Introducing the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was a leading proponent of cultural and educational renewal. He inspired many key figures in the classical education movement, including Andrew Kern, founder of the CiRCE Institute. Kern commended Kirk’s works to teachers, remarking that as Americans our intellectual debt to Russell Kirk is “immeasurable.” Kirk, he noted, “is the single most important political thinker in the latter half of the twentieth century.”
Today the Russell Kirk Center, located in West Michigan, continues Kirk’s commitment to supporting the classical school movement by providing educational programs, publications, and residential fellowships or summer research grants.
The School of Conservative Studies. Launching in 2025, this initiative will interest anyone who loves the Western heritage and wants to transmit it to the next generation through education. Learning opportunities will include virtual seminars, graduate studies in the humanities, and more. Academic credits and a graduate degree may be earned through a partner university.
Pillars Seminars.
Based on Russell Kirk’s magisterial The Roots of American Order, these Socratic seminars are designed for high school teachers. They trace the origins of the American tradition of order, justice, and freedom through Hebraic and Christian belief, classical philosophy and law, British political experience, and the ideas and institutions of colonial and early republican America.
Publications.
Center publications include our online book review journal, The University Bookman, and a forthcoming book, Teaching the Virtues, by Kirk Center Distinguished Teaching Fellow David Hein.
Fellowships and Grants.
Residential Wilbur Fellowships are perfect for teachers and scholars who need the conditions to read and write within a vibrant academic community. Fellows enjoy hospitality in Russell Kirk’s ancestral home, known worldwide for being Tolkien-esque, “the last homely house.”
The new McLellan Prizes offer $12,500 summer research grants for projects focused on the First Amendment and free speech.
Are you interested in learning more?
Sign up for the Kirk Center’s newsletter, Permanent Things. Email your questions to dfalconburg@kirkcenter.org. kirkcenter.org
COLUMNS FEATURES
EDITORS’ LETTER by Katerina Hamilton
Cultural Currency
Letter from the Editors
Dear Reader,
From the Classroom HOLY LAUGHTER, HOLY LEARNING by Tyler Justin Smothers 5
by Phillip Johnson
RECLAIMING SCHOLÉ: HOW TRUE LEISURE HELPS US RESIST THE TOTALITARIANISM OF COMFORT by Joshua Pauling
DISNEY PRINCESSES OR DOOMED ATOMS: HOW PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY INFORMS CLASSICAL EDUCATION by Peter V. Forrest
THE ART OF LIVING WELL THROUGH THE PRACTICE AND PATTERNS OF MUSIC by Eliott Grasso
CARING FOR THE SOJOURNER: INVITING STRUGGLING STUDENTS HOME THROUGH LOGOCENTRIC LEARNING by Sarah Osborne
PLUTARCH’S ADVICE TO AN ASPIRING STATESMAN
translated by Scott C. and David V. Hicks
It is with great thanks that I introduce another edition of the FORMA Journal. This edition highlights the work of classical educators around the world, from poets to essayists to teachers; the value it brings lies in their dedication and commitment to their art and the classical renewal. We are honored to offer you their words and insights.
This edition of FORMA marks a development for CiRCE and the FORMA Journal—and, we hope, the classical renewal at large. In January of 2024, the CiRCE Institute and Belmont Abbey College hosted our first annual FORMA Symposium, bringing together classical educators from all contexts to discuss and research core aspects of classical education. In this edition, you will find key papers from that symposium, each exploring the theme of logocentrism in its own way. We pray this edition invites you to deeper thought, renewed energy, and clearer vision as you participate in the classical renewal.
If you enjoy reading this journal, please consider donating to the CiRCE Institute. CiRCE is a 501-C3, and the journal and symposium are both funded by our generous donors. Small $5 donations from many have sustained us over the years, and no amount is too small to deserve our deep gratitude.
With thanks,
Katerina Hamilton Editor-in-Chief
Discussing
The Editorial Team
Publisher: Andrew Kern, President of The CiRCE Institute
Editor-in-Chief: Katerina Hamilton
Art Director: Graeme Pitman
Poetry Editors: Christine Perrin and Noah Perrin
Senior Editor: Matthew Bianco
Contributing Editors: Ian Andrews and Emily Andrews
Copy Editor: Courtney Allen
Layout: David Kern
RECLAIMING SCHOLE
HOW TRUE LEISURE HELPS US RESIST THE TOTALITARIANISM OF COMFORT
BY JOSHUA PAULING
George Orwell’s dystopian warnings in Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) were inspired by his fear that Communism would spread to the West. But slightly before Orwell’s dystopian warnings about the Communist work state, Aldous Huxley raised concerns that a cult of play might create the conditions whereby totalitarianism would engulf the West. His 1931 dystopian classic, Brave New World, depicts a futuristic society where citizens are lulled into passivity through amusements, including drugs, sex, and more. Neil Postman famously contrasted Orwell’s and Huxley’s visions in his 1985 polemic against the television, Amusing Ourselves to Death:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance….In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.1
Although Postman had no way of knowing it at the time, he wrote on the cusp of inventions with almost infinitely greater power than TV to undo our capacity to think, even reducing us to passivity, egoism, and perpetual immaturity. I refer, of course, to the digital technologies that make possible gaming, binge-watching, doomscrolling, YouTube rabbit-holing, along with emerging technologies like immersive VR experiences, augmented reality, and AI companions—all of which reduce us to passive users and consumers. For anyone concerned about preserving our freedom as individuals and as a so-
ciety, these highly addictive amusements warrant concern. They are our equivalents to the bread and circuses after Rome took a totalitarian turn, or the drug soma in Brave New World: a happinessproducing opiate that helped people to escape societal unpleasantness around them. Resisting the allure of such passive and deforming influences will, ironically, include reclaiming true leisure.
A Totalitarianism of Comfort
A totalitarianism of comfort is not as easy to recognize as a totalitarianism of pain, because it does not fit the standard models Americans have been alert to in the post-Cold War era. It is also harder to recognize because the companies that threaten our freedom are the same ones that keep us amused by providing iPads, Chromebooks, PlayStations, Oculus headsets, streaming services, social media, and more. Such entertainment does not feel like a limitation of freedom since it allows us to simulate activities that, in real life, would be the epitome of freedom, from the thrill of the hunt to the exploration of untamed territory. In many video games, an individual can experience the dopamine rush of battlefield conquest without battlefield struggles (getting dirty, hungry, scared). One can experience the excitement of fighting without ever having to cultivate the warrior virtues (patience, self-control, courage, endurance, long attention span, accountability, and submission to authority). One can feel an imitation of intimacy, without developing the real-life skills required to really experience it (conversation, treating the other person with love and modesty, vulnerability, and self-giving). The more our lives move into digital environments, the more we put real-life virtues and skills at risk.
Philosopher Byung Chul Han calls this the regime of “self-exploitation,” and argues that it is “more efficient than exploitation by others, because it goes hand in hand with a feeling of freedom.” We think we are freer because the elements of control remain hidden “behind the friendliness of social media, the convenience of search engines, the soothing voices of virtual assistants and the courteous servility of smart apps.”2
True Leisure
How can we preserve our liberty amid a totalitarianism of comfort? One answer is found in reclaiming a proper understanding of leisure in the first place. According to Aristotle, true leisure is the essence of what it means to be a free person, to have the time to follow your interests, to develop as a person, to be in community with others. Aristotle argued that when our only concern is providing for our animal needs, we function as slaves to whomever will feed us. This is not a recipe for a free people. Yet equally, he warned, when we are addicted to amusements and relaxation, we are also unfree, for amusement and relaxation are not appropriate ends for human life.
Josef Pieper further articulated this classical vision of leisure in his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Pieper argued that leisure isn’t just the absence of work, nor is it the individualistic pursuit of amusements. Rather, it is the presence of something meaningful in itself; namely, activities and practices that further us as human beings and bring us into a deeper experience of the permanent things. Leisure in this sense was not about amusing ourselves but advancing ourselves—in ways that capture the best of the vita activa (active life) and the vita contemplative (contemplative life).
Pieper suggests that “we are ignorant of how the concept of ‘leisure’ is understood in the accumulated wisdom of our Western cultural and existential tradition as expressed, say, by Plato, Aristotle, or the great teachers of Christianity.”3 As Pieper explains, today’s understanding of leisure as free time for entertainment is a recent innovation. The older usage of leisure did not have such connotations. Instead,
leisure, when properly understood and practiced, is, Pieper notes,
One of the foundations of Western culture…and even the history of the word attests the fact: for leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English ‘school.’ The word used to designate the place where we educate and teach is derived from a word which means ‘leisure.’ ‘School’ does not, properly speaking, mean school, but leisure.
In other words, leisure consists of activities and practices that further develop us, bringing us into a deeper experience or contemplation of truth, goodness, and beauty.
Education is a vital way that we are brought into an experience of true leisure, as our desires are further refined towards higher goods. Such an education will overflow into the rest of our lives through embodied activities in the real world, like learning a skill or craft, physical exercise, in-person play, reading books and discussing them, writing poetry, creating art, making music. And perhaps even more basic than these would be times for solitude and reflection and times for honest dialogue, including the type of conversation that emerges organically out of times of quiet and unhurried (non-agenda-driven) togetherness.
The digital ecosystem of amusements, distractions, and entertainment flooding into our glowing glass rectangles easily take us away from the essential habits of being human, and causes our skills and virtues to atrophy. It turns active citizens into passive users. It replaces community leisure with personal fun, eroding both the public and private sphere of life. It offers escapism as the solution to the social and political problems besetting our communities. And it distorts the active side of leisure, even as sloth and laziness distort the quiet side of leisure. Education is a gateway into the better way found in true leisure, which helps us resist ceding more of our liberty to the Machine.
The preceeding is excerpted from Chapter 21 of the new book Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine by Joshua Pauling and Robin Phillips.
1. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [New York: Penguin Books, 1985], xix–xx.
2. Byung Chul Han, Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy, trans. Daniel Steuer (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022), 6.
3. Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1963), 17–18.
In our ever-polarizing world of designer factions and boutique interests, G. K. Chesterton enjoys a vast but motley crowd of admirers. There are those who read his nonfiction, those with a taste for his mystery (or, for the rarer breed, his mystical) fiction, some who have penetrated the inner chamber of his economic theory, and more beside. Whatever their interest, though, most come to love him first for his words. Indeed, he is one of the most quotable men ever to walk the earth, looming even larger in commonplace books than he did in person (all 6 feet, 4 inches, and 290 pounds of him). Those words can be trouble, though. Anyone who has read the man for long will inevitably know what it’s like to get turned around by a wave of his whirling and whimsical verbiage, flailing in a discursive flourish before finally washing up on the shore of the main argument two pages later. He writes in one place, “Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite.” The assertion, itself slightly paradoxical, is a good analogy for his theory of truth-telling: reality is often paradoxical and therefore the truth about reality is best
UNSPEAKABLE WORD
Years Later
by Sean Johnson
conveyed in the collision of seemingly contradictory ideas. No genius has had a greater knack for turning a phrase and a harder time saying what he wanted to say than G. K. Chesterton.
In 1905 Chesterton published Heretics, a collection of polemical essays decrying the philosophical “heresies” of the modern age; but even the author himself did not escape unscathed. After the book appeared, some of its saltier subjects fired back that, as Chesterton put it, “it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm [my] cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example.” One offended party went so far as to say they would worry about their particular philosophy when Chesterton offered a positive articulation of his own. He apparently thought the criticism valid, for rather than retort, “it’s there, look again,” he wrote another book to remedy the shortcoming. And while that book, 1908’s Orthodoxy, does offer forth Chesterton’s own position, it is anything but direct about it. He proposes, as a metaphor for the work, the image of a man who sails around the world only to end up—rather unexpectedly—back at his own doorstep. Orthodoxy is full of brilliant and beauti-
On G. K. Chesterton’s
ful passages, but it arrives at the expression of a creed by labyrinthine ways; Chesterton had to say a great deal before arriving at the thing he set out to say. Twenty years later, when he sat down to defend that creed again in The Everlasting Man, he was that much more committed to his discursive form of argumentation.
The Everlasting Man began as a riposte to Chesterton’s longtime friend and polar opposite, H. G. Wells—particularly to the evolutionary theory of human development and harsh treatment of Christianity in Wells’ The Outline of History. In his preface to the work, Chesterton claims the view of the book is “historical rather than theological” and that he intends to vindicate Christianity’s historical claims as singularly true. However, he must begin long before the advent of Christianity in history and must acknowledge plenty of high theological stakes on the way. Christianity is not, he contends, one more development in a long line of human contrivances. Not only is it utterly true, but Christianity itself offers the most complete account of human history. For one, it takes seriously what Chesterton calls the “main character” of history, man, which is more than he could say of Wells’ book. Second, it reckons with the divine man, Jesus Christ. These two preoccupations provide the structure of the work.
In part 1, “The Creature Called Man,” Chesterton makes a case for the absurdity of seeing mankind as a “product of nature.” He begins with the modern notion of the caveman and the elaborate but purely fanciful conjectures about that mostly literary bridge between the apes and modern man. After a wink at the ironies undergirding ideas of “prehistoric record,” he commends a moment of common-sensical and unprejudiced observation of the actual evidence about early man.
“What was found in the cave was not the club, the horrible gory club notched with the number of women it had knocked on the head. The cave was not a Bluebeard’s Chamber filled with the skeletons of slaughtered wives; it was not filled with female skulls all arranged in rows and all cracked like eggs.” What we actually find in these caves— like France’s Lascaux or Altamira in Spain—these
windows into the life of early man in the “morning of the world”, is art. The art is even, all things considered, pretty good (as Chesterton, whose primary training was as an artist at the Ruskin School, would know better than most). “Art is the signature of man” and points to humanity’s early devotion to pursuits of no evolutionary value along with his striking lack of kinship with the other elements of the natural word. “The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being, almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one.” Chesterton concludes that any theory which does not account for this evidence of a human nature-from-beyond-nature cannot be taken too seriously. Having thus significantly battered the materialist thesis of human development, he effectively accomplishes the goal of part 1 but will go on to discuss comparative religion, the development of mythology, and (though he allows himself a little modern hedging about actual demons) spiritual warfare throughout history before turning to the “The Man Called Christ.”
Part 2 begins at the very center of the book with the God-man at the very center of history. Chesterton is not so interested in forensic evidence for things like an empty tomb as he is in the uniqueness of Christ’s claims about Himself and how those claims are vindicated throughout history. Here Chesterton reveals he is not blind to the theological stakes behind his ostensibly historical questions. “There is a sort of notion in the air everywhere that all religions are equal because all the religious founders are rivals; they are all fighting for the same starry crown. It is quite false. The claim to that crown, or anything like that crown, is really so rare as to be unique.”
He means that Christianity is actually singular among religions of the world in having a founder who actually claimed to be the Creator of the world. Zoroaster or Mohammed or Socrates may have claimed to be a servant of that creator, but Christ’s claim to be God Himself, come down to live among and as one of His creatures is utterly
strange and unrivaled in history. As proof of this espoused divinity, Chesterton points to the survival of the Church.
Christianity has suffered, by his tally, “Five Deaths of the Faith” in times of great persecution or heresy and seemed destined to vanish from the earth. And yet it has always returned, often by unexpected and unlooked means (what Chestertonian J. R. R. Tolkien would call “eucatastrophes”). Chesterton, who had made a high-profile entrance into the Roman Catholic Church just three years prior to writing The Everlasting Man, insists early on that the book is “not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic” and any other sort of Christian. In spite of (or because of) this, he skirts any discussion of Renaissance-era “controversies” (i.e. the Reformation), explaining that he plans to give the subject a book of its own, and seems to forget about the Great Schism altogether.
Nevertheless, the examples he does cite of the unlikely and exuberant reflowering of the Church (after the near-total dominance of the Arian heretics or in the midst of the barbarian conquests and radical isolation of the “dark ages”) testify of the divine life that sustains it and sets it apart. “God also was a Cave-Man,” Chesterton states in the very heart of his book, “and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously colored, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures he made had come to life.” It is a line so good you wish, as you read it, that the book could end there, but it does not. He will go on for seven more (brilliant, beautiful, and mostly intelligible) chapters; a perfect example of his tendency to draw so near the heart of a matter only to spin away again into another series of elliptical orbits that will carry him far afield before the next inevitable return.
Essayist Isaiah Berlin, adapting a line of Greek verse, once observed that great thinkers and artists could be divided into one of two categories: hedgehogs and foxes. “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” As examples of foxes—“those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory,” who “lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal”—he names Aristotle, Herodotus, Montaigne, Shakespeare. Plato, Dostoevsky, and
Dante are all hedgehogs—those who “relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent . . . a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance.”
G. K. Chesterton is most assuredly a hedgehog. In the opening pages of The Everlasting Man, he builds an analogy around England’s White Horse, the massive and ancient chalk image set into the hills of Essex. He imagines a boy who lives in these hills leaving home to discover something remarkable and realizing, upon getting some distance away and glancing back homeward, that he has grown up in the midst of this white-stone wonder, too close to take in its complete form and appreciate it for the marvel it was. Chesterton is very nearly the boy; though he knows about the White Horse, he cannot show it to us entire while we are guests in his house. Instead, in awe of the image (and seeing it clearly in his head), he leads us lovingly from stone to stone, and only when we take our leave and have gone some way down the road can we look back and grasp the full significance of everything he said.
He is so deeply rooted in the heart of one big idea that he cannot get his mind around it sufficiently to get it into a sentence.
He never utters, for instance, the phrase “the everlasting man” in the book that bears that title. But when you have turned the last page and gone a little way down the road you begin to see that he was saying it on every page. The babe born in the cave is somehow also the prototype for all of the men born beforehand and after; the birth in the cave is somehow the center of human history but also its beginning and its end; the Divine Logos has made the world before the beginning of history but somehow that making is informed by a remaking that occurs at the center of history. “The evolutionist stands staring in the painted cavern at the things that are too large to be seen and too simple to be understood…because he cannot see the primary significance of the whole.”
Because he can see the primary significance of the whole, G. K. Chesterton stands in the cave of the Incarnation contemplating a Word that is too simple to miss and too great to be uttered.
God love him for trying.
To teach is to tell stories. I think about this quite a bit, especially in March every year.
My late grandmother, Betty Jean Smothers, was born on a dreary March day—the Feast of the Annunciation to be exact—in 1943 in Magnolia, Arkansas. Although she seemed to wear many hats, she, in truth, embodied the role of a teacher for me. She was the matriarch of our family, the chief storyteller, the one who saw each of us for who we were and where we came from.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s notion of storytelling in The Canterbury Tales is that telling stories and listening to others tell their own is the essence of life. So, that means a master teacher is a sort of encyclopedia of stories worth passing down, and the adventure of the vocation is to hunt down said stories. I’m a seventh-grade humanities teacher now, and I can’t help but think that Nanny (my grandmother) has something to do with that. I grew up in the home of a master storyteller, so why wouldn’t I become a teacher myself?
My curriculum is part of an ancientmedieval-modern history and literature cycle that begins in third grade and concludes with a faculty-guided capstone in twelfth grade. Seventh graders are in the middle of this cycle. In fact, middle schoolers are in the middle of just about everything. For some it’s a growth spurt; for others, puberty; for still others, a debonair dash for renown and romance. They’re a strange bunch, and it’s a peculiar joy to work with them.
My curriculum begins with Decius, Diocletian, and the blessed martyrs made on their watches; it ends with the English Reformation and Shake-
1. Judges 3:17 (ESV).
speare’s England. For anyone counting, that’s about 1,300 years—1,300 years of people living and dying, loving and leaving, betraying and forgiving; 1,300 years of poets, priests, and prophets telling stories. Picking only a few stories to tell from that span of time is a daunting task. Of the countless possibilities, which stories should I tell?
All master teachers become such by knowing which stories to tell their students. Master teachers perform and vibrantly embody their curriculum in the classroom, inviting young minds to taste and see the riches of its morals and joys. Master teachers teach their curriculum with their lives, and I want to get there one day, but a nagging question has arisen for me on repeat this year: How do I know which stories of the medieval world to share with my seventh graders?
My answer surprised me, and to explain myself requires that I tell you the story of a grotesque, wicked king and an Old Testament sacrifice.
The book of Judges records dark times for the Israelites. Neither Samuel’s warning against establishing a monarchy nor the scoldings of Moses convinced them to not romanticize their captivity in Egypt, so they turned from the Lord and suffered with the idols Baal and Molech for a time.
During Moab’s domination of Israel, King Eglon ruled with an iron fist and maintained the worship of idols in the land, but the thing he was most known for was his size: “Now Eglon was a very fat man.”1 If you’ve read the Old Testament up to this point, this description will strike a chord with you. Imagery surrounding eating is there from the beginning. The serpent’s deception in the garden centered on eating
rather than fasting, a point St. Basil the Great taught on at length. Meals bookend the story of humankind. The first Adam’s meal brought sin and frailty to all, but the marriage supper of the Lamb awaits the blessed company of all faithful people at the end of the world; the manna from heaven sustained Israel in the wilderness, and the Eucharistic meal nourishes the Body of Christ in exile.
When Moses delivers the law to the people of God in Leviticus, food is of central importance. The blood, the flesh, and the fat are all liturgical matter, and the fat specifically “is the Lord’s.”2 The fatness of Eglon, then, suggests he has taken what rightfully belongs to the Lord. This drama of gluttony plays out in Judges 3:
And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, “I have a message from God for you.” And he arose from his seat. And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.3
That’s right. Eglon was full of it. His guts spilled their spoil all over his lap and ran onto the floor. Covered in his own excrement, Eglon died the death of a hog in the mud. Just as the once-lovely Lucifer was reduced to the role of a serpent in the garden, mighty Eglon descended into a mud bath like a fattened pig. The description is nasty, but sin is poop. Dealing with sin directly isn’t for the squeamish. It takes a doctor’s hand to cure souls, and doctors certainly can’t be too prudish to deal with bodily fluids. If you tell this honestly to a middle school Old Testament class, they will likely laugh. If we could chuckle at the tale of Eglon’s cruel death, we might be the better for it. If anyone can laugh in the face of the world’s cruelty, it must surely be God’s people. Joy comes in the morning, so why not get a head start?
If sixth-graders in a Bible class read this passage from Holy Scripture and laugh, then they’ve understood something. And when their seventh-grade teacher asks them what poop represents in the Old
2. Leviticus 3:16 (ESV).
3. Judges 3:20–22 (ESV).
Testament, they laugh a bit before exclaiming, “idolatry!”
It is a Thursday afternoon just after lunch when I say to my class, “The joy of the Lord be with you!” to which they jumble in unison, “And with thy spirit.” I say a prayer, and they sit awaiting some instruction. I tell them I’m going to read them something from The Canterbury Tales. We had just closed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the next week we would begin Shakespeare’s Henry V. In other words, I can only choose one or two stories from Chaucer to read to them. A good teacher, I tell myself, knows how to pick the right ones, so that’s what I try to do. They open their highlighter-graffitied paperbacks and joke amongst themselves in bursts of raucous, uncontrolled laughter or lean into soundproofed circles with a whispered awe at who likes who. A moment goes by, and while their attention is settling on me, I tell them to turn to page 303.
“Today, I’m gonna tell you about the most classical fart in history!” I say with an ear-to-ear smile. Horror, disgust, and giggling spread like wildfire through our collective post-lunch malaise. It’s a rogue wave of emotion, and no one is safe because their evil captain, me (call me Ahab), is steering our crew straight into the storm. It’s up to me to pick which parts of The Canterbury Tales my students will encounter, so I choose “The Summoner’s Tale”—the most middle school story in this Christian poetic masterpiece.
It got mixed reviews. "The Summoner’s Tale” features a layman fallen ill—Thomas—and his benevolent wife, who had recently lost a child to illness; it chronicles their interaction with a crooked monk. The monk in this case is a friar, a monk of a mendicant order (rather newfangled in Chaucer’s England) who travels around preaching about poverty for large sums of money. Once the parish fund is strapped to his nice leather belt, the friar moves on to the village people to beg for more money. Upon hearing about the woman’s dead child, the friar conjures up nice visions of the infant’s ascent to heaven before asking her to make him a monstrous meal (carrying all that gold makes a guy hungry, you see). Then the wife tells the friar about Thomas’s illness, which has made him a complete grouch: no snuggling in weeks and
The master teacher possesses qualities that young teachers can only hope to grow into, and one of those essential qualities is an abiding, contagious, and fearless pursuit of joy.
no gentleness, she tells him. But it’s their lucky day, as it turns out. The friar can diagnose and heal this ailment!
Thomas had been giving charitably to several monastic orders close by rather than devoting all his resources to the friar’s order. If you know the perfect doctor, the friar chides, why would you visit many rather than just the one? Why, the friar imposes, why would you not give all of that sweet money to the perfect doctor? Doesn’t Thomas want to be healed? Understandably, by this point, Thomas is sickly, uncomfortable, and peeved.
He tells the crooked monk that he feels in his gut that he wants to give him a gift.
The friar rejoices!
Thomas makes him promise to split the gift equally among the twelve fellow friars of his order and tells him the gift’s location: The friar has to stick his hands underneath Thomas’s blanket and behind his back. He’s blind to what’s coming next!
Thomas’s gut was in fact telling him something, and in this case it was screaming. The sick man let out a monstrously loud and offensive fart, which made the friar blush bright red in both cheeks and leave the house in a swarm of mumbled curses.
The friar has to follow through on his promise, though. He ponders how one might split a large cloud such as the one he’s holding when Thomas’s servant comes and devises a plan to split it equally among the friars. It’s a contraption at whose top Thomas sits ill and full of vehement gas and at whose bottom are the twelve friars. The rest you can imagine, I hope.
“The friar,” I plead, “isn’t a very good friar, right?”
My Catholic students, terrified, answer first. Adultery, oath-breaking, stealing from the poor—he’s twisted! Yes, sometimes people are bad. They know that and
so do I, and they’ve just recently heard the story of St. Dominic and the Albigensian heresy, so they’re familiar with this high and laudable order of friar.
“Alright, so Thomas knows what this friar really wants, right?” I ask. They understand clearly the friar’s greed. Thomas is a desperately sick man who’s given his life’s wages to crooked convents who promise to pray for him but just pocket the money instead. His stomach is so upset that he growls like a beast when his wife tries to cuddle. Thomas cedes his poor will to the friar and promises to give something as long as the friar shares it equally among his fellow friars.
Before this, the friar flirts with Thomas’s wife and asks her to make him what sounds like an eleven-course meal. While she’s in a cooking frenzy and her husband sits in pain, the friar brags about how beneficial fasting has been for his spiritual life. In “The General Prologue,” this friar’s description is equal parts hilarious and disturbing. He spends money he shouldn’t, and he attempts to seduce women who come to him for confession by offering them pocketknives (a real catch) or singing his heart out at the local pub. In his penultimate line about the friar, Chaucer wants his audience to know that the friar’s name is Herbert.
Everything about this is obviously funny to my students. The friar thinks he’s really hot, but his name is Herbert; he sings too loudly at karaoke night and offers ladies pocketknives in a suave voice. His name is Herbert. My students remember that part especially. So Thomas is going to give the friar something, but it must be handled with generosity—split among his brethren. It must be given out with a liberal hand.
“Mr. Smothers,” a voice whimpers, “I know we read lots of books in your class, but should we really be reading
about nasty stuff like this?” And this, dear reader, is my moment.
To be honest, I’m glad my student asks this question. Her face twists as she evocatively annunciates nasty. I have her repeat the question for the class to hear. They pause and await my response, except for one boy in the back who says, “That priest was full of crap!” Rather than chagrin, my response is a chuckle and a resounding “yes!” He got it! Chaucer got through to him and taught him about moral corruption. As a matter of fact, this is the essence of a Great Books education. Chaucer, in his masterful poesy, taught us all something, and he did it through mirth. Chaucer bound up this truth about moral virtue, greed, and prayer in a grotesque illustration, and now I get to see my students both laugh and understand.
G. K. Chesterton speculates in his classic work Orthodoxy that our Lord was somewhat reserved or shy in His displays of mirth. He writes, “There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”4
My answer to this sweet twelve-year-old (who will one day certainly be my congresswoman) is twofold: joy is at the end of the world, and sin is nasty. Joy is there in the Annunciation, in the Visitation, in the walks Adam takes with the Lord in the cool of the evening; there is joy in Jairus’s resurrected daughter and the empty tomb of Lazarus. Joy overflows at the Easter Vigil and Midnight Mass, and it teaches the young and old, the new and experienced, all the same.
Sin is nasty—Cain’s shameful murder, Noah’s drunkenness, King David’s unbridled passions. “Nasty” doesn’t quite cover it, though, for a reader of the Old Testament. Sin is often grotesque! Its overabundance is an affront to the polite or overly prudish reader. King Eglon’s gross greed wouldn’t be as powerful if his body didn’t sag under the weight of it. Noah’s drunkenness would be a bare proposition if his body’s nakedness wasn’t uncovered. Similarly, our Lord’s passion would be a tale among tales if it weren’t for His human body hanging there, water and blood
flowing from His pierced side, His precious blood staining that fateful trash heap outside of Jerusalem.
The grotesque can be offensive and the bawdy immature, but rightly ordered in great stories, they can be the vehicles of a student’s realization. In the Gospels, the grotesque torture and death of Our Lord serves as a meditative object for myriad prayers and devotions, such as the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary or the Solemn Good Friday Liturgy. But, of course, Good Friday comes not without Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, when Jesus thunders at the gates of hell and sets the captives free, coming out with Adam and Eve at the forefront. And then there is His glorious rising from the dead, His walk to Emmaus, and then His wonderful Ascencion. Not to mention the glory of Pentecost, when the cup runneth over so viscerally, so audibly as to make people think the first gasps of the newborn Church were the utterances of raving drunkards. With these scenes in mind, how much more, then, should we anticipate the grotesque joy at the end of the world, when our Lord will remake all things and wipe away every tear?
Mirth is an underrated metric for weighing the worth of the stories we teach. Each opportunity for joy in the middle school classroom is an anticipation of heaven. Each encounter with the grotesque in this life is anticipation of the abundant mirth awaiting at the end of time, when the blessed company of all faithful people will come to the marriage supper of the Lamb. The master teacher possesses qualities that young teachers can only hope to grow into, and one of those essential qualities is an abiding, contagious, and fearless pursuit of joy.
The fat that filled Eglon with dung should have been the Lord’s only, but it will be served to us in abundance at that great feast at the end of time. Grotesque, abundant, ridiculous joy awaits us there, where the Lord says, “And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood until ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you”.5
4. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London and Beccles: William Clowes and Sons, 1908), chap. 9, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm#CHAPTER_IX_Authority_and_the_Adventurer. 5. Ezekiel 39:19 (KJV).
BY ADAM BEACH
CÆDMON, AMONG THE UNCRITICAL COWS
Humble herdsman and keeper of cows
What weird word awoke in you Those first fresh lines wherein Fresh mongrel tongue found fast form?
I wonder if your uncritical cows
Grazed with new delight
As they heard the first carmen cry On early-air that English morning.
And here tonight, under easy stars, I sleep to dream of lays In middle-earth where Splendor soars in singing.
POETRY
Graduate Education for a Renewed GENERATION OF SCHOLARS
Classical Education
Designed for the working teacher, classical education programs at the Braniff Graduate School will help you deepen your understanding of the Western intellectual and moral tradition. Our graduate degree in classical education can be completed with or without a thesis. The entire degree can be completed 100% online.
Classics and English
Also designed to accommodate teachers, the master’s degree programs in classics and English - taught on our campus in Irving - will prepare you for advanced work in these fundamental fields and enrich any career.
Doctoral Program
The Braniff Graduate School confers one PhD with three possible concentrations: literature, philosophy or politics. All students address enduring questions of truth together in a core curriculum that synthesizes these disciplines, preparing them to teach excellently and contribute extensive, original research at the highest level of scholarship.
Visit udallas.edu/classical-ed
The University of Dallas Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts is committed to the recovery and renewal of the Western heritage of liberal arts and the Christian intellectual tradition. Each area of study is informed by a unique sense of paideia, the education of the soul, which attends to the person as a whole.
NUMEROUS INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS that occurred in recent centuries within the fields we associate with words (i.e., the humanities) brought radical new ideas to existing fields of study and spawned new fields in their wake. Hermeneutics, linguistics, semiotics, and certainly psychology all espoused advancement beyond ideas of a bygone era. Natural philosophy and natural history were merged into “science,” which together with the rise of disciplines previously categorized as the mechanical arts gave us STEM. The last discipline in this acronym, mathematics, has continued to provide fresh insights, but they have often been directed toward the service of technological development. Thus, we have a bifurcation between the disciplines of the humanities and STEM.
Meanwhile, the origin of the term logocentrism lies in questions of hermeneutics and semiotics and would seem to be a matter primarily, if not exclusively, of words. Surely framing the issue of logocentrism within the mathematical sciences would be a further encroachment of STEM into fields where it does not belong. But there was not always such a bifurcation between the study of words and the study of quantity. The very term Logos, often translated as “Word,” has far deeper connotations than a mere grammatical entity. In context, it also means reason or “ratio” in the mathematical sense. These latter two definitions, ratio and reason, come directly and indirectly from the Latin ratio. To showcase the mathematical nature of this word, we can point to its original definition: “to compute.” While ratio embodies both reason and mathematical ratio, it is separate from grammatical implications. When the Latin Vulgate used verbum for logos in John 1, we lost the mathematical undertones of the Greek. Indeed, when Euclid refers to a ratio in the Elements, it is always logos; proportion is analogos:
And let magnitudes having the same ratio be called proportional.
Clearly, logos is a term loaded with meaning; there is no need to parse or divide its implications. The ambiguity is helpful to retain in the discussion that follows.
I propose that effective dialogue takes place when communication is grounded in an external and unchanging reference. I further assert that mathematics is that sought-for unchanging reference. Recent advances in information theory and cybernetics have yielded powerful models of mathematical communications for machines and, possibly, for humankind. Yet philosophical ideas regarding the mathematical nature of the soul have their source in the Platonists of late antiquity. If some contemporary philosophers eschew the idea that we have true and meaningful intelligible understanding, should we expect better answers from engineers who speak of an artificial intelligence belonging to machines? No, we should not. But by capturing these scientific and technological advances and redeeming them with the quadrivial approach of old, we can gain fresh insights that will help us speak to these questions in our times. Taking Lewis’s speculation that “from Science herself the cure might come,”1 let us explore the fields of cybernetics and machine learning with eyes to the ancient views of mathematics and the soul. In the end we will find that the mathematical imagination is the faculty of the soul responsible for reasoned discourse and effective communication. Our logoi is grounded in the One Logos who transcends us and in whom we participate. Therefore, meaning is ultimately external to us, but we can still discursively reason together toward the truth.
Information Theory
We owe much of our current digital communications to two towering twentieth-century intellects: Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener. Their work on information theory and cybernetics facilitated the creation of electronic devices ranging from digital computers to targeting missiles to anything involving robotics. Information theory posits that messages can be encoded into signals, which are transmitted to and then decoded by a receiver. The encoding process involves translating the meaning of a message into a symbolic representation (such as numbers, letters, or
binary digits or “bits”). These symbols are then transmitted across a medium or channel. This channel has a capacity which limits the number of symbols that can be transmitted. Further, some amount of signal loss or noise can be present in the channel. Once the signal has traversed the channel and reaches the receiver, it is then decoded into a message for the recipient. Think of a phone call or a presentation given via microphone. Such devices have been developed and improved using information theory.
In the introduction to Shannon’s classic work The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Shannon’s promoter and popularizer, Warren Weaver, posed three questions: (1) On a technical level, “How accurately can the symbols be transmitted?” (2) On a semantic level, “How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning?” and (3) “How effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way?”2 The first question is far more significant than it might seem. This is due to the fact that since receivers are dependent upon signals, semantic meanings are limited by signal accuracies from the technical level.
However, Shannon’s work is more a theory of communication than a theory of knowledge; messages may be communicated that may not have meaning. Yet if the speaker’s words are garbled in transmission, clearly the desired meaning will not be properly conveyed. Richard Weaver, an early pioneer in this field, attempted to reduce meaning to the technical message itself. I propose instead that meaning lies outside the information system but can nevertheless be imbedded into physical information that is transmitted. This occurs during the physiological generation of physical words, whether by voice or by the technology of writing. Both of these can be characterized by mathematics. Written words can be mapped to arithmetical values (consider the recent advances in optical character recognition, which has been a boon for those aiming to digitize texts written in ancient languages), and spoken words can be analyzed trigonometrically using processes such as Fourier series (as seen by our ability to use dictation features on our
1. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Binghamton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., 1947), 47, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.88346/ page/n55/mode/2up.
2. Warren Weaver, “Introduction,” in The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude Shannon (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1963), 7–8.
phones and computers). Once mapped, both can be manipulated mathematically. This is what occurs in the translation process referred to as encoding. Sets of encoded symbols, as mathematical objects, can be quantified. The signature quantity in communication theory is information, which is a technical term for the logarithm of combinatorial probabilities of symbols and is related to the entropy of that set. However, details on these metrics are beyond the scope of this article.
As a brief example, consider a word as a string of symbols. When each symbol is transmitted, there is an associated probability distribution for the next symbol. To transmit “queen,” there would be a uniform one twenty-sixth chance for the first letter if all English letters were used equally; however, because English letters are not used equally, the starting probability reflects the usage distribution of the language. After the q is sent, there is a one hundred percent chance of a u following and a zero percent chance of all other letters thanks to the rules of English. Next, following the qu there is a high probability of vowels and varying degrees of low probability for consonants. Finally, when these symbols are transmitted across a channel, there will be a non-zero probability for noise to enter the set of symbols. Noise is the propensity for material conduits (such as air for vocal communication or a wire for digital communication) to scatter signals due to the molecular collisions that must occur for a physical signal to be transmitted. It has been proposed that one of the benefits of the complex history of the English language with its voluminous vocabulary is that its redundancy functions as a counter to signal loss. For example, many of the vowels used in English words are not necessarily useful (or rather are difficult for those learning English as a second language) but can serve as a reference and a check for misspellings or other miscommunications. That is, even if some letters (linguistic information) are lost in transit, the word as a whole can be reconstructed from what remains. The causes for noise can be traced to physical phenomena in a particular channel. (The increased usage of fiber optic cables in recent decades demonstrates the pre-
The power of information theory is found in using deterministic mathematics along with probabilistic quantities. Probability theory allows for both mathematical metrics and manipulation while avoiding certainty and determinism. Together, they make a science (a scientia—a knowledge) of the unknown. Further, the role of a transmitted signal in this theory is akin to “participation” between sender and receiver. By sending a message, the sender aims to affect the receiver (recall Weaver’s third question above). Finally, these sent messages “go out” and suffer from dispersion.3 Longer channels lead to more noise than shorter ones because the signal has greater opportunity to disperse into the medium.
Cybernetics
From the seed of information theory the field of cybernetics sprouted. The ability to transmit messages via mathematically quantified information in the form of a signal opened the door to digital communication. A consequence of the logarithmic nature of information is the efficient use of binary arithmetic. It was Shannon, again, who recognized the ability of electronic circuits to manipulate binary states in order to perform logical operations and encode or decode such messages. From here, we can see the basic schema of the digital computation machine, or computer.
However, in the decades following Shannon, further research was conducted on the manipulation of signals that required live adjustment or feedback. A prime example would be the desire in the mid-twentieth century to have guided missiles that can correct their course toward a moving target. The mathematics involved require a study whereby the output signals of a processor are fed back into its own input. Many possible feedback schemes exist, and applications where those schemes are used are collectively referred to as control systems.
Such analysis had already begun in the century prior with the physicist James Clerk Maxwell referring to the “governor” of a steam engine. The father
3. While messages that suffer dispersion generate noise, there can also be sources of noise introduced externally. Hence, noise and dispersion are related but distinct. mium value of channels that clearly transmit rather than scatter signals.)
of the modern twentieth-century field, Norbert Wiener, dubbed the field “cybernetics” from the Greek κυβερνήτης (kubernētēs or cybernetes). The motivations for choosing this term were two-fold, according to the author: firstly, the Greek term refers to the pilot of a ship in texts such as Plato’s Republic; secondly, the English word “governor” is a corruption via Latin of κυβερνήτης, and “cybernetics” pays homage to Maxwell’s original term.4
The contributions of this field toward the development of modern machines are vast and indisputable. But an additional, perhaps unnerving, incursion of this field is found in the application of such theories to the human brain. The full title of Wiener’s definitive book is Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine 5 The discourse explores the analogue of electric circuitry and the human nervous system. At first glance, the discussion of bodily control and motor functions seems straightforward enough. But a second step was made to link the feedback model, with added complexity, to the human brain to understand personality and psychopathy. Pioneers in the field of cybernetics promised the improvement of impaired motor functions. However, they also advocated the use of lobotomy as a means of treating psychiatric illness—one should separate the “problematic” region of the brain just as one would disconnect any hardware responsible for a malfunction in a digital system. The cybernetic model of the human as espoused by its founders reduces the psyche to a material mechanism and the whole to the sum of its parts. While Norbert Wiener made several calls for ethical considerations in Cybernetics and its application to society and warfare, his underlying materialism has profound problems for forming an understanding of the soul. He notes that the materialism of his day was not sufficient to give a complete model of the soul, but he continued the project nonetheless. Attempts at such an analysis raise many questions (and perhaps a few protests) for those who adhere to a classical understanding of the human soul. Yet I propose that the issue is not fundamentally related to positing a relationship between mathematics and the soul (even if quantity has been used in the service of materialist and mechanical models). How then do
mind, soul, language, and message relate to systems, signals, and mathematics? In what follows, I will argue that (a) we should embrace the mathematical nature of linguistic messages because reason is mathematical and was understood as such in the Platonic tradition and (b) that the soul is the seat of human reason and is therefore fundamentally mathematical. In short, the soul is mathematical, but the intellective (nous) is beyond mathematics and characterized by a direct form of knowledge, according to the Platonists. Consequently, there is an analogue between the Platonic placing of mathematical reasoning under higher dialectic and the role that mathematical communication plays in meaning and truth within a reinterpreted information theory.
Platonism
Plato’s political and philosophical project hinged on educational formation through mathematics. The quasi-quadrivium proposed in the Republic (arithmetic, geometry, stereometry, astronomy, and harmonics) for future leaders of society comes on the heels of his Analogy of the Sun, the Divided Line, and the Allegory of the Cave. In those latter passages, Plato builds a parallel ontology-epistemology whereby the soul makes its ascent by moving from the sensory world—where one can only have opinion—to the Good, of which one can have knowledge. Mathematics, then, is the perfect exercise for this endeavor, as it studies real incorporeal entities that occupy an intermediate place between the world of the senses and the realm of the Good. While Plato is well known for his theory of forms, it is less than common knowledge that Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy sought to address the extent to which the forms are mathematical. Finally, Plato advocates for an incorporeal and immortal soul. Like the Pythagoreans from whom he learned much, he saw a link between the reality of mathematical entities and that of immortal souls. This philosophical framing underlies many of the points he makes throughout the dialogue regarding truth, knowledge, sophistry, and true philosophy. For example, Plato has Socrates make repeated appeals to truth over euphony, the pleasant sounds of
4. See Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965). 5. This book was published by MIT Press in 1948 and 1961.
rhetoric that obscure rather than reveal the truth. In the Gorgias and the Protagoras, he refutes that “man is the measure of all things,” countering the reality of virtue against mere conventionalism. A common theme in these dialogues is the importance of the immortal soul for the appeal to virtue. In the Philebus, the hedonistic life is critiqued on the grounds that pleasure has a multiplicity and dispersion to it. Themes of “the one” and “the many” are developed to highlight the importance of unity. (The one and the many are purported precursors to numbers in the Platonic-Pythagorean tradition). The creation narrative of the Timaeus recounts the perfection of the eternal and intelligible paradigm, which is used to generate the cosmos out of the plenitude of the receptacle. The paradigm is eternal and unchanging (like mathematics), and the receptacle (or matter) is multiplicity; the One spreading out over the multitude is the cosmos. Standing as the intermediary between the paradigm and the receptacle, the divine Craftsman utilizes mathematics in a series of ratios, which are also responsible for the harmony of the world soul. Recall again that mathematics is the discipline that teaches us how to find the one out of the many, just as trained souls ascend into unity with the Good but will descend in dispersion. However, this ascent can require a circular movement. For example, in the Phaedrus, the soul encircles the beautiful in a cyclical act of contemplation, which unifies the soul to the Good. The cyclical nature of the soul also plays a role in the Meno, where the slave, through discursive reasoning with an interlocutor, recollects the mathematical proof for doubling the square. The philosophical reason for this cyclical course is due to Plato’s ideas about motion and time in the cosmos. According to Plato, the forms are unchanging (they lack motion) while the physical cosmos is always in a state of flux. The soul occupies an intermediate place: it is created yet incorporeal; it partakes of time but is everlasting. Therefore, the soul has motion, but it is an everlasting and unchanging type of motion: a cyclical self-motion. Reasoned discourse thus requires a discursive aspect, an idea echoed (albeit for differing background reasons) in the modern concept of the hermeneutic circle—a notion of literary interpre-
tation that depicts a reader’s circular comparison of parts and whole when understanding a text.
Consider how the ideas of stability and flux play a role in the Cratylus dialogue, which is named after a Heraclitean philosopher who was purportedly one of Plato’s first teachers. This work addresses the reality of names—that is, whether there are natural links between sounds and referred objects or if names are mere conventions. A key point is criticism of Heraclitus’s flux ontology: if one cannot step into the same river twice, then there is not steadiness to the object—and one cannot step into the river even once! The dialogue leaves Cratylus pointing at objects because he purportedly cannot use spoken words. Doing so would require making reference to a steady object; if all is changing, there can be no reference made. Names therefore require stable objects. Returning to the Republic, the forms are the sought-for stable entities. Similarly, numbers and their relations to one another as well as geometric demonstrations are unchanging. Education in mathematics is therefore ideal for training the soul to ascend into the higher realm of unchanging reality.
From the dialogues of Plato, subsequent commentators would speak to a series of interrelated triads: mind, soul, and body; dialectic, reason, and sense; knowledge, understanding, and opinion; forms, number, and nature. So, then, soul is associated with reason, understanding, and mathematics. For example, Iamblichus in his Protrepticus (Exhortation to Philosophy) says (1) that (quoting Archytas) “intellect is the supreme part of the soul judging by reason and discursive knowledge what is right,”6 (2) that divinity has engraved upon us universal reason (logou) in which are the forms and the significations of nouns and verbs, (3) that the pursuant of philosophy should acquire virtue and the mathematical sciences, and (4) that “continuing to contemplate ever more distant and separate natures, with the composite formed of the many and the one, he composes and reckons together the multitude of things according to the reason-principles (logos) of numbers.”7 Similarly, Nicomachus writes in his Introduction to Arithmetic that “it is reasonable [eulogōs] that the rational [logikon] part of the soul will be the agent which puts
6. Iamblichus, Iamblichus: The Exhortation to Philosophy, trans. T. M. Johnson (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988), 21. 7. Iamblichus, Exhortation to Philosophy 24.
in order the irrational [alogou] part,”8 making clear the virtuous benefit of the study of number. Finally, Proclus further links the cyclical nature of the soul and its study of mathematics in the introduction to his Commentary on Euclid’s “Elements.” He plays on the dichotomy between the incorporeal world of the intellect where knowledge (episteme) is found and the corporeal world of the senses, which can only muster opinion (doxa). Placed in the middle is the world of the soul, which can access understanding (dianoia) through discursive reasoning. These intermediate forms can be studied with mathematics because they bridge the gap between the divisible and the indivisible, between the multiform and the uniform. These mathematical soul-forms are neither fully intellective (noetic) objects nor bodily but are described by Proclus as images (and therefore the desired objects for the soul’s imagination). Mathematical objects “come therefore from the soul, which adds perfection to the imperfect sensibles and accuracy to their impressions.”9 Further on he claims that “the soul produces them by having their patterns in her own essence and that these offspring are the projections of forms previously existing in her.”10 Plato, in Proclus’s view, posited that the soul was crafted mathematically and that all the mathematical objects we imagine originate in the soul. The study of mathematics is not a static intellection or a dispersive sense perception but rather a procession between universals and particulars and back again. Further, mathematics is to metaphysics as education is to virtue. As education inculcates habits, so mathematics prepares the mind for the higher science of first philosophy. Seeing mathematical beauty brings us to the beauty of the divine. Thus, we come to the final point in Proclus’s thinking in the text: Science (episteme) is a knowledge of universals and apprehends the logos, or cause, of the object of study. Mathematics is therefore the second highest science (after metaphysics). The soul is constituted of mathematical ratios. Just as the soul sometimes receives motion from the intellect and is also a source of motion for bodies, so mathematics
is a true science that is able to make conclusions from premises but still requires starting hypotheses.
Platonic Information Theory
To bring together the philosophical discussion, a few points should be made in brief regarding information theory. According to Shannon, information shares the entropy metric with other thermodynamic quantities such as temperature and pressure because all such quantities are hierarchical, participatory, and dispersive. That is, just as heat flows from high temperature to low temperature and spreads out over the domain until a uniform temperature distribution is reached, so electromotive force (voltage) spreads as current throughout a circuit. This latter physical process is how encoded information is transmitted for electronic communication devices and how entropy measures the arrangement of these quantities. The entropy metric increases with the dispersion of these quantities and maximizes when equilibrium has been reached. When a system has maximized its entropy, its driving force (such as thermal energy or information) has been spread out and consequently weakened. The popular explanation of entropy as disorder would here mean that a signal has been sufficiently randomized so that a message cannot be distinguished from noise. Messages originate from a source of information, which encodes them in a system (hierarchy), which then propagates signals through a connected medium (participation) whose efficacy is dependent on whether the original message is coherently transferred or scattered in the medium (dispersion) and decays into noise. These themes of hierarchy, participation, and dispersion are all found in the philosophical system of Platonism.
The soul’s movement in its reasoning capability parallels a (modern) communication system’s transmission of signals because both are fundamentally mathematical. The Platonic tradition bears witness to the mathematical nature of rationality. Claude Shannon, among others, not only showed a method for the mathematization of signals but developed a sci-
8. Nicomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic, trans. Martin Luter D’Ooge (New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1926), book I, chapter XXIII, section 4.
9. Proclus, Proclus: A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s “Elements,” trans. Glenn R. Morrow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 20.
10. Proclus, Commentary, 18.
ence of information theory effective enough to bestow modern communication systems upon us. For the Platonists, the reasoning soul is the intermediate between the intelligible mind and the sensory body. For a given interpretation of information theory, symbolic messages or signals are an intermediary between meaning and noise. Clear signals have an inherent unity to them (the entropy of unity is zero). Properly received messages bring understanding between speaker and hearer. There is a unity between them that the Platonists would recognize as shared participation in the intellective. On the contrary, signal dispersion is a decay into multiplicity and a loss of the potency of the signal. With enough dispersion, the signal is lost, and the receiver does not receive the message.
One can speculate that the Platonists of antiquity would be well pleased to find a mathematical theory of communication. After all, they argued that souls themselves are mathematical and that mathematics comes from the soul. Naturally, the soul should be trained in mathematics. Doing so develops intellectual habits toward gaining understanding (dianoia). The last two thinkers have more to say about the soul and reason, but rather than taking a mathematical focus, emphasis will be placed upon the logos aspect of reason.
The Logos of Christian Platonism
Like Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysios’ Divine Names identifies a triad of Mind, Life, and Being and posits an ontology of radiating goodness. He is notable for his transformation of Platonic henotheism within Christian monotheism through apophatic theology. Dionysios has much to say about Mind, Truth, Word (Logos), and Faith. While lacking the robust incarnational approach, which will be supplied by Maximos the Confessor (see below), Dionysios still has several particularly Christian thoughts about the Logos. These help bridge the gap between the mathematical Platonism of the Hellenes and the Logocentric Platonism of the Christians and allow us to see the intermediary analogies between mathematics, dianoia, and logos.
Dionysios posits that there is an outflow of wisdom from God, who is beyond wisdom. Angels or incorporeal intelligent beings receive this wisdom directly, albeit mediated, through the ranks of their hierarchy. However, souls such as ours must circle discursively in order to concentrate the many into one. In the radiating hierarchy, God knows things in Himself and projects them outward from Himself. The cosmos, the “arrangement of everything,” is an image and semblance of His projection. Wisdom therefore links sources and goals, from unity to ends, with knowledge being a unity between knower and known. Thus far Dionysios echoes Proclus’s ideas of incorporeal intelligence, souls as discursive and image-laden, and knowledge as unity. Dionysios lacks an explicit reference to mathematics (the notion of an “arrangement of everything” carries some implicit weight) but speaks directly of God as the Logos who carries in His unity the cause of all while reaching into the end of all. This Logos is simple, transcendent, and independent. As the Logos is unifying in its simplicity, so knowledge unites the knower and the known, and the believer will find a unity in the true faith.11 Faith revolves around the Logos, yet faith is “unwavering knowledge.” For Dionysios, the faith of Christians is assurance of the truth of their beliefs. Faith is still a cyclical motion in the discursive soul, but it now has stability and assurance to it. Thus, in Dionysios’ thought, faith and truth are united. One of the preeminent interpreters of Dionysios is Maximos the Confessor, who worked to clarify the ideas of Dionysios, especially those in his On Difficulties, or The Ambigua. In particular, Ambigua 7 gives attention to the Logos12 and the logoi out of which the cosmos is generated. For Maximos, there is one Logos, who is Christ and God. All things are related to one Logos, from Him, through Him, and to Him. From the one Logos there are many logoi out of which created beings arise (there is one logoi for angels, another for humans, and so on).13 This thought parallels the late Platonist idea of the One and the henads but is distinctly Christian and orthodox. The logoi originate and are contained in the Logos. The creation of each human is an actualization of their potential in
11. Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), chap. 7. 12. Recall the difficulty in translating this term throughout the subsequent discussion.
13. Maximos the Confessor, On the Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, trans. Nicholas Constas, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 7.15–17.
their logoi. Maximos says that the many logoi are the One Logos (and vice-versa). In doing so, he appeals to the apophatic theological position that God is beyond being in a theological move comparable to the philosophical point made above that complete unity with the Good is a supra-rational act. He further develops the theology of theosis, the union with God, which is the culmination of salvation. The approach is not in a simple straight course as it would be with reason (logos), because the return to the one Logos is not complete in this earthly life. It is a searching with possibility of stumbling and falling astray.14 We waver and are yet unable to love with our whole mind—a pedagogical tool that reminds us to not love things that “do not exist” but to redirect our power toward what truly exists. Unity will ultimately be achieved not as air is breathed but as light fills the air, not as blood flows in the liver but as the soul fills the body. The drawing together of the many back into their one logoi is a convergence of unity and the end for us who are “portions of God.”
Mathematical models of the soul help properly place the soul in the same intermediate tier that the Platonists ontologically placed mathematics: incorporeal, real, and reasonable. This philosophical framing gives one the confidence to combat materialism and mortalism without resorting to problematic philosophical dualisms, or irrational spiritualisms. The inclusion of a logos-based understanding of the soul is particularly helpful for the latter cluster of ideas. Due to the challenge of the Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans, the Platonists of late antiquity developed a mathematical-imaginative psyche that is incorporeal yet natural. However, the price of establishing this teaching was granting a natural everlastingness and even a “reincarnational” nature to the soul. It was rather the outworking of the doctrine of the transcendent and incarnate Logos that gave Christian Platonists such as Maximos the ability to speak of a real, incorporeal soul that was created, participatory, and everlasting. While Maximos did not directly reference mathematics, his use of Logos and logoi can be used in conjunction with the ideas of the Platonists regarding the intermediate and mathematical nature of the soul and its implications for reason and communication. Taken together, we are presented with a new perspective on the mathematical basis of com-
munications that retains and even illuminates the role that our immortal souls play in the reasoned discourse grounded externally in the Logos.
Conclusion
To return to our original problem of communication, then, let the following summary suffice: Good dialogue brings unity; unity is mathematical. Reason is present in both, and the act of reasoning is a movement towards intellectual unity. Good souls must reason well, and mathematics is the preeminent training for this end. With mathematics and reasoning tied together, the nature of communication is demystified, and information theory is justified. Dialogos is the sending and receiving of logos. To state the contrapositive in translated terms, when speech is irrational, there is no dialogue. But reasoned dialogue is a unifying act that encircles the truth until the participating souls are united in it.
Information theory says just as much: when the symbols are transmitted properly, efficiently, and effectively, there is an ideal goal of a unitary probability, which means zero entropy or no dispersion. As much meaning that can effectively be communicated by word can also be characterized by the mathematical theory of communication. A meaning may require a multiplicity of messages with slightly varying symbolic sets. This is part of the hermeneutic circle. The probabilistic nature of information accounts for the uncertainty of given messages. Multiple varying messages for the same meaning helps reduce uncertainty and triangulate the original meaning of the sender. But what of episteme? Is there more to thought or idea than can be characterized by words? Of course. The Platonic category of noetic knowledge is suprarational in this regard. The realm of nous is hyperpsyche. Information theory cannot explain all noetic revelation in the same way that mathematics cannot capture all metaphysics. True knowledge and union with the Logos is only achieved in the life of the world to come, but information theory is quite effective for reasonable statements, which are anything that has meaning and can be expressed by word (logos).
BY ABBY PRIOR
KATABASIS
I bore you through the rugged hills, through caverns beneath the sea, near barrows where the dead men haunt; your fullness throned in me.
I carried you in flimsy rags, my back sore with your weight. I nursed you in our sad sojourn, your undistinguished fate.
Had you grown stiff along the way, I would have dug your grave, hands clawing at coarse sandy ground and signing with a stave.
Bright bowers decked our sky at times; we waded in still streams. I began to call you holy and saw your face run reams.
You came to walk in front of me, through thick brush lead the way. Your hands grew rough from diligence and beasts began to slay.
The lion, leopard and the wolf beneath your strength were bent, while their cruel blood turned into myrrh, anointing you in scent.
A warrior you bled in streams and slaughtered hell with light, then came to take me through the stars, I swaddled in your flight.
Classical education is expanding globally! In many countries, it has only begun to take root. The following interviews explore a burgeoning classical education in two different continents far from the US. While the differences in each context reveal unique challenges, the similarities reveal even more about this fundamentally human work of right education.
§
Sarah Flynn is a secondary teacher, mother to five children, and friend of deep thinking. She is a true generalist with degrees in science, arts, psychology, and education. She has taught cross faculty and became keenly interested in human flourishing during her time in public education system. During this time, she also discovered the classical education movement and has spent the past eight years re-educating herself in this great tradition. Convinced of the healing nature of the liberal arts tradition, Sarah founded Logos Australis in 2022 with the purpose of advancing classical education in Australia. To this end, she became a distributor for major US publishers of classical education resources, held conferences and events, and most recently launched a classical education journal Educere project to further develop the discussion in Australia. Sarah looks forward to the continued growth of this renewal in Australia, seeking to connect and give voice to the rapidly growing community.
Sarah lives with her family on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, Queensland and welcomes contact through her website Logosaustralis.com or email, contact@logosaustralis.com.
What drew you to founding Logos Australis, and what is its mission?
I founded Logos Australis as a way to promote classical education in Australia. I had discovered classical education through tutoring a homeschool coop, but other priorities took over at the time. I was isolated and excited for a number of years prior. I was teaching in the state system, studying psychology, raising a family, and it wasn’t an option to drop everything and homeschool.
In my teaching career, I was year on year alarmed at the disengagement of students and the gravity of the personal and social issues they were confronted with. It is clear to most teachers that the system is lacking something seriously, but the articulation of what it was exactly evaded me, even at a psychological level, until I understood the proposition that lies within the liberal arts tradition.
What is the status of classical education in Australia?
The status of classical education in Australia is probably something like twenty years ago in the US.
I was so convinced that I felt it a very simple decision to commit to this cause for the long haul, and after the pandemic, I was galvanised into action. I prayed a lot and had read and dreamed a lot. I had re-educated myself as a teacher as far as possible. I had begun implementing classical principles into my classroom practice, but I was not sure how to connect with others or what tangible next step I could take. One morning, I think it was the end of 2021, I woke up very early in the morning with a clear plan to get a website and start an online bookstore reselling classical curriculum at more affordable rate. Because of shipping costs, books and resources from America are very expensive here. I would ask the Americans to give me a distribution deal to make it cheaper, and I would use the website to build a community and promote the message of classical education. I even had the name for the business. So that was it. I purchased the domain name, and because I had contemplated and envisioned ideas for quite some time before, it fell into place peacefully. I started with one book, The Liberal Arts Tradition. I think I bought six copies from Classical Academic Press.
Maybe more. It is difficult to compare, because while aspects of culture and context are similar, there is a lot that is different. So looking at the Australian situation on its own, I would say classical education in Australia is in its infancy and growing rapidly. I see its growth occurring at multiple levels that I did not expect. I think in the US it had that long burn at the grassroots level, but here, because our regulatory environment is so different and our population is so much smaller, I am beginning to think that perhaps it takes less to get the attention of larger institutions. This is a good thing. The regulatory environment poses some real barriers. In contrast to the US, people cannot easily start up schools. The threshold from co-op to school is quite low. Once a co-op begins using outside teachers or drops off students, it technically moves to the legal status of a school. Because schools in Australia are heavily funded by public money, they are heavily regulated. So if families come to start a school they have a lot of bureaucratic processes to overcome. Significantly, they must demonstrate adherence to the Australian Curriculum and must employ registered teachers. Thus, the algorithm becomes complicated relatively quickly. Teachers need to be paid properly and the intellectual demand of aligning to the Australian Curriculum whilst being faithful to classical education principles can be a daunting prospect. Having said all that, in reality policy and legislation follows the will of the people, and I can see that groundswell increasing rapidly. I can see it in the jump in numbers of people attending events. Our first networking meetup in Queensland was in a small premises with about ten people in 2022, then a miniconference at the end of last year with over forty, and this year we have gone ahead in leaps and bounds. With the Andrew Kern tour, our Logos Conference attracted over 110 participants, including interstate participants. It was very exciting and daunting. It was definitely a case of providential timing when I started, because it was almost the same time that the Australian Classical Education Society was getting started in Melbourne and also several school projects were underway. We have had real flagship schools like Toowoomba Christian College and Campion College (a tertiary liberal art college), who have been teaching within the tradition for decades now. We also had the Charlotte Mason College, which has now sadly
closed, who operated for I think almost ten years and had grown out of the homeschooling movement. Recently, there are a number of other schools establishing around the country who are more or less explicitly liberal arts, including St. John of Kronstadt in Brisbane, St. Benedict’s in Adelaide, Hartford College in Sydney, and Covenant Christian College in Canberra.
I don’t want to miss anyone, but there are a number of independent schools either established or startups who are on the classical education journey. We are small but growing.
There is also a strong homeschooling community in Australia. Although this sector does have more freedom with curriculum than day schools, I do not believe that a very large percentage are specifically on the classical education pathway. I think it is much more common in Catholic homeschooling communities, and we do have amazing work being done by Classical Conversations. My friend Cheree Harvey is spearheading the growth of CC in homeschooling communities in Australia.
I mentioned earlier about institutional attention. It was exciting to note the incredibly positive reception that Andrew Kern received from some more high-profile individuals on his tour here. I have no doubt that this is in large part due to the amazing networking by tour manager John Smyth, but Andrew was well received by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, Notre Dame University, Campion College, as well as having opportunity to connect with some political figures who are concerned about the trajectory of education in Australia. After such small beginnings it was a real affirmation to witness this wonderfully sincere reception and engagement with the ideas of the tradition, and although it was not exactly new information (but literally the oldest story of our civilisation), to many educated leaders, the sense that there is this renewal coming that has a structure, a tangible shape, a workable solution and is not just some philosophers lamenting and screaming at the sky, I think was compelling for them. Everyone knows things aren’t right. Every classroom teacher I have ever interacted with would happily tell you the system is broken. From the bottom to the top, people know the problems, but we are not good at identifying solutions, at mapping a path for authentic change. I get cynical, most teachers do. The newest fad in pedago-
gy, the newest best “evidence-based’’ practice is often last cycle’s PD package rebranded to build someone’s resume. So to have a hold of this thing, this proposal to restore and renew a model of education with the potential to truly heal and produce human flourishing, well it’s a very exciting proposition.
So I think the status of classical education in the country at present is in reality minimal as far as the educational landscape goes, but it is poised to engage powerfully when the time is right. I watched a house being built across the road from my place many years ago. It seemed so incredibly slow. The earthworks, the plumbing, the endless concrete and foundations, but then, almost overnight the whole thing went up and was done like that. So we are in that foundational phase, I suppose. It is a complex algorithm to solve, but I don’t look too closely at the barriers; I look for opportunities and invitation.
What do you see as the major challenges classical educators will need to overcome there?
I touched on a number of these already. Many people, including myself, view the Australian curriculum, a national curriculum that governs the content and outcomes for K–10 classrooms, as a major challenge. I think opinion is hotly divided on this one. People who are successfully opening classical schools now find a way to accommodate the AC within the classical approach. However, there is the sense that with updated iterations of the AC, changes can be introduced that run culturally counter to the Tradition. Some of these criticisms are overstated but some are very valid. For example, I have done a lot of curriculum writing and am very aware that there is a great deal more flexibility (intentional) in the AC than is often assumed. It is designed to be adapted for indigenous communities in Alice Springs, to Jewish or Catholic schools in Sydney, to low socioeconomic regional state schools who struggle to find teachers. So there is what is on paper and the lived reality, and most regulators understand that at the operational level things are not simple. However, there is a concern amongst the classical education community, many of whom are Christian, around ideological creep: that the AC may be prone to being loaded up with ideological outcomes that make it more difficult to stay faithful to the liberal arts val-
ues and pedagogy. One example is cross-curricular priorities such as sustainability, indigenous perspectives, and Asia-Pacific perspectives. Now I personally don’t have a problem with these ideas in theory; however there is a challenge for classical educators to philosophically integrate these ideas into the Tradition, to maintain fidelity to the liberal arts approach rather than be drawn to a more activist narrative which is often a subtext under these terms. So the short way of saying that is, there is a fear that the AC can become politically weaponised in the way we see extreme examples of in the US.
The other barrier as I mentioned is the regulatory hoops required to start schools in this country. I have not started a school myself, but I have watched several friends in this process and it is onerous. On my visit to the US, I saw the freedom of not needing to have people with education qualifications teaching. But, on the other hand, in Australia schools receive significant government funding to open. Teachers are paid well. This means there are a lot more checks and balances involved, which becomes onerous for small-scale schools.
One other barrier I would like to touch on, which may be a little confronting but has been really crystallised in my mind since my return from the US, is the laconic Aussie attitude. This is very much my personal opinion and ideas I am still forming, but the sense of freedom in the US is tangible and inspiring. It is kind of sad, but there is this overhang on our psyche of British rule and penal colony. We have social service development, which is excellent for healthcare, but we do not have the community development that helps communities to thrive above dependency on institutions. So this is a barrier to classical education, because people in this country tend to sit back and wait for someone else to do it, and we need to take a leaf out of the American book and realize that no one else is going to do it. This is especially true for more conservative folks. The left have been brilliant at organisation and activism; they have been spectacularly successful at implementing social action in a range of issues over the past few decades. Those who care about the priorities of classical education in this country really need to seek a moral conviction and open-mindedness to say, “OK, what can I do right
now, what breadcrumb in my circle of influence can I follow to build this much-needed cultural renewal?”
Do you think classical education has to adapt to each place? Can it be the same in Australia and America and Africa? And if not, how do you see it manifesting in Australia?
One hundred percent it has to adapt. This comes down to defining classical education, and it is my view that classical education is a clunky term that actually means something like “true human culture.” If you trace the philosophical ideas of the liberal arts back to the fundamentals, what lies at the bottom are universal truths. We find the most fundamental questions being asked and answered over and over. What is man? What is this creation, this reality in which we live? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How, then, are we to live? Obviously, these are questions common to every human in every place in every time. So classical education is in essence the journey or story of answering these questions. Therefore, classical education must have unique iterations that are the same but different wherever it is found.
In addition, classical education is deeply relational and deeply real. It is therefore intimately connected with and reflective of the people and the places where it is being expressed. This is clear when you look at its origins and movement through what is often viewed as the monolith that is Europe. However, the truth is that this Tradition originated in the Mediterranean: Greece, Persia, the Levant, and North Africa. The geography is inextricably linked to the stories of the Odyssey and Iliad, to the works of Plato and Aristotle; the land informs the cultural expressions. Then on it moved into Italy and France, northern Europe and the British Isles, all along the way synthesising diverse people, environments, and stories. Norse mythology features heavily in the work of Tolkein, as does Greek in the work of Dante and Shakespeare. There is this incredibly rich interweaving of distinct cultural identity with cultural appropriation throughout the Tradition you don’t have to look too closely to see. To imagine that the canon is this kind of petrified artifact to be enshrined and venerated is making the same mistake that proponents of a utopian and pristine Australian Aboriginal culture make. Culture and tradition are
neither static nor fluid. They manage change and continuity through time and space. For instance, I play traditional Irish music. We learned orally from our “elders” in the folk community in Brisbane. They were very particular about how we should play the traditional music, but we were not in Ireland. So the music I play connects me to my blood, my ancestors, but it also connects me to my community with whom I have always played, and we have our own idiosyncrasies that belong only to us that make our music a synthesis ultimately of cultures. For a start, it’s too hot to play as fast as the cold climates. So we reflect our geography.
This is the same for classical education. This is in fact where the name of my business originates. The Logos, the Word, the revealed Christ, the great I Am, I believe is always seeking relationship and expression through His creation, through His people. Thus, Logos Australis is really a call, a proposal to the Australian community to consider, What is it that this Tradition, this true human culture might look like in this place and time? How can it be expressed through our connection to the country, to its myths, stories, places? How can it be expressed through the language and music of its people? I mean not exclusively indigenous peoples, which is often the case on such topics here. But inclusively, how do we all connect with this land, with respect for those who know it best, but also, how do we synthesize and appropriate appropriately in harmony with the Logos?
We have not had the opportunity to uncover exactly how classical education will be expressed in this country. However, I have great hopes that the Australian contribution to this cultural renewal will be unique and important. For example, our indigenous heritage sets out some patterns for relationship to the creation that may be more disconnected in other continents. As such, for areas of education relating to geography, natural philosophy, art, and ecology, we haven’t heard much of a well-developed discussion on these Quadrivium-type topics yet. I feel there is a great opportunity to explore mutually beneficial discussions with indigenous Australians and classical education. One thing I noticed on my trip to the States, which was very different to my daily life, was greater separation from the environment. We have so many birds where I live, and they are a daily part of our conversations and
interactions. I think that is an example of something unique to the classical education journey in Australia.
How can readers support Logos Australis?
If someone wants to find out more about how to partner or donate to my work, they can contact me at contact@logosaustralis.com. §
Cyndi McCallister graduated from Columbia International University with a BA in Biblical Theology and Education, and is a 2019 graduate of the CiRCE Apprenticeship. Currently, she is a graduate student at Belmont Abbey College in classical and liberal arts education. She has been mentoring teachers in Nigeria since 2022. Cyndi is also an instructor of the Lost Tools of Writing, British Literature, Greek Literature, Shakespeare, and LTW Senior Thesis with CiRCE Online Academy. While she loves mentoring and teaching, her greatest joy is reading to her grandchildren. Cyndi and her husband, Karl, reside in South Carolina.
What brought you to Nigeria?
At first, I went to support classical Christian education by offering a one-week training, but after hearing the needs of Nigerians, one simple trip has turned into a full, three-year teacher training program where I train Nigerian teachers in classical education. But to be more specific, the answer really begins with who brought me to Nigeria. Two of my dear friends from church, Jeremiah and Grace Gado, introduced me to a Nigerian community here in the States, and through them I began to learn about education in Nigeria and the needs there. Both Jeremiah and Grace work in education in Nigeria, and Grace served as a teacher at and principal of Kent Academy, a Nigerian Christian school, for many years. Their two oldest children, Ruth and Samkon—former NFL running back for the Green Bay Packers—attended KA before they moved to the US in the early eighties. Grace and I often shared conversations about classical education while I was still homeschooling. At the time, I was speaking regularly at various classical education events and mentoring other classical homeschooling parents;
it was natural to share the classical renewal movement with my friends, who were also passionate about education. When Grace and Jeremiah returned to Nigeria, a dream of visiting them in their home country for the purpose of sharing classical education with her school began to take shape in both of our hearts.
Traveling to Nigeria requires an invitation from a resident. Many charitable and religious organizations find it difficult if not impossible to serve there. To be invited is an extraordinary privilege in which I see God’s providence. Because of my relationship with the Gado family, the dream of going to Nigeria was finally realized in 2022. I traveled with Dr. Samkon Gado and a medical team to Nigeria, where I spent my time equipping and encouraging the faculty and staff at Kent Academy. During that week I unexpectedly found myself not only with teachers but also the grounds staff, laundry staff, kitchen staff, and dorm parents. Grace desired that everyone on campus understand classical education, not just the faculty. I remember thinking then how beautiful and appropriate her desire was. At the end of our time together, the teachers pleaded with me to return and stay longer. Because of my own experience as a CiRCE Apprenticeship graduate, a new dream was born in which a classical teacher apprenticeship might be established at Kent Academy.
No one person has all that is required for any one endeavor. A community is required. Knowing this, I reached out to my classical and church communities to pray and advise me before moving forward. The response was overwhelming. All books for apprentices and my travel expenses are covered by classical education publishers and generous donors. My mentors at Classical Conversations and the CiRCE Institute provided rich training that prepared me to serve well, and the Nigerians and the teachers at Kent Academy warmly welcomed me into their beautiful community.
What is the current status of classical education there?
My friend Zachs Kossen, the Academic Dean at Kent Academy, tells me classical education is gradually gaining popularity in Nigeria, especially among private schools. Yet he knows of only a couple of schools embracing classical education and only at the lower school level. Some teachers in the Kent Academy
Classical Teacher Apprenticeship (the teacher training program I lead) were unaware of classical education before I visited them in 2022. They are connecting quickly to what they are learning, and there is a growing enthusiasm among them. After my first visit, some teachers were able to attend a brief training at a Rafiki campus (a group of classical schools throughout Africa), but they are hungry for more instruction that works with their teaching responsibilities at KA. Because of travel conditions and economic concerns, not all training options for teachers are viable. To support their families, teachers must continue to work full-time while obtaining further education. KA, like many schools, is in a remote area that makes traveling to training difficult. Road conditions and safety are very poor, making travel undesirable. A school-based apprenticeship with a mentor visiting twice per year accompanied by online instruction throughout the school year is the perfect solution for them. So, this is what our teacher training apprenticeship offers.
Can you tell us more about your work there?
I led our first Kent Academy Classical Teacher Apprenticeship retreat in the late summer of 2024. Following the CiRCE Apprenticeship model, these teachers began reading Homer and practicing classical pedagogy for the first time. They really enjoy the retreats, which will take place twice each year, where they can receive uninterrupted instruction, practice classical pedagogy, and receive immediate feedback from me. We meet multiple times per month online during the school year. While the teachers are reading Homer, Shakespeare, and Socrates for the first time, I am becoming versed in Nigerian myths and literature through their patient tutelage. It is a beautiful mutual learning experience where we are discovering together what classical education looks like in their culture.
Currently, neither a BA nor a master’s degree in classical education is available for educators in Nigeria. To study classical education, a teacher would need to suspend their income and travel great distances, and this is not a possibility for any of the teachers in the apprenticeship, especially those supporting their families. Because of the financial and job opportunities that a degree offers, Nigerians greatly value education, so I am also working towards establishing
relationships with local universities so teachers can receive undergraduate credit, masters credit, or CEUs for their studies in KA’s apprenticeship program.
How has your work been received?
The faculty at KA is extremely grateful and very eager to learn. One teacher, who was quite skeptical about reading Homer, is now the most engaged in the literature discussions. They were visibly moved as we contemplated Telemachus longing for his father, a concept not unfamiliar in a culture where life expectancy is only fifty-three years. One of our apprentices died suddenly in a car accident earlier this year, leaving a son. Being orphaned is a reality they deeply understand. The theme of hospitality found throughout the Odyssey also has richer meaning in their culture, where an unexpected guest might appear in the middle of the night needing refuge and sustenance, much like Odysseus with the Phaeacians. In Nigeria, one is judged favorably or unfavorably based upon their heart of hospitality. This has made connecting with these timeless stories an unexpected joy. Besides the rich literature, they appreciate the classical-focused training while they are practicing daily in the classroom. Teachers and school leaders are excited to improve their teaching and assessment. They are very open to working with like-minded professionals, experienced classical educators, and mentors.
What challenges do you see classical education facing in Nigeria specifically?
When speaking about the challenges facing classical education in Nigeria, it is necessary to consider the context and condition of the country. Nigerians face unique daily challenges that are foreign to the West. The unstable infostructure often caused by political and economic instability fuels terrorism, disease, and unrest. Any one of these issues would close a school at least temporarily if not permanently in the US, but not in Nigeria. All these issues personally touch all the teachers and students at KA, yet they remain faithful and resilient. I traveled there to teach them about restful teaching in a place of unrest, but they are the ones who are teaching me. When I asked them what challenges they perceived classical education might en-
counter in Nigeria, not one mentioned anything from the list above.
Many of the challenges they named are not unlike our own. The apprentices at KA named training for school leadership and faculty as the top challenge impeding the growth of classical education in Nigeria, but they feel with adequate instruction they will easily be able to make the transition. They, too, must comply with national standards and testing to acquire certification. This is less daunting in the lower school, where they are moving towards a classical model. However, in the upper schools, they feel more intimidated by the task. Nigeria has adopted much of the modern educational philosophy in efforts to match the world education standards, and this includes Christian schools like KA. Schools feel pressure to integrate the classical model with their national curriculum so their students are accepted in the universities. Christian students are often discriminated against in the application process of schools and universities in the north where Muslim populations are higher, so they can’t afford any hindrances.
Nigerians also face unique challenges. The question of how to adapt a classical education to their own cultural context is one such challenge. One cultural concern is the problem of syncretism among Christians. This is the practice of combining animistic myth and ancient tribal customs and religion with Christianity. Because of this, there is a more cautious view of myth. It is very important for anyone walking alongside these educators to provide patient support, trusting the wisdom of their leadership as they consider these cultural issues moving forward.
In 2022, an electrical fire razed to the ground their classroom block, including their library. Materials are not readily available in the country, and shipping from the US can take months, making the acquisition of new materials a significant challenge.
Another challenge concerning an even more important resource is the attrition of teachers who move to other more lucrative jobs in search of a better income. Attrition occurs for multiple reasons, but the greatest are terrorism and income. A school in a particularly vulnerable area struggles to establish a base of strong teachers who are committed to stay and mentor young teachers. Many not only leave the school, but they also leave the country if they are able. For this
reason, the apprentices were gripped by David Hick’s words in Norms and Nobility, which states, “The supreme task of education is the cultivation of the human spirit: to teach the young to know what is good, to serve it above self, to reproduce it, and to recognize that in knowledge lies this responsibility.” The teachers in my apprenticeship show a growing eagerness to cultivate this in the young teachers and students on their campus, hoping they will be willing to endure so they might impact their school, community, and country. While these challenges seem great to a Westerner, the beautiful resilience of the Nigerian teacher is so much greater. They are the embodiment of Lewis’ quote from his sermon, “Learning in War-time:” “If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
This is very exciting! What can the reader do to support classical education in Nigeria and you as you serve there?
The greatest support anyone can offer is prayer. To mentor another soul is a very weighty task that requires humility at every moment. Also pray for gentle wisdom as I seek to respectfully serve these beautiful teachers in their unique culture. Pray for the school leaders as they continue to make wise decisions in transitioning to classical education. For those wishing to make a financial donation, you can make a monetary donation to the KA Classical Teacher Apprenticeship or purchase books. Those wishing to make a monetary donation may visit thejonahinheritance.fundraise.org
Lastly, don’t underestimate the daily faithfulness that you are practicing in your own classical school or home school. What you are doing in this classical Christian renewal, wherever you may be, is impacting Nigeria for Christ’s Kingdom, of which I and the teachers at KA are living proof.
CLASSICAL EDUCATION is concerned, as a matter of first importance, with the cultivation of virtue in our students. But we cannot have a reliable grip on what the virtues of a human being are without an accurate philosophical account of the nature of the human person—that is, without philosophical anthropology. This subject is especially important now given the widespread confusion about human nature and personal identity in our contemporary culture, including in our schools.
In this paper, I seek to do three things. First, I argue that the two dominant secular anthropologies in Western culture today—what I call the “Narrative Self” and the “Reductive-Materialist Self”—are harmful precisely because they have lost a logocentric perspective on human nature and thus any objective foundation for human meaning and value. Second, I briefly outline an alternative account of humans as essentially conscious, embodied creatures and elaborate on one strand of that account: the importance of the body in the development of virtue. Third, I attempt to draw out some practical implications of this account for classical education in general and teachers in the classroom in particular.
The paper is structured around six claims about philosophical anthropology, and my aim is to provide a framework for classical Christian scholars and educators to think through these issues.
I. Nearly all the major cultural controversies in the contemporary West are at their core disagreements about the nature of the human person.
Philosophical anthropology is the philosophical study of the human person. It is distinguished from the social science discipline of the same name in that it seeks to describe the fundamental, essential characteristics of a human being—what makes a human a human; what kind of being is a human. This difference in focus naturally leads to a difference in methodology: whereas anthropologists study the artifacts and practices of human cultures, philosophical anthropology (while never dismissing empirical observation as irrelevant) begins with metaphysics.
It is apparent—and I am hardly the first to note— that many of the deepest disagreements in our society today boil down to, or are at least partially created by, disagreements about the nature of the human
person. This connection is especially evident in the areas of biomedical ethics (abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy and reproductive technology, and so on) and sex and gender (especially gay marriage and transgender issues).
But the relevance of anthropology runs deeper and further. Consider the cluster of controversies around “identity politics”: critical race theory, feminism, D.E.I., affirmative action, reparations. Of course, these debates are engaged with other perennial questions, such as the nature of justice and the role of equality in a free and flourishing society. But they also critically turn on the significance of categories such as race and gender in a proper account of the individual person. Are the color of my skin and my biological sex of primary or secondary importance? Are minority categories given or socially constructed? Fixed or malleable? Likewise, the question of the death penalty is about justice, but how can we determine what constitutes a just outcome in such circumstances without first determining the value and final destination of a human life? One might suppose a topic such as animal rights or environmentalism is only tangentially related to anthropology. But consider the push in recent years to extend the concept of rights to nonhuman animals and even to objects in the natural environment such as trees, thus blurring any line we might assume exists between human beings and the rest of the physical world. Inevitably, how we view animals and the environment has profound implications for how we view humans. Or take questions surrounding the proper limits of the state and the rights of the individual: the welfare state, federal regulation and the “nanny state,” bodily and medical autonomy, pornography and recreational drug use, privacy and the “surveillance state.” Will a given behavior have a deleterious effect on human flourishing? If so, will the state acting paternalistically to proscribe that behavior and promote others do more harm than good to individuals? How can we be sure without knowing what kind of beings humans are?
Finally, no area of culture illustrates the differences between anthropological views more dramatically—and nowhere are the stakes higher—than debates about emerging technologies. Many questions in biomedical ethics have only now been raised due to newfound technological mastery over the human
body, from gender reassignment surgery to the definition of biological death to genetic engineering and human enhancement. And two of the most significant technological advances of our time in terms of their potential to revolutionize daily human existence— namely, virtual reality worlds (such as the metaverse) and artificial intelligence, or AI—also raise some of the most fascinating questions for philosophical anthropology.1
In each of the above cases, we can discern a guiding principle: ethical questions about how to live cannot be adequately answered without first getting clear on anthropological questions about who we are.
II. Nearly all of these disagreements about anthropology involve confusion about the natures and ends of the human mind and body.
Rather than defend this thesis by examining each of the controversial issues listed above in turn, I suggest we consider how such confusion is embodied in the two dominant secular anthropologies of the contemporary West. If I am right, then it is no surprise that distorted views of mind and body would reveal themselves in cultural clashes between those who accept these two anthropologies and those who hold to a classical Christian, or at least more traditional, anthropology.
The two secular anthropologies I have in mind I will call the “Narrative Self” and the “Reductive-Materialist Self.”
The Narrative Self anthropology says that the story you construct about yourself out of your feelings, desires, and free choices determines the deepest truths of your identity.2 This view eschews the third-person objective claims of the physical sciences in favor of first-person subjective interpretations of reality and in so doing strongly privileges the mind or soul over the body in determining who and what you are. The Narrative Self is ubiquitous in contemporary pop culture, from familiar phrases such as “my sense of identity” and “I identify as” to the memorable song lyrics of a long line of Disney princesses. It is also at work in the modern tendency to psychologize concepts such as harm and violence: if my inner life is the most im-
portant part of me and the final word on the deepest truths about me, then naturally I would treat anything that causes it distress, even simple disagreements and criticisms, as being at least as harmful as attacks on my body. By contrast, the Reductive-Materialist Self anthropology says that the impersonal, amoral, meaningless, unbreakable laws of evolutionary biology and psychology determine the deepest truths of your identity. Of course, reductive materialism as an anthropological thesis is just one facet of a comprehensive worldview that sees all of reality (or at least all knowable reality) as nothing more than material phenomena describable in the terms of the modern physical sciences. This worldview manifests in slogans such as “trust the science” and “trust the experts” and in an almost worshipful enthusiasm for the latest technological advances from Silicon Valley. It is evident in pop journalism’s bad habit of finding a simplistic evolutionary explanation for every modern human social behavior (e.g., articles with titles such as “The Evolutionary Reason Why He’s More Likely to Cheat on You than Break Up with You”). As an anthropology, reductive materialism adopts psychological explanations of moral and spiritual problems and pharmacological solutions to psychological problems. This is only sensible given the starting assumption that psychology ultimately reduces to brain chemistry. Thus, this view strongly privileges the physical brain and body over the mind or soul in determining who and what you are.
Now, it is apparent that both these views will be generally unsatisfying as guiding life principles. After all, who can accept—as reductive materialism requires us to—that our most personal experiences, cherished desires, deeply held convictions, and momentous choices are nothing more than the chance results of neurochemical events in our brains, which are the products of factors in our environment beyond our control, and our genes, which were themselves determined by random events stretching back millions of years before we were born? And for its part, the perspective of the Narrative Self renders life deeply solipsistic, unmoored from any independent standard of truth or external account of reality as something greater than the sum of
one’s experiences. Thus, this perspective is perpetually at war with any outside voice that might challenge how one is feeling about life at this very moment—even to the point that people are persuaded to mutilate their own bodies if the biological facts do not conform to their internal narrative. The wreckage of American culture in the 2020s bears witness to the damage this philosophy has caused.
In contrast to these two secular anthropologies, a classical Christian anthropology must offer a more personally satisfying and intellectually stable vision of the human person. But it turns out that striking the proper balance in emphasis between the immaterial and the material, between mind and body, is not so easy. Historically, many ordinary lay Christians (and some Christian scholars) have found it natural to emphasize the immaterial soul or spirit as the essence of our individual identities and that which distinguishes us from mere animals. This has often led to an unreflective acceptance of Platonic or Cartesian dualism, which tends to see our bodies as mere earthly dwelling places that house the “true self.”3 From here, it is not a huge step to the Narrative Self, since in the dualistic view the person’s soul includes her first-person conscious point of view, which includes all those mental states—of experience, desire, and will—that in the Narrative Self view literally create what is true about the person.
As a corrective, many Christian thinkers and writers in recent years have drawn on the Catholic tradition to advocate for the importance of the human body, that we have an essentially embodied, animal nature and are therefore essentially part of the natural world.4 One motivation for this emphasis is its potential to enable us to take ground in disputes in culture wars such as abortion. While true and important, the drawback of this approach is that it typically neglects to exploit one of the most significant weaknesses of modern secularism, namely the complete failure of reductive materialism to account for the so-called “hard problem of consciousness.” One of the crucial things that Descartes got right (in spite of his current role as the favorite philosophical punching bag of thoughtful Christians everywhere) was seeing that a materialist metaphysics applied to hu-
man beings was inadequate to deal with the mind-body problem. That this point now has been made (principally by secular philosophers) so clearly and forcefully as to be nearly irrefutable is one of the great triumphs of the last five decades of analytic philosophy.5 At the core of our personhood is conscious experience, and our conscious minds themselves bear witness to the fact that we are (partly) non-physical beings; but recent popular Christian accounts of human personhood, which tend to denigrate Descartes and Cartesian dualism and lean heavily on Aristotelian concepts, often obscure this fact. It is not that these accounts deny the immateriality of the soul but that in the rush to stress that we are biological organisms with physical bodies, they overlook the profound cultural implications of the dualist’s powerful anti-materialist arguments. Is there a better way forward? Two questions may serve to sharpen our grasp of the challenge before us and guide our thinking about it. Earlier I mentioned two technological breakthroughs that today are in their infancy: virtual reality and AI. The challenges these technologies pose to a correct philosophical anthropology and the decisions humans make to meet those challenges will be momentous in the lives of our children and grandchildren.
The crucial question to answer about AI is this: What separates us from even the most sophisticated future AI? What, if anything, do human minds possess that AI inevitably will lack? Since AI that is causally connected to a material body promises eventually to be able to exhibit all the same material effects on the world as a person, an answer to this question should reveal what is lacking in the reductive materialist anthropology.
The crucial question to answer about virtual reality is this: What, if anything, makes our embodied physical existence more valuable than a future life lived hooked up to a perfectly realistic virtual world? Since virtual reality promises eventually to be subjectively indistinguishable from normal human experience, an answer to this question should reveal what is lacking in the Narrative Self anthropology.
3. For sophisticated defenses of substance dualism, see Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and J.P Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei (London: SCM Press, 2009).
1. See, for instance, David Chalmers, Reality+ (New York: Norton, 2022); James Pogue, “Selling the Metaverse,” The American Conservative, February 17, 2022, https:// www.theamericanconservative.com/selling-the-metaverse/; James Poulos, Human Forever: the Digital Politics of Spiritual War (Canonic, 2021); Jay W. Richards, The Human Advantage: the Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines (New York: Forum Books, 2018); and Susan Schneider, Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
2. This view is close to what Carl Trueman, borrowing a term from sociologist Robert Bellah, has called “expressive individualism.” See Carl Trueman, Strange New World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 22–23 and Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).
4. See, for instance, Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jason T. Eberl, The Nature of Human Persons: Metaphysics and Bioethics (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021); Carter Snead, What it Means to be Human (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020); and Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).
5. David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal qualia,” Philosophical Quarterly 32 (April 1982): 127–36; Joseph Levine, “Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (October 1983): 354–61; and Thomas Nagel, “What is it like to be a bat?” Philosophical Review 83 (October 1974): 35–50.
III. The key to recovering the proper balance between the material (body) and immaterial (mind/ soul) in our anthropology is embracing the view that humans have a God-given essential nature and ultimate purpose.
I believe the key to making progress on these two questions is not to focus directly on the metaphysical constitution of the human person—the relative importance of the immaterial and material in determining our individual identities and the kind of beings we are—but rather on the given nature and purpose of human beings (that is, on teleology rather than constitution).
We could imagine the Narrative Self and the Reductive-Materialist Self existing at two ends of a spectrum of anthropological views that differ according to the relative importance they place on the mind or the body.
Our challenge then would be to find an alternative theory somewhere on the spectrum between the two. But in fact, these theories differ not along a single dimension but along at least two. We should imagine a Cartesian coordinate plane with X- and Y-axes: the X-axis represents the difference between body-centric and mind-centric views; the Y-axis represents the degree to which a theory either emphasizes order (stability, hierarchy, normativity, objective standards), or, in the other direction, freedom (individual independence, autonomy, authenticity) in human life.
In that case, our two secular anthropologies are not just at the two opposite poles along the mind-body axis. The Reductive-Materialist Self is located in the extreme far corner of the quadrant between the “body”
end of the X-axis and the “order” end of the Y-axis: The scientific laws of biology and psychology provide objective order and stability and explain why I am the way I am and act the way I do. But in the process, their meaningless and unbending nature threatens to crush individual freedom and significance as well as any sense that I am the author of my own life. By contrast, the Narrative Self is located in the extreme far corner of the opposite quadrant, between the “mind” end of the X-axis and the “freedom” end of the Y-axis: Nothing can stop the subjective, experiential part of me from thinking, feeling, wanting, and choosing as it sees fit. But for that very reason the Narrative Self cannot give itself a stable and meaningful standard by which to order its own experiences, desires, and choices as better or worse. We seek an anthropology that will properly balance both mind and body and freedom and order.
I contend that any anthropological theory will tend to deviate from zero along the Y-axis to the degree that it seeks to describe human beings without reference to a transcendent God. The Narrative Self and the Reductive-Materialist Self have gained ascendancy because, in the absence of belief in transcendence, Western culture struggles to locate meaning and value either in order and stability on the one hand or in individual freedom and authenticity on the other. In turn, the search for these two things leads to an imbalance in how we view the immaterial soul and material body, either in one direction or the other along our X-axis.
The situation is especially tragic because neither the Narrative Self nor the Reductive-Materialist Self can deliver on what each promises is its greatest strength. Reductive materialism’s greatest strength is supposed to be its ability to offer a unified, ordered, rational account of reality, including of human beings. After all, one of the virtues of science is that it produces beliefs that are (at least approximately) objectively true. But without appeal to transcendence, reductive materialism eventually gives up trying to provide a rational explanation of objective meaning and value and therefore of the nature and origin of minds, morality, beauty, material complexity, why there is something rather than nothing, and even of order and rationality itself. In its place it offers only deflationary accounts of phenomena, skepticism, brute facts, and random chance. In the end, it is hard to even see a coherent reason to believe in objective truth, since in this ac-
count the foundation of everything is not sense but non-sense.6
Similarly, the Narrative Self’s greatest strength is supposed to be its offer of freedom from all external constraints. But that leaves only the internal constraints of feelings, desires, and will to guide the individual (reason, with its appeal to an objective standard, involves an external constraint). And who’s to say my feelings and desires from yesterday should constrain my freedom today? If I felt I was a woman yesterday but want to be a man today and a woman again tomorrow, why should my feelings and desires earlier and later in time matter in the narrative I spin for myself in the present? But then what is there to prevent my inner life from becoming perfect chaos, blown to and fro at every moment by the strongest feeling or desire that happens to spontaneously arise within me? And if (as often happens) I feel no strong, spontaneous feeling or desire at the present moment, what is true about me then? There is only my unfettered, undetermined will left to decide the matter. But in the absence of all external constraints or any stable feelings and desires, what could possibly explain why my will chooses one thing rather than another? It would have to be entirely arbitrary. But a choice made by random chance is not truly in the subject’s control and therefore is not truly free. So the Narrative Self does not deliver true freedom any more than the Reductive-Materialist Self delivers objective order.
The antidote is to reintroduce transcendence, a logocentric view of reality, and therefore objective meaning and value. The classical Christian anthropology starts not with humanity but with the divine Logos. Humans were created by a transcendent, personal Creator, who gave them an essential nature and ultimate purpose (or an end, a telos). Since your Creator is personal, every aspect of who you are (your nature) and of what happens to you (the journey towards your final end) is shot through with meaning. Since your Creator is transcendently good, the design of your nature and the purposes of your life are good too; they’re valuable.
To the Narrative Self, the logocentric anthropology says this: The immaterial part of me, no less than my physical body, is governed by a stable, given nature, which brings order to the mind-soul. As such, it provides a foundation for true human freedom: not
merely the absence of external constraints, but the internal power to act in accordance with my nature and to will my true good. To the Reductive-Materialist Self, the logocentric anthropology says: The impersonal, unbending laws of biology and psychology need not enslave or crush me since they are all the while guided by the purposes of a rational Person who has designed me to flourish. On the contrary, by helping endow individual humans with subjective awareness and reason—and with unique personalities, characters, and experiences—these laws help carve out space in the created order for genuinely free and independent individual subjects. In turn, a world with freedom and subjectivity built into it is far more ordered, unified, and rational than the one described by reductive materialism since it no longer sweeps subjective phenomena under the carpet, so to speak. In sum, the divine Logos gives humans objective meaning and value that they need not chase after but simply adopt the right posture to receive. This restores the equilibrium between order and freedom and between mind and body that the secular anthropologies have lost. And this meaning and value results from God, the author of the natural law, building into humanity an essential nature and ultimate purpose. But what precisely is the nature and purpose of a human being, and how does it relate to our minds and bodies? In order to make good on my promise to offer a superior alternative to the dominant secular anthropologies, I need to provide a compelling answer to this question.
IV. Humans are essentially conscious, physically embodied creatures—which explains what separates humans and human life from AI and virtual reality.
My arguments in this section will have to be schematic. I will begin with three attributes that both the classical Christian tradition and our own reason testify are essential and foundational to humanity’s Godgiven nature and purpose. I will then sketch an argument from each of these attributes to human consciousness and embodiment and explain the implications for our questions about AI and virtual reality. The three essential attributes of human persons are that they are rational, they are moral agents, and they
The Reductive-Materialist Self anthropology says that the impersonal, amoral, meaningless, unbreakable laws of evolutionary biology and psychology determine the deepest truths of your identity.
pursue transcendent goodness. Let’s take these each in turn.
First, human beings are rational. But genuine rationality requires understanding: one must be aware of the meanings of the propositions one is reasoning about and grasp the reasons why one claim follows from another. But note that terms like “awareness” and “grasping” are tied to a first-person point of view, a consciously thinking, experiencing subject. So, understanding requires consciousness. And consciousness comes only from a mind-soul.
Second, human beings are moral agents. This means they are capable of reasoning and acting morally and thus are subject to moral evaluation. But genuine moral agency requires moral responsibility, and moral responsibility requires free will. An individual cannot be held morally responsible—praised or blamed according to moral standards—for an action that wasn’t freely chosen and carried out. But genuine free will requires (at a minimum) the awareness of choosing for reasons and assenting to the choice. So free will requires consciousness, which, again, only comes from a mind-soul.
Third, human beings naturally are led to pursue transcendent goodness. But any genuine progress towards transcendent goodness requires personal virtue: one cannot hope to commune with what is surpassingly excellent with much success while simultaneously being full of what is vicious, ugly, shameful, and deficient. But growth in virtue only comes through encountering challenges in our lives and being required to struggle to overcome them. And challenge and
struggle for an individual only come from encountering limits. For an individual mind placed in a concrete material universe, the operative limits will be causal and spatiotemporal: being contained to one spatiotemporal location and subject to unchanging laws in how one interacts with and causally affects the surrounding world—in other words, the limits of physical embodiment.
To sum up, human beings are essentially rational, moral agents who naturally pursue transcendent goodness. As a result, they are essentially conscious minds that are embodied as biological organisms and subject to the physical laws of the universe.7 This account gives us what we need to answer one of our two questions about emerging technologies: What, if anything, do human minds possess that AI inevitably will lack?
Unless and until we understand consciousness sufficiently well to create it in another material entity, AI will never be conscious. I think there are very strong reasons to believe this is in principle impossible, but in any event, I am not going to be holding my breath. Without consciousness (in other words, without a mind or soul, properly understood), AI inevitably will lack understanding, and therefore, despite the many press releases to the contrary, AI will never be genuinely rational. AI works by complex computation— symbol manipulation, basically. It has a syntax: rules for manipulating the symbols. When people ascribe meaningful content to those symbols, AI becomes an increasingly powerful aggregator and processor of meaningful information, performing logical operations as if it were performing conscious inference.
7. This formulation is intended to be neutral between various dualist, idealist, Thomist, and even materialist accounts of the person. What matters for our focus is just that both the mind and the body are seen to play a crucial role in human personhood regardless of the complex underlying metaphysical relationship between the two or whether one ultimately reduces to the other. This focus constrains what metaphysical options are viable, but, as far as I can tell, it does not determine which of these options is true.
But it lacks semantics: it has no idea what the symbols mean, or even that it is manipulating symbols.8 Without consciousness, all is dark inside.
Furthermore, without consciousness, AI inevitably will lack free will since it will have no first-person awareness of a self and thus cannot be aware of choosing, of assenting to one option rather than others for reasons that it understands and endorses as sufficiently compelling. For if this process were to happen without awareness, then the individual would not have assented, understood, and endorsed—that is, chosen freely. So, AI will never have free will and thus never have moral agency.
The Reductive-Materialist Self says that everything important about you can be accounted for by the physical laws, particularly of biology and neuropsychology. In that case, it must say that the conscious human mind is either an illusion or else is equivalent to something like the “software” of a very complex computer program run on the hardware of the brain. But if anything like that were even remotely true, there should not be any significant difference between a human being and a highly advanced future AI, contrary to what we have just shown. So, the Reductive-Materialist Self must be false.
V. The ultimate purpose of our bodies is to enable us to grow in individual virtue and thereby progress in the pursuit of transcendent goodness.
Recall that our second question is this: What, if anything, makes our embodied physical existence more valuable than a future life lived hooked up to a perfectly realistic virtual world? The best way I know to make this question vivid is to consider a famous twentieth -century thought experiment by Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick dubbed “the Experience Machine.”9 The story of the Experience Machine is basically the plot of the hit movie The Matrix except that it was dreamed up in the early 1970s, before the invention of the personal computer or the internet, and it is intended to describe a (supposed) utopia rather than a dystopia.
Imagine there is a machine that could be hooked up to your brain and thereby perfectly simulate in your consciousness any of the greatest experiences
you could imagine or desire: winning the Super Bowl, landing on the moon, running in the Olympics, curing cancer, writing a great novel or symphony, engaging in deep conversations with your closest friends, enjoying a sumptuous gourmet meal, having a passionate love affair with a beautiful person, attaining worldwide fame and acclaim, and so on. You have the opportunity to scroll through beforehand and choose your future experiences from an unlimited menu of options. You can choose to hook yourself up to the machine or not, but if you choose to do so, you are committed to remain in the machine for the rest of your biological life (with the possible exception of emerging every few years to pick new experiences). While your mind is inside the machine’s virtual world, your body and your loved ones will be taken care of, but you will not remember your past life and will not know you are in the machine. Would you choose to hook yourself up? If not, why not?
The thought experiment was designed by Nozick to criticize hedonism, the view that pleasure is the ultimate good. Many fascinating and persuasive answers have been provided for why life outside the machine is still to be preferred over virtual life within the machine’s simulation even if we grant that the machine will almost certainly provide a more pleasurable life. But I think the story raises profound questions for the idea of virtual reality generally and for the relationship between the human pursuit of virtue and human embodiment.
What is the nature and purpose of our bodies? Here are three attractive possible answers: First, human bodies are our only way to interact with our environments. I need my muscles and bones to move through physical space and my eyes to encounter visual information. Our bodies, therefore, are necessary to our causal and epistemic lives. Second, it is through our bodies that we relate to other people and are bound to them by mutual dependence and obligation; our bodies are indispensable to our relational lives. Finally, we need physical embodiment to render invisible spiritual truths visible. Marriage, birth, death, eating, and drinking all manifest elements of the spiritual realm that might otherwise be incomprehensible to us. Our bodies therefore play a crucial role in our spiritual lives.
8. The classic expression of this point is John Searle, “Can Computers Think?” in Minds, Brains, and Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1984), 28–41. See section VI below.
9. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 42–45.
However, true and important as they are, these three answers are incomplete: they miss the fact that each of these roles the body plays could be played by simulated bodies in the Experience Machine. The virtual worlds of a real-life future Experience Machine promise to be subjectively indistinguishable from real life, including our sensory experiences of material bodies. In other words, the question we really need to answer is this: What role does the body play in the created order that could not be played just as well by the experience of having a body?
I proposed an answer in the previous section. Human physical embodiment is important because it places limits on the immaterial aspects of the individual—mind, personality, desires, will, and so on—that make the formation of virtue in the individual possible. The experience of having a body in a virtual world either would not do this, or if it did, it would no longer be attractive to people as an alternative to the real world since it would be just as challenging as real life. After all, the whole point of living in a virtual world is to escape the drudgery and the difficulties, the pain and the limitations, of our present earthly existence. It is, in the final reckoning, the same dream as every utopian vision: to build a man-made heaven on earth. But that heaven cannot be a laboratory for virtue.
We can illustrate this point with real-world examples. Consider superlative competitive achievement: winning the gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the Olympics or winning an election for US Senate in a battleground state after a bruising marathon campaign. No doubt, such achievements require (among other things) a profound exercise of courage. In the Experience Machine, by contrast, you could choose to experience these triumphant moments of achievement without facing the months of doubt, exhaustion, discouragement, opposition, and fear of failure that is inherent in any human accomplishment. No need for growth in courage. Likewise, in the real world (after your twenties!), there are no shortcuts to getting in great physical shape. It requires the virtue of temperance: I must say no to that slice of cheesecake, and I must roll out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to have time to squeeze in a workout in chilly weather before I go to work. I say no to certain powerful appetites in exchange for a greater prize. In the Experience Machine, by contrast, I can have perfect washboard abs and still eat my third donut.
The application of this point is not limited to moral choices because virtue extends from the moral to the intellectual realm. The way we have been constituted by God means that so much of our knowledge of the world must come through empirical observation—the use of our bodily senses. We cannot just close our eyes or snap our fingers and know the boiling point of water or the distance from the earth to the moon or even how many chairs are currently in the adjacent room. But the hard work of the expansion of human knowledge is the greenhouse for the growth of intellectual virtues such as curiosity, patience, ingenuity, rigor, intellectual courage, intellectual tenacity, intellectual charity, and love of truth. Knowledge is cheap in the Experience Machine, which means no one needs to exercise virtue to learn new things.
A more mundane example with which we are all familiar is the smartphone. In ancient oral cultures, literacy and writing were scarce. Yet people regularly performed feats of staggeringly prodigious memorization—such as first century Jewish boys memorizing the whole Torah—which required the virtuous exercise of their minds. Meanwhile, we moderns effectively have all human knowledge in our pockets, and I struggle to remember my own zip code. The effects of virtual reality on our intellectual lives would be the iPhone on steroids.
For human beings, growth in virtue comes through overcoming challenges made possible by the Godgiven limitations of our bodies. And since growth in virtue is ineluctably tied to the nature and end of human beings, this role that our bodies play is what makes our embodied existence more valuable than a future life lived hooked up to any perfectly realistic, but human-controlled, virtual world. But the Narrative Self tells us that, on the contrary, all of what is most important about us is found in our subjective experience and that all of material reality, including our own bodies, ought to bend to our wills. The Experience Machine is merely the technological outworking of that conviction. Thus, the Narrative Self view must be false.
VI. Classical education has the power to shape children’s views about anthropology in general and the central role of our bodies in virtue formation in particular.
If the account I have presented above is correct, what practical difference should it make to the classical K–12 classroom? I humbly offer five practical suggestions.
First, educate yourself. If nothing else, I hope I have shown that far from being a philosopher’s esoteric diversion, philosophical anthropology lies at the heart of struggles to renew our civilization and thus is of the utmost practical import. Classical teachers need to read enough to gain at least a basic level of familiarity and competence with the topic so that they can pass along the right anthropological ideas in accessible forms to their students. To that end, I have included a list of helpful resources in an appendix.
Second, teach the Experience Machine (and the Chinese Room). The best thought experiments from academic philosophy literature are lucid, fun, and fascinating whether or not we agree with the author’s conclusion. And most of them are accessible to ordinary people, including older children. Teachers should not shy away from using thought experiments to communicate challenging but vitally important philosophical ideas, including about anthropology, that otherwise would be absent from the classroom. Literature and theology classes may touch on some of the same topics, but philosophy often handles them better because it is more direct and (almost always) much clearer. The original passage from Nozick in which he discusses the Experience Machine is three pages long and accessible to high schoolers or even middle schoolers. Equally famous and nearly as accessible is John Searle’s “Chinese Room” thought experiment, which vividly makes the point about the limits of AI that I explained above.10 (I have not identified a standout thought experiment for explaining the link between consciousness and free will just yet.) And presenting thought experiments can align with principles of classical pedagogy since the genius of the thought experiment is to imaginatively place students in the philosophical lesson being taught rather than simply feeding them the right answers. Most students have a strong intuitive response to the imaginary scenario—for example, why real life is preferable to plugging into the Experience Machine—and then the job of the teacher is to tease out the students’ reasons for that response and subject them to rational scrutiny by asking questions. And because the lesson
starts with their own strong intuitive reaction to the story, most students are more open to this Socratic questioning than they would otherwise be. Third, cultivate the moral imagination regarding the inherent goodness of the limits and challenges of our bodies and the material world. If the last suggestion is mostly applicable for secondary school students, this one has broader relevance, even to young children. To counteract the Gnosticism and antimaterial unreality of contemporary smartphone and social media culture, we should be teaching our children to see every difficulty in their lives brought about by the natural limits of the material world as an opportunity for growth. Here are two suggestions for how to guide and strengthen the moral imagination in this direction: First, so many of the things that children don’t like about themselves are due to facts about their genetic makeup, which are just part of the natural limitations of being embodied creatures in a physical world. Teachers should use books and films— especially historical biographies—with protagonists who overcome personal physical limitations. Think of Helen Keller’s disabilities, Saint Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” or FDR’s being wheelchair-bound—or, less dramatically, of Demosthenes’s stutter, Socrates’s ugliness, James Madison’s short stature, or George Washington’s bad teeth and bad breath. Second, teachers should use books and films that describe protagonists doing manual work that grapples with the physical challenges of the natural world. Classic examples here include the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and My Side of the Mountain by Jean George. Children should be encouraged to see these protagonists as admirable and make the connection between skillful work with their physical bodies and the development of their internal character.
Similarly and fourth, classical schools should learn to love shop class (and home economics and PE). In addition to having their moral imaginations shaped by these truths through stories, students should experience them for themselves by encountering the givenness, and thus the limits and challenges, of the created material world through manual labor and the mechanical arts. Matthew B. Crawford’s classic essay “Shop Class as Soulcraft” and subsequent book of the
10. Searle, “Can Computers Think?” 28–41.
same title make this case more eloquently than I can here.11 Every classical teacher should read it.12 Finally, K–12 teachers who have the same students in the classroom together for the entirety of a school year have an advantage in efforts both to shape students’ worldviews and to cultivate virtuous character over college professors who interact with their students much more formally and for a much briefer period. Teachers should think of creative ways to explicitly challenge their students to grow in particular virtues throughout the school year. One proposal I have is to challenge each student to adopt a different practice intended to grow each of the cardinal virtues. But the trick is that each practice is explicitly tied not simply to the virtue but also to a difficulty in their lives. For instance, students could be challenged to submit four short essays by the end of the school year about practical steps they have taken to grow in each virtue that year (verified by an adult): (i) “That time this year I did something that really scared me (courage”); (ii) “That time this year I chose to do the right thing for someone else over my own desires” (justice); (iii) “That time this year I broke a bad habit” (temper-
ance); and (iv) “That time this year I mastered something that was really hard for me to learn or came to accept a new truth that I used to disbelieve” (wisdom). The aim is that students would learn to connect difficulties with growth, see them as opportunities, and eventually seek them out for their own edification. My hope is that these reflections will serve as a helpful starting point for thinking about philosophical anthropology in a way that is informed by scripture and, in turn, informs the task of teaching. May our students see themselves not as Disney princesses or doomed atoms but as beloved creatures created by a God who is calling them to something higher, nobler, and worthy of all the struggles of our embodied existence.
Build a Theological Foundation for All of Life
At REFORMATION BIBLE COLLEGE, we seek to train up men and women of faith who can serve effectively as Christian leaders. Our founder, Dr. R.C. Sproul, carefully developed our curriculum to provide students with a classical education that is distinctly Reformed. Students pursuing a Major in Christian Thought can also earn a Minor in Reformed Classical Education, studying under Rev. Robert Ingram, program advisor and experienced leader in the field. Are you interested in learning more about RBC? Request information today and we’ll send you a complimentary viewbook.
11. Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin Books, 2009).
12. See also Christopher Hall, Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Head, Hands, and Heart (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2021).
This essay is dedicated to stream ecologist, philosopher of science, and artist Charley Dewberry, who helped me think better about patterns, interpretation, and how to live in light of what’s true.
Music is widely regarded as an aesthetic enterprise. In this view, music—when pursued properly in an educational context—is a beautification of the world and the human soul. Consequently, music’s primary use in education is to expose students to beautiful things so that they will develop affection for beautiful things. Though I believe that music can indeed serve this purpose, my question as a musician is this: is there more to music than beauty? My answer is yes—the beauty of music notwithstanding, there is a great deal more to music than beauty. Music’s functionality in education must be understood and broadened beyond cultivating aesthetic tastes. Music, when properly administered, helps discipline the patterns of the mind and body and through this discipline aids liberal arts students in their pursuit of a life well lived.
What Does it Mean to Live a Good Life?
As creatures made in the image of a moral Lawgiver, we are fundamentally moral beings. Those interested in living lives that are pleasing to God will be interested in what He recommends for human flourishing. What Jesus recommends for human flourishing is to love God and love our neighbor. These are the two great commandments upon which all the Law and the Prophets hang.1 Jesus goes so far as to say that people can identify His disciples based on their love for one another.2 To make a good decision is to make a loving decision. Thus, a good life is grounded in decisions to love others well—living well is loving well.
What is love? In Mark’s usage, ἀγαπάω (agapao) refers to love in a social or moral sense. In John’s usage, ἀγάπη (agape) refers to affection, benevolence, or charity. To love others is to prioritize the cultivation of another person’s ultimate moral good. In 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul writes about the character of love (ἀγάπη—as in John 13:35), writing that “love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices
1. Mark 12: 30–31 (ESV).
2. John 13:35 (ESV).
3. 1 Corinthians 13: 4–7 (ESV).
4. John 14:15 (ESV).
with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”3 Saint Paul’s words to the church in Corinth describe the pattern of the character of love. That is, he names distinct elements that characterize love.
Beyond Saint Paul’s words, we can find the distinct elements that characterize the pattern of love applied throughout the New Testament. Jesus teaches us what it means to love others when He shows mercy toward the woman caught in adultery and when He forgives those who nailed Him to the cross. So much to say that because each person and scenario is different, determining the most loving course is an art that may require a great deal of thought. The Bible also teaches us what it means to love when Saint John writes that to love God is to obey God4 and to believe that He is everything that He says He is and to trust that He will do everything He says He will do. Such faith can be difficult as God’s ways are not our ways. In this sense, to love God in the way John describes requires willingness to be attentive to the pattern of His blessings and good work.
What is a pattern? A pattern is a hierarchical arrangement of distinct elements ordered by frequency, proximity, and intensity. Imagine a plaid pattern in which there are a variety of colored threads woven together. The plaid pattern you are looking at will be identifiable by the frequency, proximity, and intensity of its colors. In Scotland, for example, different clans are identified by different patterns. The Royal Stuart Tartan (of which there are several) has a high frequency of red alongside thin white and yellow threads in close proximity with intense green squares. By contrast, the MacKay Blue Tartan has a high frequency of dark blue squares outlined by thick black lines and subdivided by intense, thick red lines.
To translate this plaid example to Saint Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul is telling us the distinct elements—that is, the colors—we can expect to observe in a life dedicated to loving others. To love truly is an art that requires wisdom and sensitivity to the appropriate frequency, proximity, and intensity of the distinct elements that play out through our words and actions.
The question is this: Holding in tension the general patterns of our shared humanity and each individual’s particular personhood, how can we become disciplined
at transferring the transferrable while also becoming sensitive to situations in which patterns are unique and variation called for? How can the liberal arts in general—and music in particular—aid us in this? As an art that uses invisible patterns to significant effect, music can help us become sensitive to other invisible patterns—like the ones described in the Bible—that will greatly enrich us as souls in progress.
Art in the Liberal Arts—Observing and Transferring Patterns
A liberal arts education trains a student to observe and evaluate patterns from the past and translate them into the present. This sort of experience-by-proxy comes from reading the Great Books, in which a student will encounter a wide range of contrasting worldviews. Encountering differing worldviews is valuable because doing so can expose one’s unquestioned assumptions for analysis and consideration. Given that humans are enslaved to unexamined principles, a liberal arts education literally frees them from bad assumptions and frees them to adopt better ones. This is essential to worldview formation.
A worldview is a framework—a pattern— through which we interpret the meanings of events and encounters. As such, a worldview is an interpretive pattern whose calibration to truth impacts how one navigates reality. For instance, Homer’s and Saint Augustine’s worldviews differ in many ways. One of the most significant ways is how each author thought about humanity’s relationship to the transcendent. In Homer’s Greek polytheistic worldview, humanity’s relationship to the gods is transactional—humans must appease the gods so that humans can get what they want: a good crop, victory in battle, healing from disease, or security in the here-and-now. In Augustine’s Christian worldview, humanity’s connection with God is supposed to be relational—God loves humanity as one person loves another, and humanity is to love God in return. In reading Homer, Saint Augustine, and many other Great Books authors, a liberal arts student becomes familiar with a variety of world view patterns.
To extract a general pattern from a particular context is a skill that involves many hours of practice dedicated to judging rightly between essential and incidental elements within patterns. How might this
work? Imagine that you see an oak tree that has someone’s initials carved on the trunk. In distinguishing between essential and incidental elements, you must realize that (a) the carved initials are not a natural part of this tree and (b) manmade carvings are not a natural part of any tree. Thus, though the initials are now technically part of this tree, the carving is an incidental element.
Unlike a manmade carving, leaves are an essential element of an oak tree. However, oak trees don’t always have leaves. It takes experience to know that an oak tree only has leaves under particular conditions: the tree must be (a) alive, (b) healthy, and (c) alive and healthy during particular seasons of the year. A sick or dead oak tree with no leaves in spring still exhibits the pattern of an oak tree just as a live oak tree with leaves in summer does. One experience of one oak tree is not enough to have a fully developed understanding of its pattern. Given the possible variations of this pattern, it will take many experiences with oak trees to understand which elements are essential to the tree and which are merely incidental.
Considering the difference between incidental and essential elements gives students practice in prioritizing what matters most and helps them learn how to make high-level value judgments about what is true and why. Given that Christians encounter a wide variety of particular contexts in which we are supposed to apply the general patterns of Christianity, a liberal arts education affords students excellent practice.
A Definition of Art
The liberal arts constitute a broad, deep, holistic educational program designed to help students learn and practice beneficial patterns. That is, the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music fully integrate to train students to recognize beneficial patterns and transfer them from one context to another. In so doing, the goal of a liberal arts education is to produce Artists. An Artist is one who practices art, but what exactly is art?
Art is the generation, observation, or manipulation of meaningful patterns in a skillful way. Though in common usage the term “art” often refers to masterworks created in the specialized fine arts such as music, poetry, dance, and sculpture, my definition
reaches beyond the world of fine arts and finished works to include ongoing processes and intentions. To illustrate my definition, imagine that you go outside on a summer afternoon to draw an oak tree. You observe the arrangement of essential elements that constitute the oak tree: branches, leaves, acorns, and trunk. In so doing, you observe the pattern of an oak tree. You attempt to generate the pattern with a pencil on a piece of paper. These elements when arranged in a particular pattern are meaningful—they are supposed to mean “oak tree” to anyone looking at your drawing.5 The more skillfully you observe and generate these patterns with pencil and paper, the more clearly the pattern you have generated means “oak tree.” A person who perhaps has not seen your oak tree but who has seen other oak trees can correctly identify your hand-drawn pattern as an oak tree.
Now, imagine that you are drawing a fictional landscape. There are hills, meadows, birds, and an oak tree. Using your pencil and paper, you can manipulate the elements of oak trees that you have observed in reality and create a totally new oak tree, one that does not exist in nature and that no one has ever seen before. In so doing, you have translated the pattern of “oak tree” to a new context—your fictional landscape. This is the essence of my definition of art: an ability to apprehend general patterns so that they can be transferred between particular contexts. All human beings are capable of this to one degree or another, but the ability to do so well is a skill that improves only with thoughtful practice.
Artist versus Technician
With this understanding of art, how does the practice of art transfer to a liberal arts education? In considering the importance of distinguishing between essential and incidental elements of a pattern, let us consider a distinction between two mindsets. One mindset is that of the Artist. The other mindset is that of the Technician.
In this discussion, I will use the term Technician in a narrowly defined way. In normal conversation, the term “technician” refers to a person who works in technological fields, communications, medicine,
utilities, manual labor, contracting work, the sciences, or vocational training—but this is not who I have in mind. When I say Technician here, I mean a person who holds a particular mindset about patterns. There are Technicians and Artists in every field and discipline. A violinist could be a Technician, and an X-ray technician could be an Artist. An accountant could be an Artist with data and spreadsheets while an architect could be a Technician in the way she approaches design.
To illustrate the difference between Technician and Artist, imagine two bakers using the same apple pie recipe. The first baker cranks out salty apple pies for a whole week. His customers complain that the pies he’s been selling are inedible. Customers even bring their pies back to the shop so he can taste the evidence for himself. The baker refuses to taste them and stubbornly asserts that he has followed the recipe to the letter. He ignores all complaints and continues to make salty apple pies. His business declines. The second baker, using the same recipe, hears reports that his apple pies taste terrible—they’re too salty. The customers bring the pies back. Unlike the first baker, he tastes them and confirms that there is indeed too much salt. Immediately, he adapts his recipe until his apple pies taste wonderful. His business booms. In this example, the pie recipe is the pattern. One baker is committed to baking from the recipe while the other is committed to food tasting good. On the surface, both bakers’ pies look gorgeous—golden crust, glistening filling, and pristine lattice work. They both perform the actions of baking, but they do so with very different mindsets. So which of these bakers is the Artist and which is the Technician? The Artist is the baker who has an adaptable, responsive approach to the recipe (the pattern) and cares about how his approach to the pattern impacts the broader context. The Technician is the baker who has a rigid and narrow mindset regarding the recipe and a disregard for how his application of it impacts a broader context. The Artist understands what good pies are supposed to taste like and adapts the pattern of his recipe for the good of his customers. The Technician goes through the motions of pie-making and deems that to be sufficient. The Artist understands his tasks while
5. For a rich discussion on how meaning is transferred between author and audience, see E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967).
the Technician merely performs them. The Artist is disciplined about process but sensitive to nuance. The Artist is flexible in adapting his understanding to new situations while the Technician is rigid. Where the Artist adapts, the Technician standardizes. The Technician is interested in what is most convenient, comfortable, and efficient. The Artist is interested in what’s true and is committed to achieving a good outcome even if it makes his life more complex and less efficient.
The Artist allows his concept of a pattern to grow and develop as he gains experience. The Technician clings to his narrow concept of a pattern in spite of his experience. The Artist can imagine scenarios in which a strict interpretation of the rules might be appropriate. The Technician can imagine only scenarios in which a strict interpretation of the rules is appropriate.
Music in the Liberal Arts: Ancients versus Moderns
Now that we have a working understanding of what art is and what an Artist is, consider what it means to practice music as a liberal art. The Roman philosopher Boethius was interested in how a liberal arts education would impact students. In the sixth century AD he asserted a music-related Artist-Technician distinction in his work The Fundamentals of Music. Boethius posited that there are two mindsets with respect to music. In one instance, there is the musician who understands what she is doing with music. In another, there is the musician who merely practices music without understanding. Boethius writes:6
Now one should bear in mind that every art and also every discipline considers reason inherently more honorable than a skill which is practiced by the hand and the labor of an artisan. For it is much better and nobler to know about what someone else fashions than to execute that about which someone else knows; in fact, physical skill serves as a slave, while reason rules like a mistress. Unless the hand acts
according to the will of reason, it acts in vain. How much nobler, then, is the study of music as a rational discipline than as composition and performance!7
In Boethius’s thinking, there is on the one hand the musician who performs expertly without understanding what she is doing. This musician is a Technician. On the other hand, there is the musician who has a deep understanding of music. This musician is an Artist. If you had to choose between being a great technical virtuoso or a person who understands the rational principles of music, Boethius would recommend the latter. (Though there’s no reason you couldn’t perform with both skill and reasoned understanding as long as understanding is preeminent.)
The Artist-Technician distinction that Boethius implies creates tension in how we might approach music’s role in a liberal arts education today. We might ask: “Isn’t performing the whole point of music?” The assumption in our culture is “Yes, performing is the whole point of music.” Current thought though it may be, by limiting music to the realm of performance, this modern perspective prevents us from understanding music’s richer, historical role in education and thus prevents students from getting the most out of it.
To the question “Isn’t performing the whole point of music?” I can imagine two different answers. If you want to train Technicians, then yes—performance is all that matters. If you want those Technicians to become Artists someday, then no—there’s a lot more to music than performance. The ultimate goal of teaching music as a liberal art is to cultivate Artists who will care about how music integrates with a whole life as well as how the processes of practice shape their broader understanding.
In the liberal arts, how and why you do something is as important as what you do. Let’s say that you want to listen to great piano music. One approach is for you to practice the piano until you are a great pianist capable of playing great music. While timeconsuming and inefficient, learning to play the piano will utterly transform your body and mind and give
6. In a more heavy-handed fashion, Guido of Arezzo, an Italian music theorist of the High Middle Ages, wrote of the distinction between the “knower” and the “doer”: “Great is the difference between musicians and singers. The latter say, the former know what music comprises. And he who does what he does not know is defined as a beast.” (my emphasis) See Calvin M. Bower, “The Transmission of Ancient Music Theory into the Middle Ages,” in The Cambridge History of Music Theory ed. Thomas Street Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 163.
7. Boethius, Fundamentals of Music, Music Theory Translation Series, ed. Claude V. Palisca, trans. Calvin M. Bower (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 50.
Pythagoras’s approach to music is beneficial because it dislodges one from the center of the cosmos. In the modern view, the self-absorbed individual is at the gravitational center of his own personal reality and seeks to bend the world to his will. In the ancient view, humans exist always in context and relationship to other things.
you skills of perception and understanding in the realm of sound. Another way to hear great piano music is to turn on the radio. Turning on the radio may have some impact on you, but it will be substantively less than learning to play the piano. A liberal arts education, when properly administered, teaches students that the long-term benefits of process outweigh temporary, short-term gains.
Much has changed in Western civilization since Boethius wrote The Fundamentals of Music fourteen centuries ago. A major difference between Boethius’s day and ours is that music is consumed far more than it is practiced. That is, consuming music primarily as a form of entertainment has turned music from a transformative behavior into a passive consumer’s activity. Because of the dispersion of digital recording and streaming technology, modern people consume music at a rate that would have been unthinkable 150 years ago. If you wanted to hear Beethoven’s symphonies 150 years ago, you had to either go somewhere to hear a live performance or learn to play them at home on the piano.
We today think of music primarily as a performance because that is the form in which we encounter and consume it—we consume performances and think that that’s all there is. As a professional performer and as a modern person, I have spent many enjoyable hours consuming music. It’s not wrong to consume music—my point is that there’s a lot more to music than consuming it. But if we consume music
and venture no further, we are missing the real transformative practice that learning music can bring. Music has not endured in liberal arts education for over a thousand years so that listeners can have something to consume. If providing performances for people to consume is not the main purpose of music in the liberal arts, then what is?
Music as Rational Pattern Recognition: Disciplining the Mind
In the early Middle Ages, the time period during which Boethius was writing, music’s role in the liberal arts was not to prepare students for performance. Rather, it was to train students to understand rationality and proportion. This emphasis on rationality and proportion comes from the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (sixth century BC), who believed that audible music—harmony and consonance—represented (and thus unveiled and explained) the order of the cosmos.
Thus, the study of music gave students practice in rational pattern recognition.8 This training helped them understand the right and harmonious relationship between sound, the visible world, and their invisible soul. Plato encapsulates Pythagoras’s view in his dialogue Timaeus: “The body of heaven is visible, but the soul is invisible and partakes of reason and harmony . . .”9 To learn to hear and recognize the music and the order of the heavenly spheres was to
8. Rationality is the exercise of an individual’s faculty of reason. The Italian priest and theologian Luigi Giussani (1922–2005) offers a definition of reason in The Religious Sense that will be helpful here. He defines reason as “the distinctive characteristic of that level of nature that we call man, that is, the capacity to become aware of reality according to the totality of its factors.” Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense, trans. John E. Zucchi (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 12. Giussani’s conception of reason is man’s God-given capacity to account for all the pieces of what is known and integrate them into a coherent whole that corresponds to reality.
9. Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 1166.
comprehend the order of reality and live harmoniously within that established order. In Pythagoras’s view, everyone had a place and a role to play in the cosmos. If a student paid attention and thought about it, he too could discover his role and play it well.
Boethius echoes Pythagoras’s ideas in book I of his Fundamentals of Music and writes, “The soul of the universe is united by musical concord.… For when we apprehend by means of what is well and fitly ordered within ourselves, that which is well and fitly combined in sounds—and take pleasure in this—we recognize that we ourselves are internally united by this congruity.”10 In sum, Pythagoras’s view relayed by Boethius is this: to respond well to harmonious music is evidence that you are well tuned to the order of the cosmos. But a person must first learn what harmony is so that she can determine how well aligned she is to reality. It was the study of music as a liberal art that provided this key insight. The value of music as a liberal art was that it both checked and aligned one’s personal state with the pattern of the cosmos. If one studied harmony and found oneself misaligned, one could take steps to better orient one.11
Pythagoras’s approach to music is beneficial because it dislodges one from the center of the cosmos. In the modern view, the self-absorbed individual is at the gravitational center of his own personal reality and seeks to bend the world to his will. In the ancient view, humans exist always in context and relationship to other things. It is humanity who must do the bending, not nature. This ancient view is beneficial because it encourages the student to (a) see herself not as the center but as one part of a whole and (b) reflect on what it means to play her part well. Harmony requires two or more things to happen simultaneously, and the nature of the relationship between these things can result in concord or discord, euphony or cacophony.
The Benefits of Studying the Art of Music as Performance
Music has persisted among the liberal arts right up to the modern day. And in the process, musical performance today has come to have a greater emphasis
in educational contexts than in the past. Performance serves as a beneficial complement to the rational pattern recognition that the Greeks and medieval Europeans prioritized. The ancient use of music disciplines the mind while modern performance disciplines the body. Musical performance cultivates patterns of self-discipline, self-reflection, cooperative conflict resolution, hope, endurance through suffering and tension, and patient acceptance that process is fundamental to being human.
(1) Disciplining the Patterns of the Body
Musical performance requires extraordinary body conditioning and motor control equal to or surpassing that of an Olympic athlete. This is easily overlooked by those whose experience with music is limited to listening. A musician must practice for thousands of hours to refine muscle movements with great precision throughout the entire body. The singer must carefully hone the movement and position of the lips, jaw, tongue, throat, and diaphragm for clarity, projection, and elocution. The instrumentalist must painstakingly control the position of the torso, shoulders, arms, hands, and fingers within millimeters of accuracy. A millimeter off and you are playing out of tune, thus destroying the effects of harmony. Disciplining the body is an essential enterprise. All our actions are carried out with our body, including our speech. The body—like the mind—experiences impulses that at times must be restrained. Gaining control of our bodies can show us just how significant small things can be and teach us that discipline creates healthy and helpful limitations.
(2) Learning to Observe Invisible Patterns
Music is organized, patterned sound. And sound is invisible. Though invisible, sound, like the wind or the Holy Spirit, can have a tremendous impact. A great deal of what matters most to us is, in fact, invisible. Ideas are invisible. The values by which we live are invisible. Love, mercy, justice, goodness, and truth are all invisible. Our relationships with other people
are invisible. Even God is invisible. Though invisible, these things are very real. Though intangible, their impact is indisputable.
Music-making is a human behavior. When one performs music with and for others, the extent to which one’s behavior impacts those within earshot becomes immediately clear. Practicing the art of music trains the practitioner to become sensitive to the effects of invisible things.
(3) Self-Reflection through Skillful Listening
Practicing the art of music helps one become a skilled listener. Listening while performing requires acutely focused attention. To make good music, a performer must care not only about what he sounds like but also how he sounds with everyone else around him. Skilled listening is a form of continuous, real-time self-reflection: Am I playing the correct notes? Is my rhythm precise? Am I playing in tune? When playing, self-scrutiny must continue: Can I hear how my part fits with the others? Can the other players be heard over me, or am I playing too loudly? Are we playing in tune together? Are our instruments blending? Listening as a performer helps a person practice selfreflection, which helps her embrace responsibility for her actions. In self-reflection, one asks oneself: “What am I doing, why am I doing it, and how is it working out?”
Furthermore, if another musician is at fault, one becomes practiced in collaborative problem-solving in a non-accusatory way. This is actually a form of charity—embracing an ideal while trying to collaboratively determine how to reach it without harshly criticizing others for their shortcomings. “I couldn’t really hear the flutes over the trumpets—was that your experience too?” Or “I don’t quite feel like the rhythm is gelling yet; could we try it again at measure twenty-four?” Or “I felt like I came in late there; did you hear something different?” In listening well to others around us, we can learn how to play our role well while developing a sense for how to best care for others.
(4) Living through Patterns of Tension and Release
Tension can make people uncomfortable. Yet it is the ebb and flow of tension in music caused by the flux
of pleasant and unpleasant sounds that makes a piece of music interesting to listen to. The art of music can teach the practitioner how to live with tension in the hopes that some form of resolution is on the horizon. Learning how to live with tension can be valuable when it cultivates patience for others who are unlike ourselves and with whom interacting can create tension. Practice with tension in music can also develop patience for ourselves when we experience inner turmoil. The Bible warns us to not get too comfortable in this world. Learning how to live with tension can be a good reminder of this.
(5) The Process of Existence as an Unfolding Pattern
Music is a time-process art. A musical composition can only be experienced second by second, measure by measure. Whereas one can glimpse Leonardo da Vinci’s entire Mona Lisa at once, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony takes over an hour to experience. The art of music can train practitioners to be sensitive to process within themselves and within others. Acknowledging the importance of process can develop the discipline of patience.
From Technician to Artist
Though today I am a professional musician, I can track my journey with music from Technician to Artist. I studied music first as a Technician—as someone whose only interest was to put each finger in the right place at the right time. I lacked understanding of what I was doing or why—I was just “following the recipe” and doing what I was told. However, over the course of my own liberal arts education, my approach changed dramatically. I was challenged to expand my thinking more broadly to that of an Artist, and not just about music but about all of life. I gradually transitioned from thinking primarily about performing to the rationale behind why I was playing music in a particular way, and I sought to understand how I could integrate music into a whole life. And then it dawned on me—what growth and maturation are fundamentally about is the process of transitioning from Technician to Artist. No one begins as an Artist. One becomes an Artist through experience, practice, and self-reflection, and this process of becoming lasts a lifetime.
10. W. Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed., 7 vols. (New York: Norton, 1998), 138. 11. Iamblichus, when relaying Pythagoras’s view, says that removing meat, beans, and wine from one’s diet would positively impact one’s orientation toward the cosmos. Iamblichus, The Life of Pythagoras, in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy, ed. David R. Fideler, comp. and trans. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1987), 84.
Living Well Emerges from a Pattern of Loving Well
If living well is fundamentally about loving well, and loving well requires thoughtful judgment and careful application of the patterns of love evident in scripture, then skill in handling patterns will be helpful. I believe that the patterns I have described can be transferred from the art of music to aid one in the art of living well: self-discipline, self-reflection, patience, hope, and empathy are also all the ingredients that help us carry out our God-given assignment to love and care for others.
To undertake the art of loving someone else requires us to observe general patterns of what it means to love a person while expending the effort of transferring those principles to a specific person in a specific context. Even in light of Saint Paul’s general principles, each of us is different. Each person is a distinct, individuated self whose identity and purpose has been uniquely fashioned by God. Saint Paul is not Saint Matthew. Boethius is not Pythagoras. The neighbor on your right is not the neighbor on your left. They certainly have some things in common—but not everything.
CANTATE DOMINO
If we are willing to take the time to truly see and practice the patterns of love that God graciously gives to us, we too can become skilled in the art of loving others. In this way, the art of loving others is like any other art and can be reinforced by mindfully practicing other arts: with sensitivity and discipline we can make progress and be transformed for the better along the way.
BY JEFFREY ESSMAN
SHRINE
How lovely if the bloomings of my heart were roses all, so smart and elegant and lacking any thorn, their scent the incense of a world apart. There nothing could their beauty not adorn, for it was heaven-born.
Alas, it is instead a weedy thing and there too often cling invasive species, raggy dandelion, and botany’s disordered bling— a heart that somehow has become a shrine to roots I can’t untwine.
Cantate Domino is a rich collection of spoken and sung liturgies promoting the True, Good, and Beautiful in worship. It reflects decades of use in classical Christian schools, drawing from surveys of over a hundred institutions to compile the best materials. Emphasizing the integration of historic Christianity through theology, literature, and the arts, its selections span centuries—from the early church to today—offering Scripture readings, prayers, hymns, and more for daily use in school assemblies. Beautifully typeset and bound in dark blue cloth with gold foil, its cover features an image of the empty tomb, symbolizing resurrection hope.
ERIC COOK, ED.S. President, Society for
POETRY
A Liturgical Songbook for Classical Christian Schools
Dr. Atwood’s Cantate Domino is a thoughtful, versatile collection of prayers, hymns, and spiritual songs that help shape the hearts of every young person in your school.
Classical
With its eager emphasis on structure and vigor, early stages of the classical renewal left students with language-based challenges and their families outside of classical learning communities. Ironically, the perception that students with certain learning challenges could not be educated in the classical, logocentric model and reach the end goals of education propelled their exclusion. In reality, it is through logocentric education that struggling students move toward the telos of learning; an education of words and the Word enables struggling students to access their cultural and spiritual inheritance.
In an effort to argue for logocentric education as a viable—and indeed preferable—pathway for students with language-based learning challenges, this paper will explore two facets of logocentric learning that echo the dual nature of classical Christian education: the capacity of word-centered learning to bring all students, including those with disabilities and language-based learning challenges, into the cultural inheritance that enables them to “dwell in language”1 and the implications of the divine Logos in John 1 for Christian pedagogy and practice, particularly as it relates to the embodied Christian teaching of students with disabilities and differences.
The exploration of these two ideas bears significant implications for the future of the classical renewal and for Christian education at large. Early stages of the classical renewal promoted a standardization that yielded exclusion, and modern disability theology has achieved inclusion at the expense of equalization. Neither philosophy offers a helpful way forward for struggling students. But there is a third and better way: a pursuit of logocentric learning informed by embodied Christian charity.
Logocentric Education: Inviting Students to “Dwell in Language”
An Education Dependent on Words
While we may examine an explicitly logocentric education in a variety of ways—from its emphasis on the centrality of language to its embodiment of a philosophical system based on an authoritative external reality—at the very least, it is an education dependent on words. By this definition, classical education is necessarily logocentric education. In his seminal work Norms & Nobility: A Treatise on Education, author David Hicks writes, “At the heart of a classical education is the word: the complete mastery of its shades of meaning, of its actionimplicit imperatives, of its emotions and values.”1 Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain provide grounds for this argument in their book, The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education, by highlighting “language as a defining human property.”2 According to Clark and Jain, even Aristotle’s view of man as a “rational animal” includes an emphasis on language: “It is true that the Greek word logos lies behind the English word ‘logic.’ For Aristotle, however, the word logos refers more basically to words, speech, language . . . . Were he to speak
modern English, therefore, Aristotle would likely say that man is a living being that has language.”3 Scholars and teachers must exercise charity and care with this definition and discussion of logos, however. Students (or any person) with cognitive disabilities that inhibit speaking, reading, or writing are not somehow less human.4 The imago Dei cannot be equated to a particular capacity for reason or speech or intellect. In truth, we still need to do much thinking and research on reconciling logocentric education with a viable theological anthropology. Still, language occupies a prominent role in human life. Given this prominence, classical education—an education fundamentally aimed at the formation of a human being—must be uniquely focused on language acquisition, understanding, and use.5
The Path Toward Reading: Sojourning and Struggle
Indeed, the logical connections between a humanizing education and language are clear; however, the path forward is less certain for students with learning challenges. This is especially true for students with disabilities or differences that obstruct their path to reading. Perhaps more than any other skill, reading provides students with membership in a cultural community by enabling them to access their cultural inheritance: a legacy of great books. Clark articulates this truth during an interview for a book on helping struggling readers: “Reading . . . enables us to be at home in language. Think of this inheritance of ideals and ideas as a place: you don’t feel at home in that place if you can’t read. You always feel like a stranger; you’re on the outside. Through [teaching] reading, we are literally ‘rehabilitating’ our students—we are bringing them home through reading.”6 While nonliterate stu-
1. David Hicks, Norms & Nobility: A Treatise on Education (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), 34.
2. Clark and Jain, Liberal Arts Tradition, 45.
3. Clark and Jain, Liberal Arts Tradition, 46.
4. While I generally agree with Clark and Jain’s assertion that language is a central aspect of the human experience, labeling it as a defining property may be confused with a capacity view of the imago Dei For a more focused and excellent discussion of this topic, see George C. Hammond, It Has Not Yet Appeared What We Shall Be: A Reconsideration of the Imago Dei in Light of Those with Severe Cognitive Disabilities, Reformed Academic Dissertations (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2017).
5. This is certainly true of the classical movement in North America. While current practitioners and scholars are wrestling with what a word-centered education looks like in primarily oral cultures, we need to further explore the inclusion and instruction of struggling learners in the global classroom.
6. Kevin Clark, interview, by Sara Osborne, Reading for the Long Run: Leading Struggling Students into the Reading Life (Kannapolis, NC: CiRCE Institute, 2023), 25.
1. Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain, The Liberal Arts
2021), 53.
dents are not sojourners in the imago Dei, they are indeed sojourners in their text-centered culture.
The undeniable influence of literacy permeates Western culture (at least for the present). The ability to read gives students more than access to information; it gives them a key to unlocking the world of thought that has been passed down to them through the written word. Such students live in a text-based culture profoundly shaped by literacy. Scholar and teacher Walter J. Ong offers a sweeping assessment of this impact, noting that “once writing is introduced into a culture…it interacts with noetic and social structures and practices often in a bewildering variety of ways . . . .”7 He presents numerous examples of this impact, including on business, agriculture, politics, religious life, family structure, and dialogue. Ong concludes that while “writing is only one of the various developments making for the transformation of consciousness and of society . . . once writing takes over, it appears to be the most crucial development of all.”
Teaching students to read, then, doesn’t merely offer them the skill of decoding information; it equips them with tools for analytical reasoning, to examine ideas from a helpful distance, and, as Ong puts it, to “[separate] interpretation from data”—all products of a writing culture. It also enables them to participate in the Great Conversation; to be shaped by myth and legend; to learn empathy, honesty, and courage from story characters; to allow the beauty of poetry and creative prose to wash over them—and they do all this in the same manner as their families, neighbors, and friends. A word-saturated education is the means by which we take up the inheritance of Western civilization; without the liberal arts of language, nonreaders and other struggling students remain sojourners in their own homeland.
Addressing the Debate: Literacy versus Orality
Many of these sojourning students and their families have questioned whether the struggle-strewn pursuit of the reading life is necessary. In an honest effort to
examine the necessity of literacy in logocentric learning, some educators—particularly those familiar with the ancients—call on works such as Plato’s Phaedrus as evidence for the preference, or even primacy, of orality. Such evidence suggests that our “wordcentered” education need not be explicitly literacy-based. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates argues for the “art of dialectic” as the “nobler” way, even suggesting that “those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them… [are] naïve and truly ignorant . . .”8 Similar misgivings were even voiced by a figure who “promoted the printing of the Latin classics” when he “argued in 1477 that already ‘abundance of books makes men less studious.’”9 In light of such comments by thinkers we purportedly value, how can modern classical educators rightly prioritize literacy?
In brief: we must prioritize literacy over orality because we are no longer members of a primarily oral culture and cannot escape the ways our text-based world has shaped us. Even Plato himself was operating under a burgeoning chirographic influence. Ong writes, “Although there was no way for Plato to be explicitly aware of this fact, his philosophically analytic thought, including his analysis of the effects of writing, was possible only because of the effects that writing was having on mental processes.” In fact, “even when he talks, Plato’s Socrates is using thought forms brought into being by writing.”
While our modern, text-based culture requires reading acquisition for students’ full and robust entrance into their inheritance, valuing orality is not without merit. As Ong himself notes, “In all the wonderful worlds that writing opens, the spoken word still resides and lives. Written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or indirectly, to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language, to yield their meanings.”10 Indeed, it is at this point that the classical model reveals a helpful path to the liberal arts of language by bringing orality and literacy together in remarkable ways, emphasizing the value of both.
The Trivium: Learning to Read, Write, and Speak in Community
Logocentric education begins early for the classical student. The trivium leads students into the liberal arts of language; students begin by learning traditional phonics, assigning meaning to symbols, and learning to speak and read their native tongue before progressing into logic and rhetoric. They develop the tools that enable them to participate in meaningful and effective communication. As author and former English professor Sister Miriam Joseph writes, “Because communication involves the simultaneous exercise of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, these three arts are the fundamental arts of education, of teaching, and of being taught.”11 Classically trained students learn to read, write, and speak words well not only to learn but also to participate in community. Joseph continues,
Communication, as the etymology of the word signifies, results in something possessed in common; it is a oneness shared. Communication takes place only when two minds really meet. If the reader or listener receives the same ideas and emotions that the writer or speaker wished to convey, he understands (although he may disagree); if he receives no ideas, he does not understand; if different ideas, he misunderstands. The same principles of logic, grammar, and rhetoric guide writer, reader, speaker, and listener.
It is this communal element of logocentric learning that Clark and Jain highlight when they refer to the grammar of the trivium as “the art of being at home in language.”12 This collective “home” results from the “oneness shared” by people through speaking, reading, and writing. Students begin this process by learning to imitate speech, which helps them take up the language of their community. This process of imitation does more than simply help them name reality: As Clark and Jain articulate, “The purpose of such
imitation is assimilation—that is, for the rhythms and cadences of language to work their way firmly into the child’s memory. Over time, students will gain an intuitive appreciation for proper speech and expression, which will enable them to confidently judge whether something ‘sounds right’ . . . ” Such intuition grows as the same practice is applied to reading: learning to decode the symbols that comprise words enables a student to not only access the meaning assigned to each term but also gain a sense of a text’s overall message, genre, and style—imperative skills for operating within a particular discourse community.
As Clark and Jain argue, “Each of [the] dimensions of the art of grammar—practical, metaphysical, moral, and imaginative—is bound up with language. Failure to cultivate any one of them leaves a man out of sorts with what Dorothy Sayers called ‘the world of words’ that surrounds us. To learn the art of grammar, in its most robust sense, is to be at home in the world of language.”13 To neglect the nurture of language and literacy in struggling students, then, is to relegate them to life outside of their social, cultural, and academic communities.
Implications of the Divine Logos for Christian Pedagogy and Practice
John 1: Christ, the True Word
While sojourning students’ potential inability to experience “being at home in language”—and thus being at home in Western civilization, American society, or their local neighborhoods or family cultures—is cause enough for alarm, Christian classical educators should be further concerned for them. Without possessing the liberal arts of language, sojourning students will struggle to access the very Word of God. Language occupies a central place in Holy Scripture from the very first words of Genesis; the God of the universe chose to speak creation into existence by saying the words “Let there be.”14 Yet this passage is a mere sampling of what the rest of the scriptures illustrate: God has chosen to reveal Himself to human-
7. Walter J. Ong, SJ., “Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought,” in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition ed. G. Baumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 36.
8. Plato, Phaedrus in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 553.
9. Ong, “Writing,” 28.
10. Walter J. Ong, SJ, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1982), 8.
13.
14.
11. Sister Miriam Joseph, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002), 6–7.
12. Clark and Jain, Liberal Arts Tradition, 53. Clark and Jain credit Clark’s mentor, Frank Ambrosio, PhD, for this phrase.
Clark and Jain, Liberal Arts Tradition, 53.
Genesis 1:3–26 (ESV).
kind through words—indeed, through books full of them.15 If there is still any doubt as to the centrality of the word—logos—in God’s revelation of Himself to humanity, we need look no further than John 1:1 (ESV) for final proof: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Of all the labels at his disposal, John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, calls Jesus “the Word.” Why?
Theologian David Ford considers the significance of this divine label in his commentary on the Gospel of John. In addition to noting the necessity of a multifaceted term to convey depth of meaning, Ford also mentions two immediate connections John’s first audience would have made with logos: “Word” as a concept that leads to “engagement with the whole of Scripture” and a cultural connection to the term as it was used in the broader Hellenistic world.16 According to Ford, then, “[John’s] Scripture and his civilization come together in this term.”
Surely this assertion bears implications for Christian classical educators: as we point our students toward the ultimate end (telos) of education—to know and love Jesus Christ and to serve His kingdom—we, too, must bring scripture and civilization together through logos. We do so through teaching the understanding and wise use of words, by dialoguing with important texts through the Great Conversation, and by pointing our students to the True Word, Jesus Christ. In much the same way that helping children understand parental authority helps them submit to the authority of God, teaching students the liberal art of language gives them a unique paradigm through which they may understand the very nature and person of God.
The Embodied Logos
The Logos identified in John 1 is more than a mere label for communicating meaning or an aid for a character study of God’s nature. Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of logos because His very life displays
15. 2 Timothy 3:15–16 (ESV); Hebrews 1:1 (ESV).
the message of God to all humanity: He is the gospel story. As scholar and theologian Leon Morris writes, “For [John], the Word is not a principle but a living Being and the source of life; not a personification but a Person, and that Person divine.”17 Jesus is the Living Word, the gospel message made flesh. The divine logos “is a term that gathers up into itself the universal saving significance of Christ.”
To center education around logos, then—to bring scripture and civilization together under the authority of Jesus Christ—is not only to value language as a way to communicate meaning nor to simply acknowledge the fulfillment of the term in the person of Jesus Christ; it must also include a lived gospel reality, giving hands and feet to Christian teaching. Explicitly logocentric education must apply the tenets of the Christian gospel to the work of tending the hearts, minds, and bodies of students. Like Jesus, the Christian educator must exercise care for the whole person, teaching in love and valuing not only right knowledge but also right affections. John gives us a profound glimpse of this gospel embodiment: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”18
Teaching Struggling Students in the Classical School
Such embodied Christian teaching bears particular implications for serving students with disabilities or differences that make word-centered learning exceptionally challenging. Surely the trajectory for bringing Scripture and civilization together19 under the authority of Christ includes prioritizing access to God’s revelation of Himself in the Holy Scriptures. While a classical approach to teaching reading serves all students well,20 students with dyslexia, visual processing disorder, or other learning challenges may require additional support to achieve reading proficiency, such as perceptual therapy, a slower pace of instruction and practice, and/or modified curricula. Concerned
16. David F. Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2021), 29–30.
17. Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 109.
18. John 1:14 (ESV).
19. Ford, Gospel of John, 30.
20. Cheryl Lowe, “How to Teach Phonics (Part II),” Memoria Press, accessed February 1, 2023, http://memoriapress.com/articles/teach-phonics-part-ii/.
parents and teachers must also offer these students plentiful exposure to a sufficient volume and variety of language by other means (such as audiobooks, read-alouds, sermons, and theater productions) so that their language stores may be bolstered and ready for future decoding progress. We must also consider that multi-modal learning and assessment are not only viable options in a logocentric education model but also helpful for both struggling readers and their classmates. The last decade has witnessed a marked increase in awareness of, dialogue about, and publication of resources on the challenges of teaching struggling readers in classical schools and homeschool settings.21 However, we still need to do much work to promote logocentric learning for the sojourning students among us.
First, classical Christian educators must adopt a willingness to adjust the pace of learning to meet struggling students’ needs. Any education claiming to be focused on a person instead of a product must combat the lies that fast is always good and that slow is always an obstacle to productivity. Author and classical education consultant Dr. Christopher Perrin’s recent piece on the paradox of “mak[ing] haste slowly,” or festina lente, highlights this tenet of authentic logocentric learning. Modeling the kindness and patience of Christ, parents and teachers must be willing to engage in “slow, regular training . . . heeding the wisdom of festina lente.”22
A robust understanding of human beings as imago Dei drives this willingness to adjust pace; viewing students as bearing the mark of the divine regardless of their weaknesses also calls classical Christian educators to embrace differentiation. A heart of compassion and a desire to invite students with different strengths and weaknesses into the communal quest for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness undergirds this posture. Christ’s unified message of Truth, extended through compassion toward men, women, and chil-
dren of countless different contexts, classes, and conditions, grounds this position. In celebration of the diverse creation of God, we can allow for—and even promote—differentiation in the classroom. Such classrooms full of students with different strengths and struggles portray Christ-centered hospitality through Logos, who brings the scriptures and civilization together in His name and exists in perpetual relationship with the rest of the Trinity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”23 As one commentator states, “Here are the building blocks that go into the doctrine of the Trinity; the one true God consists of more than one person, they relate to each other, and they have always existed.”24 In their book Welcoming Children with Special Needs, authors Julie M. Lane and Quentin P. Kinnison write, “God made human beings to live in relationships: first with God and also with each other. In these relationships we understand the purpose of our human existence and best demonstrate God’s Trinitarian image. By our love, care, concern, and embrace [of] people ‘other’ than ourselves, we reflect the [very] nature of God . . . .”25 Can Christian educators reflect the triune Word by isolating members of our learning community? Such practice not only fails to reflect the True Logos; it also removes from the rest of the learning community the blessings of encountering the power of Christ made perfect in weakness and virtuous character borne from struggle—works of God on display for those with eyes to see.
These works are displayed in struggling students through more than their wrestling with challenges, however. Struggling readers often learn to leverage their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses. While widely varied, this compensation may manifest as outstanding aural comprehension or excellent re-telling and narration skills. Such students may even exhibit sensibilities more akin to primarily oral culture, which “keeps its thinking close to the human
21. For example: Cheryl Swope, Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child (Louisville, KY: Memoria Press, 2013); Susan Wise Bauer, Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child’s Education (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018); Osborne, Reading for the Long Run and an increased volume of workshops and conference sessions addressing reading challenges and other special learning needs at classical education conferences nationwide.
22. Christopher Perrin, “Make Haste Slowly or Festina Lente: Why Slow Can Be Fast in Education,” Renewing Classical Education (blog), 15 November 2023, https:// christopherperrin.substack.com/p/make-haste-slowly-or-festina-lente.
23. John 1:1 (ESV).
24. ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 2019.
25. Lane and Kennison, Welcoming Children with Special Needs: Empowering Christian Special Education Through Purpose, Policies, and Procedures (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2014), 16.
life world, personalizing things and issues, and stores knowledge in stories,” helping us avoid the danger of removing important ideals from embodied existence.26 Students who lean on aural comprehension may also develop a greater memory capacity, a necessary component for storing oral information and stories. We have yet to witness the many ways students with disabilities and significant learning differences can contribute to classical learning communities.
Christian Teaching and Learning: The End Goal
The telos of logocentric learning compels us to lead struggling students into a logos-saturated life so that they can be at home in their inheritance. Reading remediation and skill support is right and good, but it is not a complete picture of modeling the embodied Word to struggling students. To call students home to dwell in logos—to be at home in their sociological, familial, cultural, and spiritual inheritance—requires kindness, patience, compassion, hospitality, and love: a reflection of Christ. Christian educators model these virtues well by fulfilling Christ’s command to care for the sojourner among us. Such an enlarged view of education and a clear view of its end goal will necessitate reaching out to students with learning challenges that limit their access to this inheritance. In short: care for struggling students must become a priority, not a pet project.
Calling sojourning students home through embodied instruction in language and literacy points to the preeminence of Christ in classical education. And bringing the scriptures and civilization together through logocentric teaching and learning reflects the reconciling work of Christ: As Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians (verses 1:15 and 19–20): “He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation . . . For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” Authentic classical Christian education—that is, an education that addresses the whole child in an effort to cultivate
26. Ong, “Writing,” 25.
27. Revelation 19:11, 13 (ESV).
28. John 1:1 (ESV).
29. Revelation 19:13 (ESV).
30. Colossians 1:17 (ESV).
wisdom and virtue by learning to dwell in language— offers a true gift to the sojourning students among us. Logocentric learning does not exclude students who struggle to take up their inheritance of words and the Word; Christ invites the outsider in, the prodigal home, the bound to freedom, the outcast to the feast. Revelation 19 offers us a compelling picture of the blessed feast that all people who have taken up the inheritance of Christ will one day enjoy with Him, the Lamb. Immediately following the description of the marriage supper of the Lamb, John narrates the coming of a rider “called Faithful and True“ on a white horse: “He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.”27 He was in the beginning,28 He rides forth in the end,29 and He holds all things together in between30—Christ, the Living Word, toward whom all our pursuits are aimed. May our teaching and learning model the lived gospel of His kingdom until we all feast together in the presence of the Lord.
BY JESSE KEITH BUTLER
THE BLESSING OF THE WATERS
The waters wander overland. Thin rivulets weave into others to form a stream. The fallow sand folds to its path. It can’t withstand the blessing of the waters.
Here’s how it starts. A dry voice groans across the wasted crags, and musters a trickle from the shattered stones. Hear how the wilderness intones the blessing of the waters.
Far off, the shriveled sea-beds fill with murky froth. The runoff gathers in pits and gullies. Bright streams spill toward them, bearing down the hill the blessing of the waters.
The stagnant depths churn up and thresh the surface, as their essence alters— the brackish breakers flashing fresh, receiving for wind-withered flesh the blessing of the waters.
Dry-throated traveler: That gleam that skirts the sky is all that matters. To crest the final slope. To dream and see beyond the way it seems the blessing of the waters.
PLUTARCH OUGHT TO BE THE “PATRON SAINT” OF EVERY CLASSICAL HOME SCHOOL.
Not only did he educate the young at his home in the small town of Chaeronea, about a day’s walk from Delphi. He wrote and lectured extensively with young people in mind—most notably in his Parallel Lives of ancient Greeks and Romans—conveying the essence of Hellenic paideia to his pupils. He is also, arguably, our best source for understanding the historical and moral traditions of classical antiquity.
His letter, “Advice to an Aspiring Statesman,” is what concerns us here at this moment of political turmoil and uncertainty. We are offering our translation from the original Greek of the first 14 sections of his 32-section letter. These will give the reader a flavor for Plutarch’s wisdom in prose. Reading it invites troubling comparisons between the advice he is giving young Menemachos of Sardis and the choices Americans too often have to make at their own polling stations.
Consider this: in ancient Athens at the height of its achievements in the fifth century BC, most of its political leadership was selected by lottery from the citizenry. In other words, every young person needed an education that would prepare him to govern in the event he was chosen.
Why not read Plutarch and consider this to be the aim and hallmark of a “classical” education?
—David V. Hicks
Nota Bene: Throughout the letter, Plutarch frequently quotes from various classical texts, which you will find italicized.
No one could make light of your proposals, not the whole army—who could contradict you? But you don’t press on and reach a useful end.1
I.
My dear Menemachos,2
If there is another situation where Nestor’s response to Diomede can be applied, it would be to the theoretical lectures of moral philosophers that have nothing practical to teach or propose. They are like men who trim the lamp but neglect to add oil. Now I see that you have good reason
to be drawn to public life, and that you wish to become worthy of your birth and homeland
… a man of words and a man of action too.3
But since you do not have the time to spend observing the words and deeds of practicing statesmen or to serve as an apprentice to a wise mentor, versed in the affairs of state and political controversy, you have asked me for political advice. To refuse would not be proper. I only hope that the result will be worthy both of your deserving and of my desire to please. As requested, I have provided a wide variety of examples.
1. Iliad ix.55-56 in Robert Fagles’ translation. Nestor’s response to Diomede.
2. I take ‘great liberties’ with this opening address and the placement of the citation from the Iliad There is a gentle irony in Plutarch’s use of the quote that I think makes it a nice reflection of the entire letter/treatise, in that he is casting himself as old long-winded Nestor addressing the young impetuous Diomede.
3. Iliad ix.443 in Robert Fagles’ translation
First and foremost, a public life should be built on a firm and strong foundation, that is, upon a choice arising from judgment and reason and not from a desire for vainglory, a love of quarreling, or simply for the lack of another occupation. Just as those who have nothing useful to do at home spend most of their time in the marketplace even when they have no business there, so some who have no worthwhile occupation throw themselves into politics and use public life as a way to pass the time. Many people get caught up in public affairs by chance, afterwards lose interest, and can no longer easily withdraw. They are like those who board a boat for the thrill of riding the waves who, when they find themselves at sea, gaze overboard, seasick, nauseous, but obliged to remain and deal with their situation.
Over the mirror-white calm of the sea their fair faced loves sweep past them into the divine fury of the sea-pounding oar.1
People like this give politics a bad name by giving up when instead of the glory they expected they are wounded by slander, or when instead of the fear they expected to inspire in others owing to their power they run into danger and confusion. Unlike these people, the person who has begun a public career reasonably, out of the conviction that it is the noblest activity he could have, will not be panic-stricken by setbacks or lose conviction.
Public affairs should not be entered into for business reasons or to make money, as was the case with the followers of the Athenian demagogues Stratocles and Dromoclides who jokingly referred to the speaker’s platform in the assembly as “the golden harvest.” Nor should politics be entered into by persons suddenly seized with passion, as was the case with Gaius Gracchus, who when his brother’s misfortunes were still fresh withdrew as far as possible from public life and later, inflamed by personal insults and injury, rushed back in anger. He no sooner had his fill of glory and public duties than he again sought to retire and rest, but found it impossible to set aside his power owing to its greatness. He perished before he could rest. Also, those who in the competition for superi-
ority and glory make themselves up like actors in the theater are bound to regret it. They either become the slaves of those they presume to govern, or they offend those they set out to please. In sum, politics is like a well. Those who fall in by accident or without thinking wind up disillusioned and regret it, while those who climb down calmly after careful preparation and due consideration conduct their affairs with moderation and are not easily annoyed, believing as they do that the goal of governance is nothing other than the common good. III.
Once you have firmly decided on a political career, your first order of business is to understand the character of the citizenry and to discover the trait above all others that distinguishes them. Attempting from the outset to build your own character while correcting the character of the people is neither easy nor without risk. It requires both a long time and great authority. The statesman, until he has built a solid reputation and is trusted by the citizens, adapts to their existing traits and keeps them always in his sights, knowing the sorts of things that please and naturally influence them.
Just as wine at first is mastered by the character traits of the drinker, but gently as it warms and mixes into the bloodstream affects and transforms character, so . . .
The Athenians, for example, are governed by their emotions and as easily moved to anger as to pity. They would rather jump to a conclusion than wait calmly to be taught. They are eager to assist the meek and lowly, while at the same time preferring amusing and playful speeches. They enjoy hearing their praises sung, while not begrudging those who make fun of them. They are fearsome toward their leaders and then generous to their enemies. The Carthaginians are just the opposite: bitter, sullen, and submissive to their leaders; harsh to their subjects; very mean-spirited when afraid; very savage when angry; stubborn in their judgments; and dour and harsh when treated with humor and graciousness. No Carthaginian would have laughed and applauded as he stood up to leave in the way Cleon’s guests did after he asked them to adjourn the assembly
because he had just made a sacrifice. Nor would a Carthaginian, having seen a quail escape from Alcibiades’ cloak in the middle of a speech, jump up to chase after it and give it back to him. No, he would taken umbrage and killed him for his brazen extravagance, the way the Carthaginians banished Hannon for using a lion to draw his carriage on his campaigns, accusing him of aspiring to be a tyrant.
I doubt that the Thebans would have hesitated to make public an enemy’s letter that had fallen into their hands. So unlike the Athenians who, having captured Philip’s couriers bearing a letter written to Olympias, refused to open it or reveal the intimate affection of an absent husband for his wife. On the other hand, the Athenians would not easily have put up with the arrogance and cheek of an Epaminondas of Thebes who, when he refused to defend himself against their accusations, simply stood up and walked out of the assembly to the gymnasium. Still less would the Spartans have tolerated the effrontery and clownishness of Stratocles who convinced the Athenians to celebrate the happy news of a victory, and then, when later they became angry after having learned the truth of their defeat, asked the people how he could be blamed for giving them three days of festivity. Court flatterers, like bird catchers, mimic the king’s voice and try to resemble him and assume his characteristics and attach themselves to him by means of deception. The statesman, on the contrary, ought not to mimic the character of the sovereign people, but rather come to understand and use those traits in the citizen that give him influence. It is ignorance of the character of the people that causes missed opportunities and mistakes in government no less that in relations with kings.
IV.
Once you have gained authority and credibility, you should attempt to modulate the character of the citizenry, nudging it carefully for the better and handling it gently, for changing a people is fraught with danger. As for your own way of life, you must put it in order and display it as though you were to spend the rest of your life on a stage in plain view. And if it isn’t easy to destroy the bad elements of your soul entirely, at least remove and trim those that bloom and stick out the most. You have heard how Themistocles, intending to enter politics, gave up drinking and partying, earnest-
ly explaining to his friends, sober and sleepless, that the trophy of Miltiades at Marathon kept him awake. Pericles even changed himself physically and his life style, walking slowly and conversing gently, always displaying a composed expression, keeping his hand inside his cloak and walking only on the road to the Assembly and the Council.
The citizenry is not easy to handle, not easy to get a salutary grip onto by just anyone. You must be content if like a suspicious and temperamental horse it accepts your authority and is not shied by a look or tone of voice. How can the leader who must pay close attention to the people keep his own life and character free from reproach and scandal? The politician is held accountable not only for what he does and says in public, but much is also made of what he eats, of his love life, of his marriage, in short of everything he does, in jest or in earnest.
Do we need to speak of Alcibiades, the most energetic of public figures, an invincible general, who was destroyed by his lack of self-control and the audacity of his life style? He deprived the state of all his good qualities through extravagance and licentiousness. The Athenians criticized Cimon for his wine consumption, while the Romans, finding nothing else, blamed Scipio for sleeping. Pompey the Great’s enemies abused him when they caught him scratching his head with one finger. For just as a mole or a wart on the face displeases more than marks, malformations, and scars on the rest of the body, so small faults appear large when seen in the lives of leaders and statesmen, owing to the citizens’ opinion that government and politics is a grand activity worthy of being purified of all eccentricity and error.
The populist Livius Drusus’ response to one of the builders of his house makes a lot of sense. Upon remarking that his house had several rooms exposed to his neighbors’ view and offering to reorient it and rearrange the rooms for only five talents, Drusus was praised for responding, “Take ten and make the entire house transparent, so all the citizens can see how I live.” He was indeed a wise and decent man, although in his case such transparency was perhaps unnecessary. The people see clearly the character, plans, deeds, and lives of politicians, even those aspects that seem most carefully concealed. Whether for private or public behavior, they will like and admire the one, dislike and despise the other.
“Come now! Do states not use those who live licentiously or extravagantly?” Yes, sometimes pregnant women seek out stones and seasick passengers briny foods and such, only to spit them out and reject them soon after. Just so the people, owing to decadence or anger or for want of better leaders, use those who come along, all the while loathing and despising them. Later they take pleasure in hearing it said of them such things as the comic playwright Plato put in the mouth of his citizen:
Quick, quick, hold down my hand! I’m about to raise it to elect Agyrrhios.2
or again, asking for a basin and feather in order to vomit,
Mantias is about to speak… and He’s been eating smelly Kephalos, dreadful plague!3
When Carbo made a promise and offered to back it up with an oath and curse, the Romans responded in unison, “We don’t believe you.” In Sparta, when a profligate offered an otherwise reasonable opinion, which the people in turn rejected, the ephors selected one of the elders by lot and ordered him to offer again the same opinion. Thus, by pouring it as it were from a dirty vessel to a clean one, it became acceptable to the people. So critical in politics is the weight attached to trust in someone’s character and its opposite.
This should be corrected to say that both character and speech persuade. Unless, by Zeus, one might say that just as a pilot steers his vessel not with the rudder, or a rider turns his horse not with the bridle, so the statesman persuades the people not with speech as rudder and bridle but with political virtue, “taking hold of the animal where it is most manageable” (as Plato has it) and “steering his boat from the prow.” Wherever great kings, Homer’s “scions of Zeus,” with their purples, their scepters, their guards, and their divine oracles inflated themselves and subjugated the populace as if they considered themselves to be superior beings, they nonetheless wished to be “speakers of counsel” and did not neglect elegance in speaking
Nor the assemblies where men earn distinction.4
And they not only invoke Zeus the Counselor, Ares the Wrathful, and Athena the Warrior, but they call to their side also Calliope
Who indeed attends to reverend kings5 by inspiring awe and calming by persuasion the contumacy and violence of the citizenry. How is it then possible for an ordinary individual, with the dress and appearance of the common man, seeking to govern a state, to gain enough influence and power over the people if he does not possess appealing and persuasive eloquence?6
For all that, one should not rely entirely on merit and neglect the appeal and power of eloquence. As Menander reminds us, if not its creator, the art of speech is at least the co-producer of persuasion.
The character of the speaker, not the speech, persuades
Under Pericles, Athens was “in name a democracy,” as Thucydides puts it, “but in deed the rule of its first citizen” owing to the force of his oratory. At the time Cimon was esteemed as well, as were Ephialtes and Thucydides. But when the latter was asked by Archidamos, the Spartan king, who was the best wrestler, he or Pericles answered, “No one knows. When I dropped him in a match he said he didn’t fall and won by persuading the spectators.” And this ability not only brought him renown, but salvation to the state by being persuaded by him to preserve the prosperity it enjoyed and to refrain from foreign ventures. Nicias, however, who had the same intention, lacked the same
power of persuasion. Attempting with speech resembling a soft bit to turn aside the citizenry, he failed to control it and instead was borne off by force on its bucking back to the disastrous venture in Sicily.
They say that you cannot control a wolf by the ears, but it is the best way to lead a state. Don’t be like some, unschooled in rhetoric, who seek gross or crude holds on the people, pulling them by the stomach with sumptuous feasts, giving handouts from the public purse, and forever organizing Pyrrhic dances or gladiatorial contests. These popular leaders are merely sycophants. Genuine leadership consists in persuading with oratory, whereas these attempts to domesticate the masses are no different than the trapping and herding of beasts deprived of reason.
gravitas and grandeur are more suitable for political speeches. Models to follow are the Philippics of Demosthenes and, among the speeches in Thucydides, those of the Ephor Sthenelaidas, of King Archidamas at Plataea, and of Pericles after the plague.7 As for the speeches given by lesser historians to generals in front of their troops lined up for battle,
No one utters such drivel with sword drawn. VII.
2. … as “strategos” in the text.
3. Both of these latter lines depend on probable puns difficult to render effectively.
4. Iliad ix.441.
5. Hesiod, Theogony 80.
6. We have omitted a page of text here in
VI.
The statesman’s speech, however, should not be trendy or theatrical, like the set speeches on national holidays, weaving garlands of fancy words. Nor should his speech, as Pytheas said of Demosthenes’ oratory, smell of the midnight oil and overwriting, appearing boring and dry in its argumentation with phrases measured out by ruler and compass. But just as musicians ask that the strings be touched expressively, not percussively, so in the speech of the public figure who offers counsel and hopes to lead. His speech should not put cleverness or cunning on display. It should not invite praise for ‘flowing periods’, ‘virtuosity’, or ‘subtle argumentation’, but instead it should be filled with unaffected feeling, with genuine high-mindedness, with wise counsel, foresight, and compassionate intelligence, combining the charm and nobility that proceed from solemn words and original convincing thoughts.
Maxims, anecdotes, fables, and imagery are more acceptable in a political speech than they are in legal pleading, and they can be very effective when they are well timed and used sparingly, as when Archilochus said,
… let not Tantalus’s rock hang suspended above our isle,
or when Pericles ordered the removal of Piraeus by calling it an “eyesore.” Generally speaking, however,
7. We have preserved two of the five examples that Plutarch cites.
Nonetheless, there are times when sarcasm and mockery have their place in a political speech, so long as they don’t descend to the level of personal insult and buffoonery, but can be said to chastise and ridicule effectively. Such things are especially well received in answers to questions and in repartee, whereas planning and initiating them is more the work of a comedian and will earn a reputation for meanness.8 In the case of mockery, you must also guard against belittling your audience or lowering yourself in their esteem, as Democrates did when he said upon entering the assembly, “Like the state, my muscles are weak, but my lungs are strong.” Or when, after the defeat at Chaeronea, he declared to the people of Athens: “I wish the state were not faring so badly that it had to listen to me as well.” The latter are the words of a little man, the former of a nutcase; neither is suited to a statesman. Phocion was admired for his conciseness, which is why Polyeuctus considered Demosthenes the greatest orator but Phocion the most eloquent, inasmuch as his speech contained the greatest substance in the fewest words. And Demosthenes, who thought little of other orators, was accustomed to say when Phocion got up to speak, “Here goes the chopper of my speeches.”
VIII.
Above all, try to ensure that your public speeches are the product of deliberation and contain no weak passages, knowing that even Pericles would pray before addressing the people that nothing off topic would occur to him. In addition, in your repartee be quick on your feet and practiced, for such occasions in politics are crucial and often unforeseen. For this reason, they
8. Here follow several examples of proper and improper uses of sarcasm that we have omitted, none being particularly enlightening.
say that Demosthenes lost out to many from hesitating and shrinking back when challenged. Theophrastus tells how Alcibiades, who was determined to say not only what needed saying but how to say it, by searching for words and rearranging them as he was speaking often fell silent and lost his audience.
But the person who is aroused on the spot by the matter at hand makes the greatest impression. He wins over the people and convinces them. Take Leo of Byzantium, for example, who came once to speak to the Athenians in a time of civil strife. Seeing that he was laughed at for being small, he said, “You should see my wife. She barely comes up to my knees.” At which point they laughed even more. “But I can tell you that we who are so small, when we argue, the city of Byzantium cannot contain us.” And when the youthful orator Pytheas was arguing against giving honors to Alexander and someone said, “Who are you to be addressing such important business at your tender age?” Pytheas replied, “Who indeed. Alexander is younger than me, and you’re voting to make him a god.”
IX.
More than that, you need a loud voice and complete breath control for the no-holds-barred contest that is politics. You must train like an athlete to speak in order not to be interrupted—as often happens when one is tired and out of breath—by some
Rapacious bawler, with the voice of a crashing torrent.9
Cato, when he had no hope of persuading the people and a senate already won over by favors and intrigues, stood up and spoke for an entire day and thus put off the decision. On the question of training for and using speech, these remarks will suffice for someone able to discover what they imply.
X.
There are two ways to enter politics—one the fast and brilliant lane to glory, but not without danger; the other more plodding and slower, but the safer path. Some arrive on the political scene suddenly, dashing forward
like a ship’s prow into the sea, with some striking bold move, proving Pindar’s words correct:
to an action that begins must be put A face that shines from afar.10
Bored and fed up with what they are used to, the people welcome a newcomer as spectators welcome a new contestant. Authorities and powers that experience this quick and spectacular increase deliver a knockout blow to envy. As Ariston says: “lit rapidly and blazing quickly, a fire produces no smoke and glory no envy.” But those who rise little by little are attacked easily from all sides. For this reason many wither before they bloom on the speaker’s platform. But when, as they say of the sprinter Ladas,
The drop of the starting rope still in his ears And crowned the winner.
Envy and scorn have little effect on the one who has brilliantly accomplished an embassy, a triumph, or a generalship. This is the way Aratos achieved glory, entering office by defeating the tyrant Nicocles; and Alcibiades, by negotiating the support of Mantinea against Sparta. Pompey requested a triumph when not yet a senator. When Sulla protested, Pompey said, “More nations worship the rising sun than the one that sets.” At which point Sulla conceded. It was not by chance but rather out of admiration that the Romans suddenly and contrary to their laws elected Cornelius Scipio consul, although he was seeking only the aedileship. After all, this young man singlehandedly achieved victory in Spain and shortly afterwards so distinguished himself at Carthage that Cato the Elder exclaimed,
He alone is calm—the other shades flit about.11
But in our day, when the affairs of city-states no longer involve military campaigns to lead, tyrants to overthrow, or alliances to negotiate, how is one to make a start to a visibly brilliant political career?
Public trials remain, as do embassies to the emperor, which require a man of conviction, possessing both boldness and intelligence. By restoring to our cities
the many fine customs that have fallen into disuse, or by reforming those that from abuse have shamed and harmed the state, a reputation might still be gained. In the past, a great trial well adjudicated, testimony in defense of the weak against a powerful opponent, or bold speech for a just cause in the face of a corrupt governor—these actions have marked glorious starts to political careers for some. Not a few have risen to power owing to the resentments of the people. They have fearlessly confronted those whose authority was feared and hated. In this case, the power of the overthrown passes immediately to the over-thrower along with a better reputation.
To attack out of jealousy a worthy man who gained his position owing to virtue—as Simmias did Pericles, Alcmaeon Themistocles, Clodius Pompey, or the orator Meneclides Epaminondas—is neither good for one’s reputation nor advantageous in any other way. Whenever the people injure a worthy man and then repent, as typically happens after a fit of rage, they consider the easiest way to excuse their behavior to attack the person who instigated their anger and persuaded them to injure the worthy man. But in the case of a worthless person, who has taken control of the state through deception and craft, as Cleon and Cleophon did in Athens, the man who stands up, like a dramatic hero, to fight and bring him down makes a brilliant entrance to politics.
I’m not ignoring the fact that some have gained power and glory by curtailing the authority of a grievous assembly or oligarchy, as Ephialtes did in Athens, or Phormio in Elis, but this involves great risk for someone just setting out in politics. Solon chose a better beginning. When the city was rent by three divisions—Mountain, Plain, and Coast—he became entangled in none but rather made common cause with all, arguing for concord in word and deed, and as a result was chosen to be a lawgiver to reconcile them and thereby established his rule. For a spectacular entrance into politics these then are the various ways to start. XI.
Many famous statesmen favored a safe studied approach. These included Aristides, Phocion, Pammenes of Thebes, Lucullus in Rome, Cato, Argesilaus of Sparta. Like ivy that grows strong as it clings to a tree and
rises alongside, each one of these men attached himself while still young and unknown to a man who was older and wellknown. By rising due to his influence and growing alongside him, they each took root and implanted themselves in public life. In this way, Cleisthenes raised up Aristides, Chabrias Phocion, Sulla Lucullus, Maximus Cato, Epaminondas Pammenes, and Lysander Argesilaus. In this last case, Argesilaus, owing to hasty ambition and jealous of the other’s glory, scornfully tore himself away from the man who had mentored him. The others, however, nurtured these relationships nobly and diplomatically until the end, adding to their own brilliance as heavenly bodies do from the sun, reflecting its light and joining in its radiance.
Those who maligned Scipio claimed that he was simply taking credit for the work of his associate Laelius. But none of this ever bothered Laelius. He continued to work for Scipio, taking pride in his mentor’s excellence and reputation. Afranius, the friend of Pompey, who aspired to a consulship even though he was quite poor, stood down at a time when Pompey favored other candidates, saying that he could not take pride in obtaining a consulship, but only pain and regret if he did so against the will of Pompey and without his support. Holding off for one year only, he both obtained the office and preserved his friendship. Those who are thus helped along on the path to glory both benefit from the people’s favor and escape its condemnation should something go wrong. This is why Philip advised Alexander to make friends whenever possible under another man’s reign, to be gracious and affable.
XII.
To begin a career in politics one should choose as a mentor not just anyone famous and powerful, but someone who owes his fame to good character.12 Just as every tree does not lend itself to supporting a vine, but would strangle and destroy its growth, so it is in states with those who seek not the common good but only honors and offices. They do not allow the young to take initiative, but stifle and allow them to wither out of jealousy, as if they were stealing their nourishment, their glory. So Marius, who enjoyed many successes in Libya and then later in Gaul owing to Sulla, stopped using him, annoyed by his ascendency. He used Sulla’s seal ring as a pretext. As quester under
Marius’s command in Libya, Sulla was sent to Bocchus and returned with Jugurtha as a prisoner. Like a proud youth at this first taste of glory, he did not react to his good fortune with moderation but had a depiction of Jugurtha surrendering to him made for the seal ring he wore. Marius broke with him over this presumptuous act. Consequently, Sulla went over to Catulus and Metellus, both good men and Marius’s opponents, and soon they drove out and defeated Marius, who nearly ruined Rome in civil war.
Sulla, on the other hand, elevated Pompey to greatness from his youth, rising at his approach and uncovering his head. To other young men too he provided opportunities to command troops, even to the point of spurring some on against their will, and filled the armies with pride and competitive spirit, all the while maintaining his preeminence, wishing to be not the only, but the first and greatest among many great men. These then are the sorts of men one should hold and cling to. Don’t be like the snake13 in Aesop’s fable that rode the eagle’s back with the intention of flying off in order to steal his glory. Rather be content to share in his good will and friendship. As Plato says,14 they cannot rule well who have not learned to serve well.
XII.
[FRIENDS] There follows the question about keeping friends. I commend neither the attitude of Themistocles nor that of Cleon. Cleon, when first he knew that he was entering politics, gathered his friends together and broke off his friendship with them, saying that friendships often lead to compromise in politics and turn one away from correct and just decisions. He would have done better to rid his soul of his love of money and quarreling, to cleanse himself of envy and spite, for states need noble wise men, not friendless companionless ones. Indeed, when he drove away his friends there gathered about him, as the comic poets say,
A hundred heads in a circle, the kissing tongues of whining sycophants.15
13. The snake is specifically the basilisk.
14. In so many words, Laws, 762e.
Rough and disagreeable toward respectable persons, he threw himself at the people’s feet to gain their favor,
Playing the geriatric nursemaid and handing out pensions16
and allying himself with the base and noxious element of the citizenry against the best citizens. Themistocles, on the other hand, in response to a man who said he would rule well by being impartial to all, said, “Never would I occupy a post where my friends could not profit more than my enemies.” He was not correct to subordinate politics to friendship, to place the common good and affairs of state below private favors and ambitions. Nonetheless, he did respond correctly when the poet Simonides made an unjust request, “A poet is not serious who composes against his measure, nor is a magistrate worthy who grants favors against the law.”
Would we not expect a captain to pick his crew and a ship owner his captain who
know well to hold the helm and well the yard-arm on the poop deck when a wind arises,17
or an architect his contractors and craftsmen who will not destroy his building but will follow his plans to make it perfect? Likewise, would it not be truly shocking if a statesman, Pindar’s “master builder of fairness and justice,” did not choose friends in the first instance who shared his passion, a crew to share his enthusiasm and pull for the common good, but instead friends who, unjustly and forcibly, pull at him each in his own direction? The statesman would then appear no different from a homebuilder or carpenter who, owing to inexperience or error, used squares, rulers, or levels that would distort his work.
Friends are the living, thinking tools of statesmen. You must not allow them to cause you to slip into error with them, but rather ensure that they do not themselves err out of ignorance. This was a source of shame for Solon and lowered his esteem with the citizens, for when he got the idea of relieving debts and introduc-
15. Aristophanes, Wasps 1033 and Peace 756. We are using “kissing” for the Greek “licking” (said of serpents’ tongues). “Licking” works well in French, where the vulgar name for a flatterer is “léche-cul.”
16. Provenance unknown, Kock 11.
17. Callimachus, Schneider 382
ing the “Disburdening” ordinance—a nice term for cancelling debts—he shared it with his friends, who committed a grave injustice: they rushed out and borrowed great sums of money. Shortly thereafter, when the law was published, it came to light that they had purchased magnificent homes and great plots of land with the monies they had borrowed, and Solon carried the blame for the injustice of which he was the victim.
Agesilaus too, owing to zealous exertions for friends, became very much weakened and brought low, like the Pegasus of Euripides,
Cowered, stooping more the more he bade,18 and by aiding them in their misfortunes more zealously than he ought to have done, he gave the appearance of joining in their wrong-doing. He spared Phoebidas, for example, when he was condemned for seizing Cadmea without permission, saying that such things needed to be done on one’s own initiative. And when Sphodrias was pursued in court for the extraordinarily illegal act of invading Attica at a time when the Athenians were friends and allies, Agesilaus contrived to get him let off, yielding to the amorous entreaties of his son. And in a message to a dynast, he is reported to have said, “If Nicias has committed no crime, release him. If he has committed a crime, release him for my sake. In any case, release him.” Compare Phocion who did not come forward for his own son-in-law Charicles when he was charged in the case of Harpale, but left the court saying, “I became your father-in-law for all your just actions.” Timoleon of Corinth also, when he failed by arguments and entreaties to turn his brother from tyranny, joined his assassins.
It is not only to avoid perjury and “up until the altar,” as Pericles once said, that one must be a friend, but up until any and every law or principle of justice and good judgment. If justice and good judgment are flouted for the sake of friendship, great damage is done to the common good, as were the cases of not serving justice to Sphodrias or Phoebidas after they involved Sparta in the Leuctrian War. When it comes to friends’ lesser mistakes, no harsh treatment is called for; and we are free to help friends, stand by them, and serve
their interests so long as the common good is preserved.
There exist favors that do not invite criticism or envy, such as supporting a friend’s candidacy, entrusting him with an honorable administrative role, or sending him on a friendly embassy such as bestowing honors on a ruler or petitioning another state for friendship and peace. In the case of some difficult mission to which one has first been entrusted, one might bring a friend on board, like Diomede:
If you bid me choose my own companion, how could I forget the divine Odysseus?19 . . . who appropriately returned the compliment:
These horses, sire, you ask about are newcomers, Thracians; the one who killed their master the good Diomede, aye and twelve of his best comrades besides.20
This sort of nod to one’s friends embellishes the praise-giver no less than the praised. “But arrogance,” says Plato, “shares his home with solitude.”21 Moreover, when giving out noble and philanthropic favors, you ought to ask those who receive them to praise and thank your friends for being jointly responsible and having suggested them. Base and inappropriate requests, however, should be rejected, not bitterly but gently, explaining and helping them understand that honoring such a request would not be worthy of their fine character and harm their reputation. Epaminondas provides the best example when, having refused Pelopidas’s request to release a tavern-keeper from prison and later releasing him at his mistress’s request, he explained, “Such favors, Pelopidas, it is fitting to grant to courtesans, not to generals.” Cato’s response, on the other hand, was heavy-handed and arrogant when Catulus the Censor, one of his closest friends, requested pardon for a man who was being judged by him as quaestor, “It is shameful that you who are in charge of upholding the laws of the Republic must be denied and reprimanded for making such a request to a subordinate.” In fact, it was possible to reject the favor while removing the harshness and bit-
19.
20.
21.
18. Nauck 309.
Iliad 10.242-243
Iliad 10.558-560
Epistola iv.321b
terness of his words. He could simply have said that the law obliged him to do so.
Even in money matters there are ways of assisting friends in need that are not dishonorable in politics. Themistocles, for example, after a battle seeing a corpse wearing a golden neck ring and wristband, passed by but turning to his friend said, “Take them, you’re not Themistocles.” State business also often provides these opportunities for friends (for they are not all Menemachuses). You can entrust a friend with the paid defense of a just cause, introduce him to a wealthy man who needs assistance and protection, or help another obtain a public works or taxation contract. Epaminondas even told a friend to ask a wealthy man for a talent at his bidding. When the rich man came to ask him why, he said, “Because he is worthy and poor, while you are wealthy having stolen much from the state.” Agesilas too, according to Xenophon, enjoyed enriching his friends while remaining himself above money.
XIV.
[ENEMIES]. But because “all larks grow a crest” in Simonides’ phrase, and every policy creates enemies and disagreements, it is advisable for the statesman to consider the treatment of enemies. Most men praise Themistocles and Aristides who laid aside enmity at the border whenever they departed on an embassy or campaign and picked it up again on their return. Some even take unreasonable delight in the example of Cretinas of Magnesia. His political opponent was Hermias, not a nobleman but an upstanding generous soul. When the Mithridatic War broke out and he saw the state in danger, Cretinas offered to stand aside and asked Hermias to assume the office and manage affairs or, if he preferred, to have Cretinas command the army and leave himself lest their rivalry destroy the state. The proposal pleased Hermias, and saying that Cretinas was the better warrior, he went into exile with his wife and children. Cretinas provided him an escort and from his own possessions gave him whatever was more useful to exiles than to those under siege. Owing to his excellent generalship, Cretinas managed against all expectation to save the state, which was on the edge
of destruction. But if it is noble and high-minded to exclaim,
I love my children, but I love my native land more,22
how would it not have been better for these men to say: “I despise the fellow and wish him ill, but I love my country more.” Would it not have been better for them to reconcile with each other in order to preserve what was dear to them both?
Phocion and of Cato the Younger did better yet, not holding any grudge at all in spite of their political differences. They were severe and unbending only in public disagreements over what was in the state’s best interest. In private they treated their political rivals in a friendly manner free from rancor. No fellow countryman should be considered an enemy unless some plague or cancer—an Aristion, a Nabis, or a Catiline— appear in the state. Those who are “out of tune” you must like a musician tighten or loosen gently to bring them back into harmony, not contributing to their mistakes with anger or inciting violence, but more responsibly as in Homer:
Alas! And I thought you more sensible than others23 and You are capable of forming a better opinion than that.24
And when your adversaries do say or do something worthwhile, you will not be irritated when they receive honors or niggardly in your praise of their fine achievements. In this way, your blame, when it is necessary, will be trustworthy, and you will turn them away from evil and increase their virtue by showing that the actions and words you are praising are worthier and better suited to them. I believe that a statesman should publicly support the just actions of his adversaries and assist them against anonymous informers by lending no credence to their accusations when these contradict their actions. Nero offers a good example of this. Just before killing Thrasea, whom he especially hated and feared, he answered a man who claimed that Thrasea had badly and unjustly judged him, “I wish
that Thrasea were as loyal to me as he was excellent as a judge.”25
To reprove others, who are by nature rogues and more serious offenders, it is not a bad idea to cite the fine examples of their enemies, “But they would not have said or done such a thing!” When they fall into error, some must be reminded of their noble fathers, as in Homer:
How little the child Tydeus engendered resembles him!26
And toward Scipio Africanus in a debate before the comitia Appius, “O Paulus, how you would turn over in your grave to see Philonicus the tax-collector acting as your son’s bodyguard in his pursuit of the censorship!” Such words criticize those in error and do honor to the critics. Sophocles’s Nestor also responds to Ajax’s abuse in a statesmanlike manner:
I blame you not: you do well even if you speak ill.27
Cato also, who thoroughly opposed Pompey when with Caesar he resorted to violence against the state, when war broke out between them asked that Pompey be given supreme command. He stated that it was up to those who had done great wrongs to the state to put things right. When blame is mixed with praise and is frank but without insults, provoking remorse and a change of mind rather than anger, it displays good will and concern. Insults are most unbecoming in statesmen. Look at the things Demosthenes said to Aeschines and Aeschines to Demosthenes, and at what Hyperides wrote against Demades. Would a Solon, a Pericles, a Lycurgus of Sparta, a Pittacus of Lesbos have spoken in this way? Besides, Demosthenes only employs insult in court pleadings. The Philippics are free of all forms of mockery and ribaldry. Such things shame those who speak them more than those to whom they are addressed, and in addition they create confusion in public affairs and disrupt councils and assemblies. That is why Phocion made the excellent decision to interrupt his speech and yield the floor to someone who was insulting him. When the fellow finally fell silent, he came up again to say: “So, we have
covered the cavalry and heavy infantry,28 it remains for me to talk about the light infantry and the peltasts.”
But since for many this behavior is difficult to resist, and it is often very useful to silence insults with repartee, in that case be brief in your speech and avoid the appearance of being worked up or angry, but calmly rather, with playful wit, in one way or another, make it bite. Word-for-word repartees are of this sort. Just as a dart returned to the sender seems to strike with special force, so those who insult appear to be struck by the added force and intelligence of the insulted. So Epaminondas to the insults of Callistratus, who blamed the Thebans for the parricide of Oedipus and the matricide of Orestes: “Those who did those things we exiled and you welcomed.”
Also the response of Antalcidus the Spartan to an Athenian who said, “Many times we chased you from the Cephisus”—“And we chased you from the Eurotas never.” Witty too Phocion to Demades screaming, “The Athenians will kill you!”—“Me if they’re mad, you if they’re sane.” And Crassus, the orator, when Domitius said to him, “Aren’t you the man who wept when the muraena he was nursing in his aquarium died?”—responding, “Aren’t you the man who buried three wives without shedding a tear?”
Repartees such as these sometimes have their usefulness.
