This essay on reading The Great Books, or joining the Great Conversation, may be addressed to an audience other than the one typical of BwB, but Professor Peter Lawler makes many good points. He argues primarily against those who believe we, the people of the 21st century, are far superior to the people who came before us on many levels.

From my postmodern view, maybe the chief purpose of higher education, is then to counter the dominant view of who we are-–which is partly true and partly degrading prejudice—of our time. Our tendency is to view human beings as free and productive—as autonomous individuals with interests. This means that we don’t regard anyone as less than a being with interests—or as existing merely to serve others. We all have a right to look out for our own interests, and so to be treated as individuals and not merely as part of some larger whole. That means that it’s not really news to any of us that racism, sexism, classism, and so forth are wrong, and we usually think that it’s an affront to our dignity to be thought of as merely parents or citizens or creatures. We tend to be all about autonomy and self-definition.

But we’re weak—often very weak—in thinking of people as more than productive or self-interested beings. We tend to think that human distinctions that can’t be measured quantitatively aren’t real, just as we tend to think that a true meritocracy is based on productivity. We tend to think that because the great authors of the great books of the past must have been racists, sexists, and classists and, of couse, not as technologically advanced or as productive as we are, they have nothing real to say to us. So our prejudice is to study them critically—or condescendingly—as remnants of discredited prejudices.

In weather like this, you pretty much have to blog about the snow and cold. But how to do it? Tell harrowing stories of my near-death experiences shoveling my driveway, or fighting traffic on Teflon streets? Fortunately I avoided both those activities today. Employ quirky and creative similes and metaphors, like James Lileks? I could try a weak emulation, but it’s late and I want to get to my Christmas cards. Casual wit takes a lot of hard work.

So I’ll talk about my Grandpa, Clarence Walker. I thought of him as I unloaded my groceries in the cold wind tonight. I remembered that Grandma Walker once told me that he had saved his brother’s (or brother-in-law’s) life, when they both got caught in a snowstorm in the woods. It was one of those classic situations where one guy wants to sit down and rest, and the other guy says, “No, you’ve gotta keep walking. If you fall asleep, you’ll die.” (I understand that’s not entirely true. You can sleep just fine in the snow if you’re well bundled up, especially if you let the snow drift on top of you like a blanket, as long as you’re not physically exhausted. It’s the exhaustion that kills you. I have to assume they were both exhausted that night).

This is Grandpa and Grandma Walker, with (reading left to right) my brother Moloch and me. Must have been around 1953. It was taken in the house in town to which they retired after Dad got married.

Continue reading The Saga of Clarence →