Reclaiming Liberal Artistry Pt II

In the first part of this essay my goal was to articulate the grief that I believe we all feel, consciously or unconsciously, while reading those authors who have had the privilege of contributing to what Robert M. Hutchins coins as “The Great Conversation”. This grief exists because, overall, what we can know from this conversation is fragmented and only marginally representative of the whole of Western civilization. This conversation has been held amongst the elite of the West for generations and has, according to Hutchins, faded in its glory since the 19th Century due to two factors: “internal decay” (the specialization of all fields of study) and “external confusion” (attempting to apply experimental science to every disciple). As discussed in the previous essay, these members of the elite are predominately male and white and the sense of loss we experience is rooted in the missing pieces of the conversation. So, what we might have considered the greater and holistic wisdom of Western culture must be practically relegated to a place of limited perspective.

However, there is a message in the silent void that is left by these missing pieces and that message should invigorate those of us living in the West. Recognizing the limitations of the great conversation as represented by the “great works of the mind” does not warrant casting the whole lot of it into the abyss. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it seems to me that ignoring the greater journey of how we came to be here in this time and place, no matter how fragmented and disjointed that journey may appear when most of what is left is words on a page, is tantamount to self sabotage. Hutchins articulates clearly that “these books show the origins of our most serious difficulties.” We must try to learn not only from the extant Western canon but also from its many and varied voices whose silent words carry perhaps a more expansive depth of understanding. How can any of us know where to go from here if we do not know as much as we possibly can about where we have been? To swipe a metaphor from psychology, how can you identify the pain you feel in this moment if you cannot face the shadows of your past? I concur with Hutchins that an even greater grief awaits us if we continue to blithely ignore the liberal arts as they slowly vanish from importance within our systems of education.

Now, above all other times in our past, we must consciously reclaim liberal artistry and rejoice in the fact that we all have an equal opportunity to make an attempt at contributing to the Great Conversation. The lessons of the silent ideas must continue to be sought but more importantly we must maintain as well as enrich this precious dialogue with new words and new ideas that are not as limited in their perspective as were our forbearers’. However, before we can reclaim liberal artistry and contribute to this esteemed conversation, we must first define liberal artistry/the liberal arts and understand why our lives would be negatively affected by their absence. Robert M. Hutchins describes liberal artistry as, quite simply, the vehicle by which the great conversation has been made manifest since the beginning of history. But more pragmatically, he argues that each and every individual utilizes the skills that are informed by the liberal arts every day of their lives.

“The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand and think . . to measure, manipulate matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce and exchange. As we live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know it or not.. The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is will he be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one. [50]”

One might ask why, if liberal artistry is a daily and “indispensable” activity of us all, then what effort is needed to consciously reclaim it? Hutchins’ diatribe illustrates an integral element of why this effort is needed – do we choose to be proficient liberal artists or inept liberal artists? At this time in our culture a strong argument can be made that mostly we are poor liberal artists and for the greater majority of us this has nothing to do with our abilities to think and write and feel but more to do with the ways in which our education system has failed us. Hutchins spends a good portion of his essay discussing the free, mandatory, universal education system of the West (specifically, in the United States) which seems to him to be a great waste of time.

He refers to our schools as basically holding pens for the young where we “keep the child off the labor market and detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.” Hutchins believes that it is a horrible misconception to believe that our education systems are adequate to the task of actually educating our young or our adults and that reintegrating the education of the elite, the liberal arts, (if it is good enough for the elite it is good enough for all) into the system is something, that firstly, has never been tried before within the existing compulsory system and which also will give us the necessary tools to accomplish well those things we do every day.

“Education is supposed to have something to do with intelligence. It was because of this connection that it was always assumed that if people were to have political power they would have to have education. They would have to have it if they were to use their power intelligently. This was the basis of the Western commitment to universal, free, compulsory education.” [57]

Two barriers to integrating liberal artistry into our education system are what Hutchins refers to as rampant specialization and a deeply rooted misunderstanding of experimental science and its applications. The first barrier, specialization within all disciplines of human thought, deals with a shift in writing and communication. Specialization does not lend itself easily to having translatable communication outside of said specialization. Hutchins argues that this necessary and needed phenomenon has been hit hardest from a lack of liberal artistry. Liberal arts allow for people to be able to communicate with a wider audience because the proficient liberal artist uses a universal language and is capable of drawing parallels between details and the broader picture. Without the liberal arts as a foundation, we have incredibly smart people who are only writing and communicating to other people who happen to possess the same vocabulary of whatever specialization that they are writing about. This leaves them communicating their knowledge in a void where only others of their ilk have access to it. And, in many disciplines, even attempting to communicate this information in more accessible ways is highly discouraged. It is true that the liberal artists of our past who have contributed to the great conversation were also only writing for each other (the elite), however, it must be clearly stated that these writings are far more accessible to us today than if we were to attempt to read a doctrine of law or medicine or even literary criticism.

The second barrier for our citizens in becoming exceptional liberal artists is the “external confusion” of which Hutchins ascribes as a wide reaching misunderstanding of experimental science. It is important to note that the beginnings of the great conversation and the origins of experimental science are synonymous and have been linked since the dawn of history. However, Hutchins believes that “faith in the experiment as an exclusive method (of learning) is a modern manifestation...[t]hus we are often told that any question that is not answerable by the empirical methods of science is not really answerable...and if they are not answerable by these methods, they are the sort of questions that should never have been asked.” [60] The success and amazing technologies that the experimental method has afforded us cannot be refuted.
However, we have developed a dependence upon this sort of learning that is limiting our perspective. I have confronted this attitude within my own experience. In many ways this experience can be interpreted as a manifestation of both barriers; specialization and the overriding faith that if science cannot cure what ails us then it cannot be cured.

While attending a physical science class, I attempted to begin a dialogue regarding the ethics of scientific education in reference to population control. My question was a simple one and one that was never answered. If science has verifiable methods of proving that, within such and such time, our population will be so great that our species will be harmed and risk possible extinction, then why is it not prudent to aggressively educate people of this verifiable fact so that social changes can begin to follow? I recognize this to be a prickly question but the response that I received was startling. My teacher literally looked at me as if I were insane and began to mockingly explain that what I was asking was a question of ethics that had no place in science. “That is a question for the humanities not for scientists.” I was appalled especially considering the fact that I believe ethics to be of primary importance for all fields but especially within science and medicine. Not to mention the fact that, in essence, this ‘save it for the humanities’ attitude simply illustrated lazy liberal artistry.

A struggle continues to exist between science and what some consider the superstitious notions of our ancestors before science came to illuminate the world and banished these antiquated ideas back into history where they can propagate no further “illusion and sophistry” (Hume). However, the reality is that science cannot answer all of our questions and if we are limited to seeking further understanding of those things that cannot be answered only through scientific experimentation, then we have, ironically, narrowed our opportunities for coping with these very real and pertinent questions yet again.

The absence of liberal artistry in our culture can be seen in many places but it is devastating when we see it within our systems of communication and education. I do not believe that Hutchins is arguing against specialization and experimental science, however, I think it is safe to say that he sees danger lurking behind these trends if they are not influenced by a foundation in good liberal artistry. Hutchins believes that with political power (which those of us in the West enjoy freely) comes a deeper responsibility for educating ourselves. And, that in order for us to be able to contend with the ever changing variables in our lives we must pay heed to the skills we can learn from our ancestors many of whom spilled their own blood that we might be privy to the “Great Conversation”.

“We know that it will be impossible to induce all men to agree on all matters. The most we can hope for is to induce all men to be willing to discuss all matters instead of shooting one another about some matters. A civilization in which all men are compelled to agree is not one in which we would care to live. Under such circumstances one world would be worse than many; for in many worlds there is at least the chance of escape of one to another. The only civilization in which a free man would be willing to live is one that conceives of history as one long conversation leading to clarification and understanding. Such a civilization presupposes communication; it does not require agreement.” [71]

Hutchins’ advocacy of the liberal arts hopes to inspire and prepare us for what it is to come and what has come since the 1950’s one can barely describe. Throughout history every generation of peoples comes to an ardent wish for future generations. For me, and I believe for Hutchins, that ardent wish is for the children and adults in the future to be smarter and better prepared than we have been for all that lay ahead of them. What they will face I cannot imagine but I do know that if they are not given the skills they need their lives will be unnecessarily more difficult. I think the message of the silent voices who were not allowed to contribute to the great conversation is simply this – do not limit yourselves. If we allow liberal artistry to fade from our culture, if we allow the silent voices to continue to remain unheard then we are shackling ourselves with chains of our own making. I guess the only question left remaining is whether you wish to be a good liberal artist or a bad one?





THE SLEEPER MUST AWAKEN!!

"The Great Conversation Revisited"- Critique pt 2

Section Three- Why a Second Edition of Great Books of the Western World and How Does it Differ from the First?

For those bracing for a dry discussion about selection methodology, Adler does not disappoint completely. The 20th century receives some kind of Easter morning reprieve as Adler opens the section by invoking Hutchins’ ecumenical observation that, “the Editors don’t think that the Great Conversation came to an end before the 20th century” [32]. The reasoning, he explains, in 1950 when the first edition was assembled, was that the editors lacked the distance to meaningfully separate the good from the great, if only in terms of eventual influence. By the late 1980s, when the second edition was being created, the new editorial team felt enough of a consensus had been reached regarding writings of the early 20th century to extend the series’ contents up through the end of the 1950s.

After four pages of faintly praising the updated material (including a more genuine enthusiasm for improved translations of material from the first edition), Adler cannot resist one last psychobilly freak-out worthy of reproduction.

"What Jose Ortega y Gasset called ‘the barbarism of specialization’…had its first impact on our culture in the years just before WWII. The books published in the first three decades of this century were, for the most part, written by authors who were born and educated in the 19th century and who had not succumbed to the rampant plague of specialization. Only books written after WWII are likely to have been written by authors who were born and educated in the 20th century, and who, because of the academic posts they occupied, were also more susceptible to the spreading infection.

That is another reason why we set the middle years of the 20th century as the cutoff date for the selection of authors and titles to be included in this set. Unless the barbarism of specialization is somehow transcended, it is unlikely that, in philosophy, the natural and social sciences, and history, truly great books will have been written in the closing decades of this century or will be written in the century to follow." [35]

Section Four- Questions and Replies

Adler opens the final section with a short history of the Great Books movement, beginning at Columbia University in the early 1920s and spreading to other reputable institutions like the University of Chicago where both he and Hutchins taught. By the late 1940s, the Great Books movement began its push out of academia and into the community with the establishment of the Great Book Foundation. Given the anti-anti-establishment bent of the Great Books movement, every success was met by vocal critics with concerns about the efficacy of the liberal arts education model as well as charges of elitism and exclusionary tendencies in the reading list itself. Adler separates the series’ critics into two camps, conveniently tied to the two differing editions of the Great Books collection and separated, thus by the four decades between editions.

The first wave, Adler suggests, are critical, in fact, only of misunderstandings about the Great Books series. It is notable that Adler provides his rebuttal to these critics in the form of a speech he delivered in 1948, a full year before the Great Books of the Western World and the accompanying editorial material were published. One might rightly assume that much of what Adler was responding to were criticisms of the curriculae adopted by various schools that reflected the movement’s core values. Before clarifying what is not true to about the Great Books movement, Adler does succinctly outline that core belief, saying that “our claim, then, for the great books program, conceived as a lifetime undertaking, is that it is…certainly the best way for the individual to acquire understanding and wisdom” [37].

With that done, Adler boils the critical reaction (in 1950) against the Great Books program down to five essential misunderstandings that, he asserts, do not represent the critical or ideological position of its advocates.

1. The Great Books are the only books worth reading.

2. Reading and discussion of the Great Books are all that is required in order to give an adult a complete and well-rounded education.

3. Reading the Great Books, absent of other formative influences, will make better human beings and, therefore, better citizens.

4. No knowledge of current events and ideas are necessary in order to function in modern society.

5. Only ideas from antiquity are worthy of careful consideration.

I find this conciliatory tone surprising considering the vehemence with which both Alder and Hutchins attack the modern education system, composed of the same critics they address and with whom they now share only semantic misunderstandings and no differences. Surely those same critics could respond by saying that their criticisms of the “barbarisms of specialization” are founded on misapprehensions of what specialization stands for? Aren’t all arguments over abstractions to some extent, arguments over semantics and definitions?

If Adler is duplicitous in responding to his first wave of critics, he’s completely dismissive of the second, describing the “intense controversy” that accompanied the publication of the second edition in 1988 as “irrelevant” and waged by critics who “appeared to be uninformed about the discussion that had occurred in the first part of the century.” Nonetheless, he includes the heart of the critical response in passing noting that, “objections were raised to the whole idea of a canonical list of books. The narrow parochial interest in Western European culture, excluding the literature of the Far East, was challenged, as well as sexist and racist prejudices that appeared to ignore or dismiss the writings of authors other than white males—European and American” [36].

While the bulk of these concerns go unanswered, Adler does address the lack of material from the Far East, suggesting that the task of delineating and presenting the landmark contributions of that tradition should fall to those better educated in its intricacies. He goes on to say, though, that “with one or two exceptions the great books in these Far Eastern traditions do not enter into the great conversation that occurred in the literature of the West”[37]. It is tempting to extend the logic of that statement into assuming that Adler meant to suggest that the Far Eastern written tradition was silent on the Great Ideas that make up his Syntopicon but, whether that extension represents Adler’s own beliefs falls into the realm of conjecture and not criticism. He may have intended only that the writers of the Mediterranean/European/American tradition wrote in ignorance of what was happening in the literary traditions of China, India, and the Middle East at the same time. But, considered in context with this quote from Hutchins’ essay that Adler included in an earlier section, that willingness to overlook the Eastern tradition begins to look more like willful ignorance than pragmatic deference to Eastern scholars.

"The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in other respects, no civilization is like that of the West in this respect. No other civilization can claim that its defining characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any other civilizations can compare with that of the West in the number of great works of the mind that have contributed to this dialogue. The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race…" [Hutchins, 48-9]

Conclusions about “The Great Conversation Revisited”

There is a marked difference in tone between Robert Hutchins’ “The Great Conversation” and this essay from Mortimer Adler and I was continually led to extra-textual speculation to pinpoint the reasons for this disparity other than just differences of style. Hutchins was writing in a time when the full effect of the changes in education had yet to be fully realized and the generational impact fully measured. Much of what he rails against, he opposes in theory, essentially prophesying about the eventual failures of specialization. His defense is more focused on the liberal arts method than on this specific set of works. Adler, in contrast, is writing in an environment where the effects of specialization were well known and, in most cases, embraced with the zeal of democracy or religion, regardless of the mounting evidence that it was, historically, in many ways deficient. His advocacy for the material presented cannot be faulted for its lack of sincerity or academic rigor but his critical defense is too often dismissive and comes to rest on a slippery either/or slope when contrasted with the modern education system.

I've given Dr. Adler quite a rhetorical work-out here because, ultimately, I recognize the wisdom of what he is telling us even as I question the articulation of his vision. That is the heart of the Great Conversation as each new generation reconsiders the wisdom of its ancestors through the prism of new information and new understanding. Whether or not he found my viewpoint hopelessly tainted by the evils of post-post-modernity, I'd like to believe that Dr. Adler would appreciate that some 90 years after the Great Books movement began, it continues to reach out, inspire and educate.