A class needs time to develop, in college at least three hours, but getting the intellectual muscle for three hours of discussion takes time. Students get tired. When a “long form” article (with warnings about length!) is around three hundred words, then a class where clearing the ground to learn takes thousands of words is wearing. When the question is hard, the answer is sometimes even more difficult! No surprise that hard answers, require time for any group to develop.... Read more
The community was so bad, educating people so difficult, and tyranny so much in fashion, that Socrates, a man who ends up willing to die for wisdom and his city, had given up. He was done with discussion. (Republic Book II) That’s frightening news for the community, as telling for the health of the culture as Bobby Flay giving up on cooking and the Food Network. What can be done? Is there hope? There is, but it needs two type... Read more
Brett Favre always wanted to play or so it seemed watching him. He seemed never to come out of a game, so when the quarterback every announcer called a “gunslinger” announced that he would not want his children or grandchildren to play the game and that he was afraid for his own health, the news was stunning to this Packer fan. Something must be wrong with tackle football. Why? The man loved the game, but Favre is done with football, at... Read more
In some parts of American Christianity there is a weird belief that all forms of doubt are toxic. Thanks to good parents, I missed that error, though I made more than a few of my own! There are doubtless toxic ideas or practices covered by the very broad term doubt. Anyone who has ever taught Socratically has run into the student who did not read the book, but tries to get through class by doubting any positive thesis advanced by... Read more
Socrates knew what Jesus incarnated: the beginning questions contain the apocalypse and paradise. News happens quickly, if we are thinking of what everyone is talking about now. In reality, Americans have not digested the evils done to First Nations (American Indians) or the good done by the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis. World War I and the decisions of the racist in chief Woodrow Wilson roil our lives, but we miss reality for the news. If we thought harder about... Read more
All loves can go awry when they become disconnected to goodness, truth, and beauty. We can love learning and still not learn if we do not discipline ourselves: Socrates called this being a glutton at a feast of words when he saw this error in himself. At the end of Republic Book I, Socrates tells his listeners why he thinks they have had an entertaining discussion, even chewed on some good ideas, but he is unsatisfied. He thought, but this... Read more
Read enough great books and you see connections. . . Plato, T.S. Eliot, and A.E. Taylor did not go to a bar together, Plato being dead for millennia before there were bars, Eliot, or Taylor, but Plato did influence both thinkers, the poet and the philosopher, and I suspect the least famous (Taylor) provided some intellectual help to the famous poet Eliot. Recently at the College, we were working through “Dry Salvages” by T.S. Eliot and the (potential) connection was... Read more
We are gluttons for edutainment, the thought- free substitute for education that gives us little of the hard reality of education while trying to provide the (genuine!) pleasures of a real education. The edutainment complex produces dilettantes, highly cultivated intellectual skills without the virtues of the mind that only painful, difficult, and time consuming work can produce. Edutainment is the equivalent of handing out jerseys and football helmets, filling a stadium, introducing the players, doing all the exciting rituals of... Read more
If there is great food made in a microwave, I have never eaten it. Microwave food is hot (in places) and (sometimes) beats no food, but is not eating well. Inquiry can be this way: certainly containing the ingredients of a discussion (words, ideas, people), but lacking the excellence. One can whip up some talk, but the results are not satisfying to anyone who has received a real education. At the end of Republic Book I, Socrates confesses: You are... Read more
Asking a question begins a series of questions so endless that if it were not for the promise of Paradise where we can learn without end, a man might despair. There is glorious wonder in questions, but also a particular danger. To see the danger and the opportunity, I will outline how this Spring a question in a Saint Constantine college class led to a long discursive set of readings and what I learned, but also what I might not... Read more
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