Welcome Instapundit Readers!!
When I graduated from college, I was determined to pursue a Ph.D in Comparative Literature, hoping to expose myself to the best of European & American literature so that I might teach students to appreciate great books where they could find insights to guild them in their lives’ journeys. Not only that, I hoped to write about literature, showing how those great writers of the past addressed themes that we confront in our lives today.
In short, I saw the profession of university teaching as one where a scholar would help students relate literature to their own lives. These works would, I hoped, remind students that there is more to life, to quote my favorite poet, than “getting and spending.” They would see the study of literature as a life-long avocation, something to pursue alongside their professional endeavors.
I abandoned my study of literature for a great variety of reasons, notably because I became increasingly aware that graduate programs in the humanities were increasingly replacing study of the great works or literature themselves with a focus on criticism. Professors of literature scoffed at the notion that the books under study were any more than texts, with some even dismissing the notion of their greatness.
Just over three years ago, I decided to study mythology at Pacifica Graduate Institute because that quirky program seemed less focused on criticism and more devoted to studying ancient stories and rituals and considering their real-world meaning. Indeed, as I begin work on my dissertation, I intend to explore how understanding the role of the goddess Athena in the lives of Greek heroes can help men realize the importance of the non-sexual feminine in their own lives.
Given this appreciation of literature and myth, this belief that this great stories can help us lead rich and more fulfilling lives, it’s no wonder I ordered Anthony Kronman‘s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life soon after reading upon it on Instapundit. The very title encapsulated the primary reasons behind the decision I made not to pursue a Ph.D. in Literature.
When I received the book, I was delighted to discover that, like yours truly, Kronman is a graduate of America’s finest liberal arts college. While an undergraduate he too had a professor who led animated discussions where they considered important questions about life. But, as he pursued his own career in academia, as a professor and dean at Yale Law School, he found the question of life’s meaning
exiled from the humanities, first as a result of the growing authority of the modern research ideal and then on account of the culture of political correctness that has undermined the legitimacy of the question itself and the authority of humanity’s teachers to ask it. I have felt puzzlement and anger at the easy sweeping aside of values that seem to me so obvious and important. And watching these developments, I have been moved to wonder about their causes and consequences and the likelihood of a cure.
In his book, he explores just that. And I found myself nodding my head in agreement with many of his observations. While coming from a different political background than I (he had volunteered for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society in college; I had served as state president of the College Republicans), he had reached the same conclusion about the state of the humanities in colleges and universities as had I.
Proof that the humanities can serve to bring together people with different political views, even different backgrounds as they remind us of our common humanity.
After diagnosing the problem, that humanities professors no longer see their various disciplines as concerned with the meaning of life, Kronman looks to the history of post-secondary education in America to find its source. While professors were once jacks of all trades, able to teach a great variety of classes in a number of disciplines, today’s college and university teachers have become increasingly specialized, with little ability to teach outside their narrow field of interest. As the same time, a set curriculum has evolved into a smorgasbord.
He shows how secular humanism replaced more religious ideas of instruction with the research ideal. And with the research ideal came an end of the notion of the humanities as initiating a student into a great “conversation that is always alive, where every participant who has ever joined it is still actively engaged, and to which each new generation . . . is introduced.” Devoted to their particular field of expertise, professors were no longer interested in considering the question of what living is for. Their narrow focus replaced a broad interest in themes common to a great variety of works from any number of eras served to “undermine the unique authority they once enjoyed as guides to the meaning of life.”
Another force would join the research ideal in undermining that authority, political correctness. With its concomitant multiculturalism, political correctness has made it increasingly difficult for “students to accept the notion of a common human solidarity that transcends the experience of the particular group to which they belong.” Kronman regrets that:
The sad result of the humanities’ use of racial and gender diversity as a criterion for the selection of texts and teaching methods has therefore been to make it harder to pursue the question of life’s meaning in the only discipline in which there is still any chance of asking it.
And I would note that some of the works selected so that diversity may also include sexual orientation seem to have been chosen not to show how, despite our differences, gay and lesbian people still confront some of the same issues as do our straight peers, but instead focus on the most marginal aspects of gay culture, written more often than not by the most angry and unhappy homosexuals.
Their inclusion in the curriculum seems designed to please the most radical of gay activists, rather than directed to offering students a balanced perspective of gay life, allowing straight students to see that gay people face the same struggles as do they and giving gay people the resources to see our struggles in terms of the very issues with which men and women have wrestled since our ancestors first expressed themselves in words.
For example, his observation that “[h]uman sexual desire . . . has an element of fantasy that distinguishes it from the thoughtless sexual appetites of other animals” applies to gay people as well as straight people.
Finally, Kronman reminds us in of the need for spirit in a age of science. Our numerous technological advances do indeed improve our material condition, but they leave us empty, failing to fulfill the spiritual longings of our age, indeed, would fail to fulfill the spiritual longings of any age. As the humanities no longer even pretend to offer that fulfillment, fundamentalist religious institutions, churches and synagogues, are filling the void. These “movements all propose a common cure: the restoration of God to His rightful place, and the demotion of man who has usurped it.”
Kronman faults “cosmopolitan observers” from deriding and scorning these movements:
But their smugness prevents them from grasping the source and magnitude of the crisis of meaning these religious movements address, and from seeing that it is a crisis in which they too are caught, along with those whose spiritual yearnings they mock.
Had humanities professors not undermined the importance of the ideas inherent in the works studied in their own disciplines, students might not need turn to fundamentalist churches to consider the fundamental questions of living.
Kronman believes that a “revival of the humanities” would allow students (and presumably professors themselves):
. . . to reclaim their commitment to the human spirit without the dogmatic assumptions that religion demands. It would give them a platform from which to launch a vigorous and spiritually serious counteroffensive against the fundamentalist movements of our day, which at the moment represent the only serious response to the crisis of meaning whose pervasive presence in our technological civilization makes itself manifest in the debates about religion and science that stir such passions today.
Lacking this commitment, humanities departments lose their importance in the life of colleges and universities and to the lives of those who study there.
There is much more that I could say about this book, indeed, much about its importance to gay people, how a true study of the humanities can benefit us and improve our social standing and how the current study of the humanities, while designed to include us, in some ways serves to perpetuate our isolation. But, I realize I have already gone on longer than I had intended when I set out to write this piece.
Even so, I keep finding passages that I had meant to quote. I have flagged them for a potential followup piece for I do believe this book merits further consideration–and not merely because it addresses an issue with which I have wrestled many times over the past two decades, how to promote a serious study of the desires, the questions the conflicts which confront the heroes of myth and legend and the characters in great works of literature so they may inspire us in our everyday lives. And to consider the meaning of the images of the visual arts and poetry. And he ideas in philosophy.
Kronman offers an important book which should be mandatory reading for every professor of humanities at every post-secondary institution in this country. Hopefully, this book will cause them to ask why it is they have chosen a profession which requires them to teach literature, art and ideas to future bankers, lawyers, doctors, politicians and other professionals to whose careers, the liberal arts seem irrelevant.
At times, Kronman can be a bit long-winded. And at times, he repeats himself overmuch, particularly in the middle three chapters. For those not much interested in the history of the American university, I would recommend skimming the second and third chapters.
Despite its flaws, it is an excellent book — and an important one. In age where every new day seems to bring a new scientific breakthrough, a new technological advance, we could all benefit from confronting the great questions of life, ideas explored in mythology and in great works of literature. For as we wrestle with these ideas, we may wonder why with scientific knowledge “greater than ever before,” earlier ages, in the view of Anthony Kronman (and this blogger), “knew more about humanity than we do.”
Reading his book could serve as the first step to recapturing that knowledge.
– B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)
Comparative literature professors, out of the so-called cultured classes, are some of the very worst examples of human beings Western Civilization has produced in recent decades.
The problem is worse, more entrenched and vicious, than your tone and exposition indicates.
Related:
“Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders” (in Sex, Art, and American Culture) Camille Paglia
Who Killed Homer? Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath
Another part of the equation is that religious texts have been anathema to college programs, and the ‘Meaning of Life’ is at the heart of the Torah, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other religious texts.
If there is no God, then there is no purpose to life, except to indulge and reproduce. All human life begins as a clump of cells and ends as a few kilograms of rotting meat. Aspiration to any higher level of meaning is pointless.
The home library of today is significantly different from fifty years ago. There is no shelf of The Harvard Classics. The Great Books set by Britannica is missing. The sets of Hugo, Dickens, etc. can not be found.
The whole world of publishing has been turned on its head. The great publishing houses no longer carry clout. There are no well known editors guiding promising writers along. Success depends on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders pre-orders. The quirky local bookstore has all but disappeared.
We are absorbed with ourselves and our times. Writing has become sociological in a Bernstein and Woodward sort of way. In the process, the theme has been traded for theatrics.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing and we will rediscover the classics. But I don’t think it will happen so long as we are anti-religion, self hating and suspicious of Western dead white men.
Got to feed your brain on your own. The moment the French Dept librarian warned me I’d probably never be assigned Madame Bovary, I knew I’d be at war with the academiklatura for the rest of my life.
Academe is even at war against language, the substrate with which ideas are expressed. When they made me rewrite my thesis because I’d used active voice instead of passive voice, and said “I” instead of “this observer”, I knew a scholarly life was not for me.
I think we agree on the symptoms, just not the causes. I agree that we have tossed out the traditional literary canon. We don’t even really learn history any more. We learn theories about history and political ideas about literature. I’m glad my education was in the backwater of East Texas and Arkansas and we were mostly behind the times on these things. But then I also took it upon myself to read many of the classics, knowing that I would not learn everything I needed to know in the classroom.
I think there’s another reason for this, however. The major programs in colleges and universities are there to prepare people for professional careers. No one making the decisions sees the arts, literature and history studies as being relevant to a career in business, medicine or law. So those programs are left alone to get farther and farther away. And yes they are often run by people way off the charts to the loony left.
I saw a curriculum once based on reading the great works of history and literature across four years of education. I thought that was an amazing idea. Does any school actually do this?
As for religion, while I think comparative religious studies are useful in understanding the world we live in, I think that the search for finding truth in the meaning of life is one of self-discovery. I don’t think that you can lead in that journey unless they are ready to go. And be careful. They may not come to the conclusions you want them to.
A recent poll indicated that only 43% of American adults had not read even one complete book in the last 12-months! I visit my clients mostly in their homes, and it’s shocking how many educated, high-income families have no books or magazines in plain view, or bookcases that look used. There might be one or two lrage-format coffee-table books out to display their “culture”, but those were usually gifts not personal selections reflecting the owners’ tastes or interests.
As for the Universities, the same is holding true in my profession, Architecture. Most professors of design are now critics and deconstructivists rather than practicing Architects. They don’t create in the real-world, and pass that passion on to their students; they judge without accountability, and pull-apart someone else’s work and practice the art of destruction. And they refuse to treach any real-world technical working-skills to their students, so you spend first year or two out of college of a recent Architectural grad-student beating the mindless-BS out of their brains and teaching them the very skills they need to pursue their own profession.
But the second part is a sufficient explanation – in fact, ‘the’ explanation – of the first. Is it not?
I mean, if the people in business, economics, medicine, law, math, science and engineering went to the people in arts, literature and history and said “We have got to end this gap that has developed between us. And that really means, you have got to go back to teaching the valuable stuff you used to teach, not crap that is practically calculated to undermine our students’ ability to think and solve problems in the real world” – What do you think would happen?
http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/
Great post — but general acceptance of sinful homosexuality, and even more sinful heterosexual adultery, are huge parts of the problem.
Every religion claims it is true … and implicity that “truth is good”. Each also claims to be searching for truth.
But in fact, successful religions are those that are searching and finding, not so the “meaning of life”, but finding “good”. How to feel good about living a good life.
All religions are attacked by those with a desire to accept and promote promiscuity, even the “responsible promiscuity” I thought I was trying to practice in college just before AIDS.
Gay sex does not produce children. It is “not sustainable” in the way that normal sex is. This is why I support legal civil unions, but oppose “marriage”.
Gay sex, like sex outside of marriage, does not and can not have the same “meaning” as love=commitment sex inside of marriage. That which is likely to (no guarantees) result in children born into a family.
yada yada… (No fault divorce was worse for marriage than gay marriage would be — the gay marriage battle is more fierce because the pro-life folk are fighting against it as an abortion substitute; especially when elitist judges ‘legislate’ it rather than voters.)
I love the Harry Potter books, and they are “great” literature in a more true sense than Lord of the Rings. Even if Dumbledore is gay.
Good vs. Evil. In absolutes, not relative. Based on belief, unprovably but believed (revealed?) truth.
Oh yes, capitalist / marketeers want to use sex to sell more stuff, so life becomes time to “consume mass quantities”. Including consuming sexual experiences.
ILC:I mean, if the people in business, economics, medicine, law, math, science and engineering went to the people in arts, literature and history and said “We have got to end this gap that has developed between us. And that really means, you have got to go back to teaching the valuable stuff you used to teach, not crap that is practically calculated to undermine our students’ ability to think and solve problems in the real world” – What do you think would happen?
I think the professors would die of shock, that’s what I think. I actually think your best bet of something like this happening is at the smaller colleges. It’s likely that an English professor is married to the Economics prof in a smaller university. But turf wars are common. And often there is a great deal of disrespect in the professional programs towards liberal and fine arts. So I really don’t see this meeting of the minds happening. That’s a real shame. There’s hardly a situation that isn’t covered in Shakespeare. I think more and more people view education as “how can I get the piece of paper that allows me to earn the most money with the least effort on my part”. And then there are the liberal/fine arts people with no appreciation for how any of this might be applicable to the world at large. (It always makes me think of the Glass Bead Game.)
A few years ago the National Endowment of the Arts put together some Shakespeare productions to take to/near military bases around the country. The plays were chosen with the audience in mind. It was a great success. We need people in education to think outside their narrow box. But the problem is that if we require business majors to take an extra lit class, that’s one more English professor hired and one business prof let go. So the business school is not going to be likely to support that.
Education is not about students. It’s about the power struggles inside the institution for funding, tenure and status.
Ha!
A bunch of “liberal arts” majors wailing about their poor formal education in the attempt to discuss their self education!
No wonder I stayed in the science realm.
Everyone knows universities don’t care about the squishy world of literature and other such softy learning.
There is no money in it!
Sports and hard science are all universities care about. All in the chase for fame which leads to the coffers being full.
Azar Nafisi, an Iranian woman did just that. Have you read: ‘Reading Lolita in Teheran’ ?
Our universities have become very expensive trade schools. It’s all about getting that high paying job. When the humanity departments became – social science departments – you know something was very wrong. As if only science has value.
It’s a problem I’m grappling with my son right now, he is showing great potential as a writer, but feels he needs to go into business so he can make a living. At least now in his college years he is getting a good well rounded education, figuring that being a well rounded person will only help him in the future.
As to the meaning of life, he is a clear example of someone who is finding meaning in Judaism (not the fundamental variety).
Actually, GPW, I can show you what the problem is.
For 18 years, Hilary Zunin taught Shakespeare and other literature to students of all ages and skill levels at Napa High.
Last spring, she learned that most freshmen and sophomores would soon be reading the Holt anthology instead of the books that had always been required, including John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Night,” by Elie Wiesel.
“There are a lot of people living good lives in this country who aren’t able to write a cohesive paragraph and don’t know grammar,” Zunin said. “I’m more concerned about them being able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes – which is the essence of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ I’m more concerned with them being able to feel compassion and to question authority in a constructive way, which is the essence of ‘Night.’ I’m more concerned with them looking at the nature of friendship, which is at the heart of ‘Of Mice and Men.’ ”
But Zunin recognized that her concept of education was incompatible with No Child Left Behind. So, years earlier than she intended, the teacher who had once taught others how to inspire in students a love of literature said goodbye to Napa High.
In my opinion, good riddance.
Because look at what the students she failed are saying.
“It’s helpful,” said 15-year-old Araceli Hernandez, one of 56 sophomores assigned to “Read 180,” a step-by-step, computer-based reading course designed to accelerate low-scoring students by two years. That is, it’s supposed to turn their skills around 180 degrees in one year.
“It helps you learn how to spell the words better, and you get to understand what they’re reading,” said Araceli, who was born in Jalisco, Mexico. “It was difficult last year because I couldn’t understand how to do paragraphs and everything. But now that I got into this program, it’s better.”
Look at her statement. She claims that it’s not necessary for students to be able to write a cohesive paragraph, to know grammar, in short all the things that enable you to read and understand English — but she claims her students are learning from books she assigns.
Incorrect. Her students are not reading or analyzing these books. She is spoon-feeding them what she wants them to learn; whether or not they read the books, or even have the capability to read them, is irrelevant to her. It’s all about imposing her views on them under the guise of teaching them literature.
Business isn’t bad for a writer to know. Being able to handle the business side of it and self-marketing, branding, etc., could well make the difference between making it and not. Good luck to him in any case, Leah.
The great books curriculum may have been Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. It’s used by quite a few homeschoolers but generally doesn’t satisfy accreditation requirements. Not that most homeschoolers care a whole lot about accreditation requirements. 😉
I read a good essay by a homeschooled student then in college about the conflict between analyzing and her way of going about things which she referred to as synthesizing. Instead of education being focused on taking things apart she felt it ought to be focused on putting things together. The only problem being that the word synthesis had negative cooties.
She may also have been the person who pointed out that diversity is contrary to the notion of *uni*versity. Or maybe that was me. Lord knows no one seems to think that comparison is nearly as clever as I do, or even that it makes any sense.
Synthesis and university opposed to analysis and diversity. Bringing together and showing and studying the common human experience, or taking apart into many pieces that remain unrelated and irrelevant to each other.
What made me think of that was the quote of Kronman saying much the same thing.
NDT, No child left behind does do some violence to the act of learning since students *must* be taught to the test rather than being tested on what they are taught.
That doesn’t change the fact that the bigger violence to the act of learning is done by centralized state-run compulsory education.
It’s not NCLB that adds a hundred and one requirement because children should know something or other. My daughter’s school is big into “character” education, which is essentially about what students should think. It’s not so bad, though, since it’s a charter school and voluntary to that extent.
But if one looks at any attempt to define standards, and obviously this isn’t a “Bush” thing but is an educational establishment thing, it is all very much about what students ought to think and know about History or the world or whatever. The possible exception is Math, which textbooks sort of put the lie on because social stuff is crammed in left and right between the multiplication problems.
It seems self-evident, as you pointed out, that knowing how to read *well* is more important than reading the right things the right way. Someone with good reading skills has the option of self-education and has sovereignty over what goes into their heads according to their native understanding of what is most important in their own lives.
Yes, that bothers some people.
Coming at this from a homeschooling point of view I’ve been exposed to a whole lot of expressed pain and anguish over the idea that children might not be taught the right things, the approved things, the things the experts decided were necessary to know. And it’s not just that ignorant parents aren’t trusted. Local schools and teachers aren’t trusted to pick out text books or set graduation requirements or to have a clue if their students are learning or not.
And if the “experts” are going to insist on huge, centralized, state-run educational monopolies then they’re just going to have to deal with having measures like No Child Left Behind put in place and enforced.
Michelle Malkin has an EXCELLENT post about the failure of schools and their harmful teaching methods.
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/11/28/fuzzy-math-a-nationwide-epidemic/
Scroll down a bit and there’s a video.. I recommend viewing this video… it demostrates how kids are being taught to do math.. like how to add multiply and divide.. or rather how they have come up with teaching methods that result in being totally unable to add mulity or divide.
If we are discussing K-12 education, I think I would be happy if the children understood the difference between there, their and they’re. That in and of itself would be a big improvement. The current level of spelling and usage (punctuation in particular) is appalling.
I agree about the criticism of being taught to the test, but the testing was put in place because parents were concerned that children weren’t learning the basics. The problem existed before the tests.
There’s no way around the fact that parents have to be involved in their childrens’ education. If I had had trouble reading my parents would have known. They read to me every night until I was old enough to read to them. Do parents not do this any more? And both of them worked so that is not the problem. It was a priority for them as it should have been.
And then we have another problem. Americans by and large do not read other than what they absolutely have to. That’s not true in most parts of the world. Of course spending a couple of hours a day on mass transit helps in that regard since there’s not much else to do with that time but read a book, magazine or newspaper.
Yeah, I’m sure the Russians are avid book readers.
And in Oman they can’t read enough!
In UK i’m sure they read a lot too.
In Sierra Leone they have contests on who can read the most.
In Burma there are no more trees due to the book production.
Fun Fact:
More books get translated into Spanish in one year than all books have in Arabic for the past 500 years.
I was just discussing this problem yesterday with my class (PhD level Restoration Lit); the problem of “the canon”. I had noticed, as had several other people in the class, that we all had gaps in our basic knowledge of the literary canon. Some people had not read Robinson Crusoe, some had never read Paradise Lost, or Dracula, or poetry by Marvel. They were all sort of concerned that they had not been given any kind of introduction to these bedrock classics… even the class we were in was subtitled “Colonial Slave Narratives and Caribbean Literature” and had only 1 book from the canon out of 10 required texts.
My to my dismay, however, the controversy over not knowing the canon did not revolve around the usefulness or the literary heritage of the canon… it seemed to be generally accepted that it was an antiquated and “racist construction” as one girl put it. Instead, the controversy turned on being required to defend dissertations and take exams based on the canon when we had only been reading “rescued texts” throughout our careers.
I was apparently the only one who thought Paradise Lost represented some important literary value apart from being authored by a white male.
I’m an avid follower of the Islamic Jihad movement.. so on YouTube I happen to stumble across a lot of speeches being given at universities.
The most disturbing thing is the way the Leftists act.. they have no regard for the first amendment, they show no capacity to restrain thier emotions, they are thuggish and arrogant and they seem to believe all the propaganda that has been fed to them.
These people are a threat to our freedoms and way of life. I would eliminate Tenure and start getting classical liberals back in College not these Stalinists that run them now.
“I was apparently the only one who thought Paradise Lost represented some important literary value apart from being authored by a white male.”
I’ve no doubt that there are books authored by non-white non-men that have important literary value.
I’m not persuaded that “important literary value” is the criteria that those books are chosen by, however. When the goal is diversity the implied truth is that we are more different than we are alike and relate differently to ideas and to literature. The idea that minorities and women are uninvited to participate in literature created by white men uninvites white men to relate to literature created by women or minorities.
Do I have to have a similar background to understand and benefit from a Colonial Slave Narrative? Yes, no? Why or why not?
I think that other work should be included as it is seen to have merit but the practice of choosing work for diversity’s sake doesn’t bring people together in a concept of common humanity and human experience, it divides us farther.
I think that the “cannon” is only useful in that it gives people a common base of experience to discuss. There are far more worthy works in the world than one person can ever read, much less study.
One of your most interesting posts ever! I’d love to be snowbound in a cabin with you for a weekend. Nothing beats a conversation about literature — if the conversation goes on long enough, every category of our education and personality becomes involved. Thanks. I’m starting to really like you, dude, despite the hard time you give LCR. 😉
[GP Ed. Note – Hey, hey, hey. Get a room 🙂 ]
If there is no God, then there is no purpose to life, except to indulge and reproduce.
Rather the purpose in life is to hand it over, as well as your hard earned treasure, to the DNC and a bloated government of absolute liberal power.
You’re supposed to be too damn stupid to do anything else in life except to produce more wards of the state.
If there is no God, then there is no purpose to life, except to indulge and reproduce. All human life begins as a clump of cells and ends as a few kilograms of rotting meat. Aspiration to any higher level of meaning is pointless.
Comment by V the K — December 7, 2007 @ 8:00 am – December 7, 2007
my aren’t you a negative one. too bad you can’t imagine a world without god. cus that’s what we got.
And it gets worse by the day
#26
Interesting.
If I imagine a world without mindless liberals, will they all go away?
Imagine there’s no liberals. It’s easy if you try. No Murtha or Pelosi, only Earth and Sky. Imagine there’s no whining or willing us to lose, oh oh, ohohoh.
Bah, I still hate you because I really have to log out, go to bed, and that SONG is going to be in my head. Some things are simply not supposed to be in our heads. Ever.
Such as higher taxes for another liberal reich and the destruction of American exceptionalism.
EssEm, a wonderfully succinct answer.
Hmm, Henry V? Macbeth?
#20 Vince P – Fair answer. I half-expected the discussion to veer toward “Americans are so much more dull, vulgar and rube-ish than Europeans or other ‘world citizens'” at some point, a viewpoint that is not fair and accurate.
As for the God sub-discussion – I’ll just say this briefly. Morality (or the ability to think and act on moral principles) and meaning are necessities for happiness, and for long-term survival. Their necessity arises from certain “facts of life” which I’ll omit for now. In short, they arise from life itself. In other words: No, religion and God aren’t actually necessary for meaning and morality. But having said that: unlike most far-lefties, I respect religious people as people who are trying to be serious about having morality and meaning.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 12/08/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention updated throughout the day…so check back often.
I am one of those who feels that God is imperative to morality. I am also one of those who feels that Great Literature is part of the equation as well. I find too many religious people get caught up in the minutia of their observance, and forget about the important things in life, like being a good person, or the meaning of life.
Great literature touches on the essence of who we are as human beings.
As Synova commented about my son, being well rounded is good for busniess. Of course it is, and I have no problem if he finds that business is how he will make a living. If he were to figure out that he can make a living as a pundit or writer – that would be wonderful as well. My sons happen to be lucky, they grew up in my house, we discussed world issues as well as ‘meaning of life’ issues. They have continued to explore these issues in college and beyond.
I think Dan and Prof Kronman both are making a very important statement. We live in a secular society. As such, the universities are the secular vehicle that should be imparting some sort of values and avenues to explore the serious issues. Trade schools are important, but the soul of a society is equally so. I have learned as much from the Odyssey as from the Torah what it means to be an honorable human being.
I actually meant it the other way around. Not that writing will contribute to a business career (though I suppose it would) but that many writers are woefully ignorant (or adverse) to the business aspects of their profession. Writing *is* a business.
What is the meaning of life? “Taking pain,” said the nail. “Keeping cool,” said the ice. “Driving hard,” said the hammer. “Being up-to-date,” said the calendar. “Being sharp,” said the knife. “Making light around you,” said the fire. “Sticking to it,” said the glue. “Being bright,” said the lamp. “Being on time,” said the clock. “Saving a drop,” said the faucet. And best of all, “learning from it,” said the mistake.
This above quote makes me laugh and look at myself in the mirror.
Life is a vast !