“Do you enjoy a fast-paced discussion with intelligent people?” Do you consider yourself an “equal among equals” and would you like to “get together” with these equals among whom you are equally equal? Do you want the kind of education given Thomas Jefferson; do you want to go to school under Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hume; do you believe that leisure must not be wasted in strumming the guitar or playing chess; do you believe in democracy; do you want to get wise?
One hesitates to attack the Great Books Foundation. It is like throwing stones at Boy Scouts. The obvious sincerity of the leaders of the Foundation commends the movement to anyone standing in the Western tradition. Were the Great Books seminars solitary protests against pragmatism, were they auxiliaries in the total education of a man, any civilized person would welcome them as allies in the rearguard action being fought today against educational barbarism. He would see in the Great Books program a rather limited and naive affirmation of our common culture, an affirmation failing in depth because innocent of history, lacking in breadth because initiated by men but imperfectly formed by the corporate wisdom of Christendom. He would tolerate the excessive rationalism. He would forgive the forced egalitarianism. He would be a Roman using Gauls and Visigoths against Huns from the East.
Comments