Dear Nick, Roger and Group,
While contemplating the thoughts you express below, I came across this
article in the New York Times. It spoke to me about the timelessness of
core values expressed in our literary heritage over the millennia and of
their place in the education curriculum today
I hesitate to copy the entire article for fear of infringing copyright laws
(if someone could provide a guideline on this I would be grateful). The link
to the article will remain live for a day or so before the complete article
is archived. (If you miss it and are interested – I have the article I could
send privately)
Translating Virgil's Epic Poem of Empire By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: October 30, 2006
HYPERLINK
"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/books/30fagl.html?em&ex=1162443600&en=2a1
82b8438f2e75a&ei=5087%0A"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/books/30fagl.html
?em&ex=1162443600&en=2a182b8438f2e75a&ei=5087%0A
The article is about the recent release of Robert Fagles’s new English
translation of “The Aeneid” (Viking), ‘in which that ancient war horse
emerges as a work of surpassing beauty, feeling and even relevance,
everything that teachers used to say it was.’
Key quotes:
“I usually try not to ride the horse of relevance very hard,” Mr. Fagles
said recently at his home near Princeton University, from which he recently
retired, after teaching comparative literature for more than 40 years. “My
feeling is that if something is timeless, then it will also be timely.”
‘ But another reason for the success of the Fagles translations is that
there turned out to be a far greater audience for them than either the
author or the publisher had anticipated. “I was very surprised,” Mr. Fagles
said, “because I’m an academic, and a lot of hand wringing goes on in the
academy about the illiteracy of the public. The great joy of this work was
to discover that there is in fact a great number of very intelligent,
hardworking readers out there.”
“Every now and then you pick up a book, whether it’s Homer or Dante or
whatever,” he said, “and you read something and think, ‘My God, that’s such
a perfect image of me.’ When I read that passage, it wasn’t just that I
could identify with the situation, but that the text took that situation and
made it universal.”
‘The great challenge, he said, was to master the two voices of “The Aeneid”:
the stately public voice, the one that critics of Virgil used to say was
just propaganda for Augustus, and the private voice of Aeneas’s personal
sorrow. “The modern tendency is to hear one voice to the exclusion of the
other,” he explained. “We generally think of the public voice as the voice
of betrayal, and the private voice as the only place where truth resides.
But the truth in Virgil is more complicated than that, and you need to hear
both’
Best wishes
Cherryl
_____
From: Group concerned that academia should seek and promote wisdom
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nicholas Maxwell
Sent: 29 October 2006 11:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On the issue of Wisdom Inquiry
Dear Roger,
On the other hand we ought, surely, to hold that what is genuinely of value
is out there, actually and potentially, in the world, whatever anyone may
think of the matter - and it is important that we adopt that value-realist
viewpoint, since otherwise it is not clear what learning to realize what is
of value can amount to. We ought to be arguing against the widely held and
corrosive views of value-relativism and value-subjectivism - which more or
less cancel the very possibility of learning about what is of value in life.
Indeed, if value-realism is false, nothing in reality is of value.
There is a tendency, perhaps, to think there are just two positions about
what is of value: (1) dogmatic objectivism and (2) relativism (or
subjectivism). (1) says "What is of value is objective; we know what it is,
and if you don't agree with us, we will force you to agree with us". (2)
says "what is of value is what the individual decides for himself or herself
(or what a given culture decides)". Under the impression one has to choose
either (1) or (2), many plump for (2).
(2) objects to the "objectivism" (or realism) of (1). But what is wrong
with (1) is the dogmatism, not the objectivism. If anything (2)
strengthens the dogmatism. Given (1), it makes sense to say one is wrong
(even if one is convinced one is right); given (2) it doesn't even make
sense to say one is wrong. There is, in short a third view, namely (3)
conjectural objectivism: "what is of value is out there in the world for us
to discover, but no one has authoritative, indubitable knowledge of what is
of value; we all can only conjecture as to what is of value; some
conjectures are, no doubt, better than others, but we all, nevertheless,
have things to learn (form each other, from experience) about what is of
value". (3) is vastly preferable to (1) or (2). And we Friends of Wisdom,
in that we take learning what is of value in life and how it is to be
realized to be of fundamental importance, should plump for (3) - undogmatic
value-realism. We should be able to take the view that we live immersed in
an ocean of value, extraordinarily rich and diverse, of which any individual
has only a minute glimpse, all our ideas about what is of value being
fallible, there nevertheless being the very real possibility of learning -
learning to see, to enjoy, to help sustain, to help create.
Best wishes,
Nick
HYPERLINK "http://www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk"www.nick-maxwell.demon.co.uk
Poor Socrates was forced to drink poison for criticising authorities; to
teach this method to students and get everyone criticising everything must
eventually end up with anarchy (I think).
The problem with grading is that there needs to be an authority saying
what's right and what's wrong. Then if this authority could be wrong,
there needs to be those who are Socratic in criticising.
There are lots of different points-of-view. There are religious groups that
want to impose their point-of-view on Society. But Society is composed of
these many groups and other types.
It is difficult to judge one point-of-view against another.
On the emotive issue of child abuse, Society has had different beliefs as to
what was acceptable. For instance in the Dickensian period (Victorian) it
was acceptable to send orphans up chimneys to clean them, often they died;
opinions changed and such a thing is now considered child abuse. Different
societies will hold different opinions as to acceptable behaviour.
>>Can we stop pretending that we do not need to make judgments about
difficult issues, despite our fallibilities and the likelihood that many of
our judgments may, after all, turn out to be wrong.
It is part of our nature to try to make judgements on issues. As to what
will be considered right or wrong, opinions will vary over the years, and
society will be based upon these different opinions which can reverse the
beliefs of the past; so what is considered wrong will continually change.
Roger
----- Original Message -----
From: "John H Spencer" <HYPERLINK "mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]>
To: <HYPERLINK
"mailto:[log in to unmask]"[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: On the issue of Wisdom Inquiry
Karl and others are missing important distinctions. True enough, as
Socrates long ago showed us, Wisdom cannot be taught. And I agree with
Karl that the purpose of wisdom inquiry is to ‘teach students how to learn
for themselves, how to challenge and criticise authority, how to
participate in their own educational process, how to develop their
characters, and how to discover for themselves what is of value for the
enhancement of the quality and meaning of life.’ But I completely disagree
with the notion that there should be no grades and that just going though
the motions of attempting to defend a thesis is enough to get a PhD. I
think such a proposal is as frightening as it is self-contradictory, which
I will explain. Do we want surgeons who really understand how to perform
surgery, pilots who really know how to fly planes, and so on? Surely we
do. You do not want me to perform surgery on you or to fly your plane,
because I am not trained in either profession. If I could just show up for
a class whenever I wanted and not be graded or assessed and then still be
able to be employed as a surgeon or pilot, clearly that could be
disastrous. Thus, here is the first problem, which requires a proper
distinction between wisdom and technical knowledge. Perhaps it is unwise
to grade people according to their level of wisdom, but we must grade
people according to their level of technical competence, whether in
medicine, aeronautics, or logic etc. These distinctions between wisdom and
technical knowledge require finer tuning, but the main point should be
clear. Learning about oneself is one of the most important things we can
do (wisdom based inquiry) but it is also important to learn technical arts
(which require clear assessments). I have already mentioned to the list
that the University of Philosophical Research has successfully integrated
both approaches. If the FoW want to develop an educational institute, then
we will have to focus on wisdom based inquiry or technical knowledge or
integrate them both.
The second problem concerns self-contradiction. If Roger, for example,
thinks that we should grade students and Karl thinks we should not, then
Karl believes that his own ideas are better than Roger’s, which implies
that Karl would necessarily judge himself to be wiser than Rogers, at
least so far as future educational development is concerned. But, Karl has
stated that no one can judge who is better or wiser etc, and so Karl
cannot say that his ideas are better or wiser than Roger’s or anybody’s.
Thus, Karl cannot attack the current educational system’s emphasis on high
grades and careers etc because such an attack requires making a judgment,
in effect a grading, and he places his own ideas above the conventional
ones. But he cannot both say that we cannot make such judgments AND yet
make such judgments. This is the problem with holding a relativist
position. If relativism is true, then everything is just as true and just
as false as anything else. But, relativism does not equal pluralism.
Pluralism allows for many voices to be heard and to be given equal
consideration, although we still must judge which ones are better. Karl
sent an email about the horrific child abuse around the world, but a
relativist cannot really condemn such horrors, only someone who really
believes that it is REALLY wrong can consistently say that child abuse in
all forms everywhere is wrong. But only a realist can say that, someone
who is not afraid to make a judgment and provide reasoned arguments to
defend it. There will always be a difficult dialectal tension between
differing ideas and desires etc, but refusing to make distinctions and
judgments is no way to deal with the inherent challenges. Worse still is
pretending not to value distinctions yet making them yourself about
others. A relativist who refuses to make distinctions cannot disagree with
me, so, if you disagree with me, if you really think I am wrong about one
or all my points (or correct), then you are being a realist. And it is
only with someone who admits that there is truth outside of relativized
context that you can have a good argument. If truth is nothing but context-
dependent convention, then there is no way to say that child abuse is
really wrong if it is an accepted, prevalent practice in a particular
society. Can we stop pretending that we do not need to make judgments
about difficult issues, despite our fallibilities and the likelihood that
many of our judgments may, after all, turn out to be wrong.
John
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