
permutations of power into tyranny. We need to study history, and politics,
civics and current events in order to keep before our eyes the political
institutions whereby Men define and govern themselves; and we need to study
foreign languages, philosophy, religions, mythologies and literatures, and all
the sciences in order to understand that it is through various and diverse
languages and “stories” that we as a people initially begin to frame, and then
to flesh out, our political and social institutions, which in turn become
reflections of the intellectual life of the American demos. Why do we do this?
Because, "[i]f the children are
untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in
their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good
education" (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818. FE 10:99).
Bibliography
·
Arieti, James A. 1991. Interpreting Plato. The Dialogues as Drama. MD:Rowman &
Littlefield Pubs.
·
Cornford, F.M. 1971. Principium Sapientiae. Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith
·
Guthrie, W.K.C. 1975. A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. IV. NY: Cambridge University
Press.
[This essay has been modified from its
original form, which was presented as part of a Panel Presentation at The
International Humanities Symposium held at Columbia University in 2007, with
the title: “Conversations and Conversions: Humanities in the State University.”
The complete Panel Presentation was published as "Skepticism,Stoicism, and the Jeffersonian Model" in The International Journal of the
Humanities, Vol. 5, No. 8, 2007. ]
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