I love reading polemics about the sad state of humanities education. The classic in this genre is Allan Bloom鈥檚 The Closing of the American Mind (1989), which paints a very lively picture of the absolute emptiness and dreariness of the average undergraduate鈥檚 mental landscape, but there are others: William Deresewicz鈥檚 Excellent Sheep (2014) is another favorite.
Kids these days. They鈥檝e got nothing going on upstairs.
And their professors aren鈥檛 much better! Usually, in these books, the professors have been seduced by postmodernism, cultural relativity, literary theory. The professors have lost the plot鈥攖hey鈥檝e lost belief in the age-old mission of liberal education, which is, in Allan Bloom鈥檚 telling, 鈥渢he goal of human completeness.鈥�
When it comes to this crisis (i.e. the fact that, as Allan Bloom puts it, 鈥渙ur students have lost the practice of and taste for reading鈥�), the polemicist usually advocates Great 快色直播 courses where you read classic texts and talk about their relevance to modern life. So, for instance, you鈥檇 read Moby-Dick and talk how these characters grapple with fate and the inevitability of death鈥攑roblems that all human beings must face.
What鈥檚 best about these polemics is that they frame 鈥渞eading the classics鈥� as a solution to a stark, civilizational crisis. Kids have no moral values! They come from homes where they鈥檙e taught nothing, not even the difference between right and wrong. Unless they can be switched on by the right book, they鈥檒l go out into the world completely unfit for good citizenship or any higher intellectual life.
Often these polemicists will also bring God and metaphysics into the picture, saying that the classics are a way of getting in touch with timeless insights about the nature of truth, beauty, and goodness. (Bloom says the point of studying the humanities is to gain answers to the kinds of questions that children ask, 鈥淚s there a God? Is there freedom? Is there punishment for evil deeds? Is there certain knowledge? What is a good society?鈥�)
This is a very good justification for reading the classics. It鈥檚 probably about the best justification that can be developed. Without the Great 快色直播, you鈥檝e got utter savagery and barbarism鈥攖he inability to read, reason, or act morally鈥攂ut if you just crack open Moby-Dick you鈥檝e got the possibility of learning whether God really exists.
Personally, I am very convinced by this argument. About seventeen years ago, in 2009, I decided to finally brush up on all the classics that I鈥檇 missed. So I bought a book called The New Lifetime Reading Plan, and I began slowly working my way through this list. I read Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Chaucer, Shakespeare (there鈥檚 always a big jump in these lists between the ancients and Chaucer), Milton, Donne, and all kinds of other authors.
And over these seventeen years, as I aged from twenty-three to forty, I did indeed grow in wisdom. My values solidified. I gained some private understanding of the Divine and of the nature of justice.
Unfortunately, this understanding is somewhat incommunicable. If I was to say that I think the world is underpinned by justice, and that justice has metaphysical weight鈥攕o that wrongdoing is always ultimately punished, either now or in the hereafter鈥攖hat would just sound like a platitude. I surely can鈥檛 convince you, in the space of a blog post, that divine justice actually exists. Nor am I convinced that if you read the Great 快色直播, you鈥檇 come to the same understanding of justice as mine.
But I do think that if you read these books, then something will happen. There is some wordless knowledge in these books, some sense of integrity and some understanding of the universe, that is conveyed by exposing yourself to what Matthew Arnold called 鈥渢he best which has been thought and said鈥�.
So I am fully bought in, which is why I love reading these polemics.
But I fear that if you鈥檙e not fully bought in, then there is something rhetorically ineffective about Allan Bloom and William Deresewicz鈥檚 books.
That鈥檚 because they really convey quite a stark 鈥榰s鈥� vs. 鈥榯hem鈥� dichotomy. If you already love the Great 快色直播, then it is quite pleasant to image you鈥檙e not one of the 鈥榚xcellent sheep鈥� (Deresewicz鈥檚 term) whose empty heads and vacant stares apparently proliferate on college campuses.
But imagine you鈥檙e not already bought in. Imagine you鈥檙e a undergrad who became a Regeneron Science Talent Search semifinalist on the basis of her innovative work modeling how the Wnt signaling pathways regulate early neuronal development, and now you鈥檙e spending nights and weekends working in a biology lab on a model for how congenital CMV affects fetal brain development.
This kind of person would probably feel very insulted by the implication that they鈥檙e a blank slate, and that the knowledge they acquired in high school and undergraduate was somehow useless, simply because it did not include any discussion of Moby-Dick. This person likely doesn鈥檛 read that many books, because they don鈥檛 have much time, but they still use their mind and take a lot of pride in using their mind.
I think it would still be very beneficial for this person to read Moby-Dick, precisely because there鈥檚 a kind of metaphysical knowledge they are likely to gain from it鈥攁 knowledge that they perhaps won鈥檛 gain from reading the latest paper in Cell鈥攂ut the rhetorical approach to this person probably needs to be different.
This person needs a sales pitch that鈥檚 much more low-key.
That鈥檚 something I鈥檝e learned from my years of blogging about the Great 快色直播. Sometimes you gain more traction when you use arguments that are modest. It might seem more effective to say that reading Moby-Dick will somehow save civilization, but to a lot of people, this argument feels quite shaky. It doesn鈥檛 really hold up, because it seems intuitively true that studying congenital CMV will probably do equally as much for civilization as reading Moby-Dick.
But an easier argument to make is that reading Moby-Dick is very good, and there is a decent chance that if you read this book, and other books with similar canonical status, then you鈥檒l gain the kind of knowledge that makes life sweeter and easier to bear.
Not all people are looking for that knowledge. Some people are what William James called 鈥榟ealthy-minded鈥�. They basically already understand their place in the world, and they don鈥檛 need much more. These people might understand my message, but feel it doesn鈥檛 really have any bearing on their lives.
But there鈥檚 a whole swathe of other people who do feel dissatisfaction and who are looking for something, and I think these people should really consider reading the Great 快色直播, if they want to.
Naomi Kanakia writes a popular literary blog, Woman of Letters, that鈥檚 been praised by The New Yorker, Vox, and New York Magazine. She is also the author of three YA novels and a literary novel for adults.