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  • What is the best sort of life for a human being?  Socrates claimed in 400BC that a

  • man lives a happier life if he’s just, even if he is thrown starving into prison for the

  • rest of his life than if he is unjust and he is celebrated and honored all of his days

  • and is never caught for his crimes.  Could that possibly be correct?  If not, why not

  • and what difference should the question make to us now?  

What moves the human heart?

  •  Shakespeare’s characters throw us into the depths of lust, envy, greed, pride, ambition.

  •  What do those characters have to say about the way that we act or that we behave or that

  • we believe?  And if so, what difference would it make to read about them in Shakespeare

  • and why Shakespeare whose Elizabethan English is very difficult for us who speak modern

  • English to understand?   Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651 a book called Leviathan, one of the

  • two or three most influential works in the history of thinking about government and politics

  • in western society.  He was writing from the midst of a raging civil war and he argued

  • that unless we gave all the power, unless we surrendered all ultimate control to a legitimate

  • king that we would all rob and kill each other.  Was he right about that?  Is that the way

  • things actually work and is the question relevant to us today when we no longer believe in kings?

  •   

Hello.  My name is Jeff Brenzel and I'm the dean of undergraduate admissions

  • at Yale University.  I'm also the master of something called Timothy Dwight College,

  • which essentially means that I live with 400 of the very undergraduates that I picked myself

  • and yes, it is unusual for an admissions dean to live 24/7 with the outcomes of his own

  • decisions.  I also lecture from time to time in the philosophy department at Yale and my

  • work in philosophy centers around ethics and also the history of the ideas that weve

  • had about something we like to call human nature.  Speaking of human nature, one of

  • my personal heroes, Aristotle, claimed that by nature everyone seeks to know, everyone

  • desires to know.  For the purposes of this talk I'm going to assume that you are already

  • an intellectually curious person and that youre not only chasing after knowledge

  • as hard as you can.  Youre also trying to build up the skill sets and acquire the

  • kind of capacities and abilities that youre going to need to become a better learner overall.

Also

  • I'm going to assume that youre not only trying to increase your stock of knowledge,

  • but that youre seeking to grow in wisdom as well and wisdom is something distinct from

  • knowledge and I'm going to come back to that a little later.

If these things are in

  • fact true about you then here is my advice in a nutshell.  Make a choice in college

  • to read some old books, even a substantial number of old books.  My argument will be

  • that reading the right old books in the right way is better than reading only new books,

  • much less using only new ways of learning that have nothing to do with books at all.

  •  So yes, I'm a throwback.  I have a somewhat unpopular view of what you should do with

  • your college education.  What I'm going to try to persuade you is that my advice is going

  • to make a difference to your education or at least that you should test my advice to

  • see if it’s worthwhile and determine for yourself.  But let’s be careful about

  • what I'm claiming and what I'm not claiming.  I'm not claiming that you should read only

  • old books or that old books are better because theyre old or that you should never read

  • any new books or that new books are worthless.  Only that you should read and learn how

  • to read some old books, but which ones would those be?  How do you learn how to read them

  • in the right way?  Why should you read them in college and how could doing that change

  • your life for the better?  How is that going to make you smarter and moreover, how is it

  • going to make you wiser?

The Dialogues of Socrates, Aristotle’s Ethics, Oedipus

  • Rex, the City of God, Leviathan, Dante’s Inferno, King Leer, Paradise Lost, War and

  • Peace, there are a lot of these books, but why spend a significant amount of your time

  • on books that by definition are outdated?  Why not go after the books that bring every

  • up to date?  Don’t we know those people already knew and much, much more?  

So

  • a little personal background here, I went off to university in 1971.  No one in my

  • family had ever graduated from college, much less a place like Yale.  I was from—I had

  • gone to an all Catholic, boy’s high school.  I had never visited across the state line.

  •  I never had even been on an airplane before the one that swept me off the New Haven, Connecticut.

  •  

My folks assumed that I was going off to become one of two things, a doctor

  • or a lawyer.  That is the sort of thing that happened to you when you went off to a university

  • like the one I attended.  Doctor, lawyer, there is nothing wrong with doctors or lawyers,

  • far from it.  The point was that you go to college in order to find paying work.  College

  • equals a job.  

Now when I actually showed up at Yale I applied in total ignorance

  • and almost by accident to a special freshman year program called Directed Studies.  So

  • what is Directed Studies?  In Directed Studies you take three four-year courses in the history

  • of western thought and philosophy, in literature and in politics.  You start with what the

  • classic Greeks had to say and then you roll forward with the centuries until you end up

  • about a century behind where we are right now.  

There are no textbooks.  There

  • are no summaries.  There are no Cliff Notes.  You read only the original works and it

  • was both the single most difficult and the single most transforming educational experience

  • that I've ever had.  About 15 years ago I came back to Yale after founding companies,

  • managing organizations and after earning a PhD in philosophy and I'm having the opportunity

  • there today to teach in this very same program that I took over 30 years ago.  

So

  • I'vegotten to know these classic works fairly well.  I've become familiar with them.

  •  I've seen their effects on students and I've had the chance to stack them up against

  • my own life experience and stuff that I've read from lots of modern books, so here I

  • am ready to give you some good reasons to look into the classics yourself. 

Now

  • the first thing to point out is something that I think you already know, but that you

  • might not have noticed that you know.  There are a lot of books out there and you don’t

  • have much time.  The Library of Congress has over 20 million volumes.  That is the

  • largest library in the world.  That is not counting the journals, the publications.  That

  • is not counting the internet.  It’s not counting the blogs.  It’s not counting

  • Wikipedia.  It’s not counting the entire Googleplex.    Meanwhile down here on the

  • personal level I'm 58 years-old.  I've been a pretty strong reader for about 40 years.

  •  Back home I've got a personal library of about 2,000 books, volumes and if you do the

  • math that is about 50 books times 40 years, about 50 books a year.  It’s about a book

  • a week.  I hope you can see the problem.  My problem, which is also your problem,

  • which is we aren’t going to make it through the Library of Congress, not only that, were

  • not going to get to 99.999% of everything that has ever been written.  

You know

  • Mahatma Gandhi said live as though youll die tomorrow, but learn as though youll

  • live forever.  Now Gandhi was as aware as you and I are that were not going to live

  • forever and of course that means that you are going to have to be extremely picky about

  • what you choose to read, even if you live according to Gandhi.  You literally have

  • no other choice, but now it seems I've only made my job harder because I have to persuade

  • you that with this precious time that you have for learning and study, which is dwindling

  • all the time that youre going to take some of it and devote it to things that are outdated.

  •  So I've enlarged, you might say, my task.

So let’s focus on the principle of necessity

  • and that means the principle of having to make these difficult and time consuming choices.

  •  I’d like to give you five reasons, five rough and ready criteria for identifying a

  • classic of literature or philosophy or politics.  Now no one or two of these criteria are

  • going to be decisive, but I think if you put them altogether theyre going to prove actually

  • to be quite useful.  So my five criteria or marks of a great book, a great classic

  • in the sense that I'm using the term are these.

So first, the work addresses permanent concerns

  • about the human condition.  From a philosophical perspective it has something to say about

  • the way we should live.  From a literary perspective it has something to say about

  • imagining the possibilities for how we could live and from a historical perspective it

  • tells us how we have lived.  That’s mark number one of a classic.

Mark number

  • two is that the work has been a game-changer.  It has created profound shifts in perspective

  • and not only for its earliest readers, but for all the readers who came later as well.

Mark

  • number three is that the work has stimulated or informed or influenced many other important

  • works, whether directly or indirectly.  Mark number four is that many generations of the

  • best readers and the most expert critics have rated the work highly, one of the best or

  • most important of its kind, even if those experts and readers shared no other views

  • than that and even if they violently disagreed with the work.

Mark number five is that

  • the work usually requires a strenuous effort to engage and understand, but it also rewards

  • the hard work strongly and in multiple fashions.  

Before we think about what these criteria

  • rule in let’s think about what they rule out.  You might say, as my wife said to me

  • the other day.  “Jeff I've just read this classic on cat breeding.”  But that book

  • however good it is would not fit the criteria that I've laid out for you here.  Why?  Even

  • though my wife would be upset and I'm rather fond of cats myself, why?  A book on cat

  • breeding does not address permanent and universal concerns about the human condition.  Most

  • broadly informed readers and critics are not going to see it at the top of their book list

  • and it’s not going to require a strenuous effort of the kind that I'm imagining here.

So

  • let’s contrast that book with an acknowledged classic, perhaps the greatest of the American

  • novels, Moby Dick.  That was all about whales wasn’t it?  Bigger than cats obviously,

  • but otherwise it’s the same sort of thing.  Well no.  Herman Melville does use a story

  • about whale hunting, which includes an enormous amount of material about whales to weave a

  • mighty fable, a fable about good and evil, about the human will, about the mysterious

  • connections that bind people together or the differences that drive them apart and about

  • the human struggle with nature in the very largest sense of the word and our struggle

  • with our own natures as well.  

Though virtually ignored when it was publishedthough

  • virtually ignored when it was published Moby Dick later became a game-changer.  It has

  • continually grown in the estimation of the best readers and critics.  No significant

  • American writer is unaware of its influence or doesn’t take account of it in their own

  • work.  It’s a superb challenge to read.  It becomes the more rewarding the more effort

  • that you put into it and the older you get typically the more you get out of it, though

  • even less experienced readers often find it extremely moving if they make the good effort

  • to persist with it to the very end.   

So here is the narrator Ishmael describingso

  • here is narrator Ishmael describing mad Captain Ahab who is locked into an obsessive hunt

  • for the whale Moby Dick, the whale that cost him his leg:  “All that most maddens and

  • torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks

  • the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil to

  • crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.

  •  He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt

  • by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst

  • his hot heart's shell upon it.”

Well aren’t people always advising you to pursue

  • your passions?  What if some passions are worse than others?  And here is Ishmael thinking

  • about life and fate.  Now he is sitting in the whaling boat where the long lines are

  • attached to harpoons and the lines snake all around your feet.  When the harpooner spears

  • the fish with the harpoon the line jumps out and if you slip or you get caught up in the

  • coil of the rope it yanks you out of the boat to a virtually certain death.

So Ishmael

  • says: “The graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen

  • before being brought into actual play- this is a thing which carries more of true terror

  • than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in

  • whale lines.All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in

  • the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils

  • of life. But if you be a truephilosopher, though seated in a whale boat, you would not

  • at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with

  • a poker, not a harpoon, by your side.”

So what is Ishmael telling us here?  At one

  • level he seems to be saying that a wise person, someone who fully and completely understands

  • the ever-present possibility of death is going to be no worse off and no less calm sitting

  • amid a bunch of whizzing harpoon lines than she is sitting home by the fire.  Now that’s

  • an interesting and perhaps a debatable proposition.  Well there is that and much, much more in

  • Moby Dick.

But let’s say that you run up to me with a novel that you picked up just

  • last week.  You wave itin the air and you say:  “Professor Brenzel, I've got a great

  • book here for you.  It’s an instant classic, even be better than Moby Dick, maybe even

  • better than Moby Dick.”  What am I likely to respond?  It may be in fact very good

  • and your recommendation may persuade me to read it, particularly if I have a high opinion

  • of you as an expert reader.  Your new favorite book may in fact become a classic someday,

  • but it hasn’t changed the game as yet for other writers and readers.  It hasn’t provoked

  • or influenced lots of other works.  How could it?  You don’t know how experts and other

  • readers are going to evaluate it over time.  Youre not even sure how youre going

  • to see the book over time.  In fact, youll notice that the higher we put the bar for

  • these criteria that I've been talking about not only are the books that make the grade

  • going to be fewer in number.  Theyre actually going to get older and you might think no

  • fair.  Youre just defining classics or youre just defining great books in such

  • a way that there can only be a few of them and they have to be pretty old.  Not only

  • that, you haven’t made any effort yet to persuade me.  What is the benefit of actually

  • reading these books?  What is my payoff going to be for all this effort that you say I have

  • to put into them?    So hang onto your question about benefits for a moment.  I

  • do promise to come back to it, but let’s remember the critical problem that we all

  • have, way too many books and not nearly enough time.  So where are you likely to get the

  • biggest bang for your reading dollar and for your reading hour, something published last

  • week or something that stood the centuries of tests by tough readers and that has in

  • fact spawned a great deal of what youll be reading today?

So I'm sort of defining

  • a classic as an old book that has been through generations of readers, big game-changing

  • ideas and something that you can expect to find to be a considerable challenge to tackle.

  •  You sort of knew this already right, so let’s flush it out with just a few examples

  • before we talk about what good it’s going to do you to read such a book in a college

  • course.
Socrates was a philosopher who lived in Athens, ancient Greece about 400 years

  • before the birth of Christ.  Youve probably heard his name even if you know nothing else

  • about him.  You may also know that the other citizens of Athens put him to death because

  • he went around asking a lot of challenging questions, needling people, irritating them

  • with questions about their actions and their beliefs that they didn’t care to answer.

  •  Well it’s a remarkable fact that for the past 24 centuries very few thinkers in the

  • western tradition have been able to avoid having to come at some point to grips with

  • Socrates and his life and his death.  

It’s even more interesting that Socrates himself

  • never actually wrote down a single word.  He was apparently a very plain and ugly man who

  • lived in poverty.  He lived a very simple life as he walked around embarrassing the

  • prominent citizens with his questions.  He liked to say that the only superiority that

  • he understood himself to have over the other citizens of Athens was that while he was absolutely

  • certain that he was completely ignorant they all thought they actually knew something.

  •  They imagined that they had acquired some kind of knowledge and he was forever trying

  • to find out what it was and if they actually understood what they said they knew.

Now

  • one of the young aristocrats who got a big charge out of following Socrates around the

  • town was a young wrestler named Plato, maybe the first scholar athlete, so Plato wrote

  • a series of dialogues after Socrates died that featured his hero in the principle role.

  •  The early dialogues do seem to reflect for us this business of walking around asking

  • these difficult questions that no one can answer.  Later, in the later dialogues Plato

  • begins to use Socrates as a mouthpiece or as someone who represents the kinds of new

  • questions that Plato himself began to ask under Socratesinspiration.  

To

  • give you some indication of how expert readers over time have understood Plato’s thought

  • and its central importance in the tradition, the great twentieth century philosopher andmathematician

  • Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of western thought is nothing more than a

  • series of footnotes to Plato.  Quite a claim and remember that it was Plato’s encounter

  • with Socrates that inspired all of Plato’s thought.

Now Plato’s single most important

  • dialogue with Socrates as the hero is a dialogue called the Republic and in it Plato tries

  • to formulate two basic fundamental and universal questions.  What is the best sort of life

  • for a human being and beyond that what is the best society for producing the conditions

  • under which human beings could live that kind of life?  These two questions give the book

  • the first mark of greatness that I was discussing, which is the Republic addresses permanent

  • and universal questions, ones that might puzzle you as much as they did Socrates and Plato.

The

  • book opens with a really terrific argument about justice and about whether the justwhether

  • it’s the just or the unjust person who gets the better of it in life.  Socrates confronts

  • a very sarcastic and very aggressive young man named Thrasymachus who attacks the common

  • notion that justness is a virtue:  “Listen then, says Thrasymachus.  I proclaim that

  • might is right and that justice as you call it is whatever happens to be in the interest

  • of the stronger.  There are different forms of government, but they all make laws according

  • to their own interests, which they deliver to their subjects calling it justice and they

  • punish whoever breaks these laws and they call that person unjust and that is what I

  • mean to say when I say that in all states there is the same principle of justice, which

  • is neither more, nor less than the interest of the government and as the government necessarily

  • has the ultimate power the only reasonable conclusion is that everywhere there is only

  • one principle of so-called justice, which is that justice turns out to be whatever happens

  • to be in the interest of the stronger.”

So have you ever heard someone make this argument

  • before, that might makes right, that justice has no fixed meaning, that what is considered

  • just in a society is just whatever the people running the society say it is?  I’d be

  • surprised if you hadn’t because it’s a universally recurring argument, not only throughout

  • the dorms of any good colleges down through time, but also down through the centuries

  • in the debates of the very best philosophers.

Now I can’t do justice in this short talk to

  • even this relatively simple opening framing argument of the Republic between Thrasymachus

  • and Socrates, but essentially Socrates tries to answer Thrasymachus by pointing out that

  • we distinguish between good rulers and bad rulers just like we distinguish between good

  • shepherds and bad shepherds or good boat captains and bad boat captains.  The good shepherds

  • act in the best interests of the sheep and the good boat captain act in the best interest

  • of their boats and passengers, so a ruler, if he is rightly named a ruler or she is rightly

  • named a ruler is someone who acts in the best interest of the subjects and the bad ones

  • don’t.  So it’s the same for rulers as it is for boat captains and for sheep and

  • shepherds.  A ruler who is rightly called a good ruler will be just and we mean by this

  • that the ruler rules in the interests of the subjects, not in the interest of himself or

  • herself.  

Thrasymachus calls this dribble.  He points out that the shepherd hardly cares

  • for the sheep.  He is simply fattening them for the slaughter:  “Consider further most

  • foolish Socrates, he says, that the just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust.

  •  First of all, in private matters wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you

  • will find that the unjust man always gains more and the just man always gets less.  Next,

  • in their dealings with the government when there is an income tax the just man will pay

  • more and the unjust man less on the same amount of income and when there is anything to be

  • received the one gains nothing, the other gains much.  Observe also that when they

  • come into office there is the just man neglecting his own affairs, perhaps suffering other losses,

  • but he will not compensate himself out of the public purse because he is just.  Moreover,

  • he is hated by his friends and acquaintances for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways.

  •  Now all of this is reversed in the case of the unjust man.”

“By this standard,

  • Thrasymachus goes on to say, the best life is actually the one to be had by the absolute

  • tyrant who can take anything that he wishes by force and make everyone else pay honor

  • and obedience, so not only is being a tyrant the best kind of life, all people would become

  • tyrants if only they could.”  Now Socrates at this point knocks Thrasymachus down with

  • some verbal and logical tricks that I'm not going to take you through in this talk and

  • outwitted Thrasymachus stalks off from the conversation not to return.  So actually

  • what Socrates does at that point in the dialogue is that he gets Thrasymachus to redefine justice,

  • look away from justice in the State, but look at justice in the soul, that is kind of the

  • internal integrity of a person and he gets Thrasymachus to agree that justice is something

  • like self control, that if youre not in control of your own passions and emotions

  • and vices and so forth that you can’t be just even to yourself.  So once he gets Thrasymachus

  • on the path to the notion that justice is some kind of right order in the soul then

  • he brings it back to the example of the State and he said, “So Thrasymachus, if you believe

  • that this is how justice works in the individual person, in the individual soul as a virtue

  • then you have to agree with me that the tyrant doesn’t have the best life.”  “It’s

  • the best ordered State or the State that is governed by a good ruler in the way that weve

  • discussed.”

But the young friends of Socrates are not satisfied with this outcome

  • and they take up the core question, but in a much harder form.  They ask Socrates to

  • prove to them the just person is always happier and always has a better life than the unjust

  • person no matter how poor, deprived, disgraced or reviled the just man might be and no matter

  • how wealthy, honored and completely unharmed an unjust man might be.  

So the rest

  • of the Republic is Plato’s attempt to answer this question along with a number of other

  • questions.  In the course of it he draws a surprisingly compelling picture of human

  • psychology.  He speculates on the nature of knowledge.  He presents a proposal for

  • the ideal State and he polishes it all off with a theory about enlightenment and about

  • the ultimate nature of reality.  Along the way he speculates about the relations men

  • and women, how to raise and educate children to be good citizens and the right way for

  • human beings to investigate questions of all kinds.  It’s good stuff.  

Now Plato

  • himself had a brilliant student named Aristotle, who for my money actually surpassed Plato

  • in a number of different ways, but was certainly heavily influenced by Plato.  So let me just

  • give you a very quick notion of how things play out in the history of thought for Plato’s

  • and Aristotle’s thinking and in fact, for your own.

First, their thinking stays

  • very much alive in Greece and Rome for 400 years, until the coming of Christ and beyond

  • that for many centuries more.  If you happen to be a Christian what you think of Christianity,

  • the very concepts and ideas that form the basis for Christianity actually turn out to

  • owe a great deal to Plato and Aristotle.

Virtually everything that Christianity teaches about

  • God, about human nature, about human fulfillment arises from what the historians of religion

  • like to call the marriage of Jerusalem and Athens that is the marriage of Greek and Jewish

  • thinking.  One big moment for this process comes about eight centuries after Plato and

  • Aristotle, four centuries after Christ when a man named St. Augustine writes a truly monumental

  • work in the history of western thought, a real classic, The City of God.  He writes

  • this book just as the Roman Empire is collapsing around his ears from invasion of barbarians.

  •  Augustine was very influenced by platonic thinking even though he wasn’t all that

  • familiar directly with Plato’s works and he sets the course of Christian thinking for

  • a very long time.  In fact, if youre knowledgeable about the history of Christian doctrine or

  • Christian theology youll know that Augustine is influential right up to the current moment.

  •  

Then another 800 years after St. Augustine a priest around the year 1250 named Thomas

  • Aquinas rediscovers many of the lost works of Aristotle.  To put this very briefly,

  • he puts together the thought of Aristotle with the thought of Augustine, comes up with

  • a new synthesis for Christian thinking and it turns out to be a game-changer.  The result

  • is for the most part, what the Roman Catholic Church teaches to this very day.  St. Thomas

  • Aquinas is the primary orthodox theologian of Catholicism.

Meanwhile, the Italian

  • poet Dante who lives one generation after Aquinas reads Aquinas, is influenced by his

  • work and as one of the three or four greatest poets ever to live presents us with his own

  • view of human nature, fulfillment and human destiny when he writes his three epic poems

  • about hell, purgatory and heaven.  Youve probably heard of Dante’s Inferno.  

So

  • now fast forward another 250 years and we come to about the year 1500, Martin Luther

  • in Germany.  Now Luther gets very angry about a lot of things that are happening in the

  • Catholic Church.  He goes back and rips Aquinas apart.  He trashes Aristotle and he returns

  • for his inspiration to the game-changing works of St. Augustine and St. Paul.  By doing

  • this Luther also starts a process that splinters Christianity into a million pieces, game-changers.

Another

  • hundred or so years after Luther we have John Milton.  Milton is an English poet.  He

  • takes his inspiration from the reforming of Christianity, the Protestant reformation and

  • he writes the greatest epic poem in the English language Paradise Lost.  It gives his own

  • picture, the Protestant picture of human nature, human history, human destiny, God’s will.

So

  • if you happen to be a Catholic and you believe that the Catholic Church teaches the same

  • thing always and everywhere and has from the very beginning or if youre an Evangelical

  • Protestant and you believe that all of your own views come directly from a plain, straightforward

  • reading of New Testament texts in either case you could not be more mistaken.  The very

  • teachings of the Catholic Church or the very ways that a Protestant Christian interprets

  • the words of the Bible, the scripture results from speculations and collisions taking place

  • among ideas that involve Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, St. Paul, Dante, Martin

  • Luther and Milton.  

Here is a very small example of something quite specific.

  •  Many Christians believe that Satan, the Devil was once a great archangel, in fact,

  • that he was the highest of all the angels and that his name was Lucifer and that he

  • rebelled against God in heaven before the creation of the entire world.  Later he successfully

  • tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve to eat an apple in the Garden of Eden and then

  • this sin was passed down as an original sin to all the human race that flowed from those

  • two beginning parents.  They also think that these beliefs about Satan are actually taught

  • in the scripture, that you could go into the Bible and find them, but theyre not.  There

  • is actually remarkably little in the Hebrew Scriptures about Satan and what is there does

  • not happen to include these beliefs.   

Satan as we imagine him, and usually Satan is a

  • he, is actually a much later invention and he is not thought of as either a fallen angel

  • or even fully identified with the serpent in the garden whotempts Adam and Eve to taste

  • the fruit until four centuries after the life of Chris.  Augustine has a lot to do with

  • who Satan becomes and the picture that you yourself may have in your mind of a rebel

  • angel, a war in heaven between the good angels and the bad angels well that is something

  • that John Milton imagined for us when he published Paradise Lost in 1667.

It has sometimes

  • been said that we all live on the thoughts of dead philosophers and dead poets.  I think

  • this is probably true.  So we should stop and remember for a moment our distinction

  • between knowledge and wisdom.  It’s one thing to discover, if it is a discovery and

  • if you believe what I've said, that Satan in the way that we think about him entered

  • into our imagination, our collective western imagination in the fourth century as Augustine

  • was trying to work out salvation history and also that Satan went through a significant

  • transformation in the year 1667.  

So those, you might you say, are bits of knowledge.

  •  Whether and how you take them to be important, whether they make any difference to your own

  • view of religion or your own religious beliefs well that is a matter of wisdom.  Knowledge

  • only creates a question about what to do with the knowledge or the question of how that

  • knowledge makes you think about some other things.
So I could go on.  Socrates and

  • Plato and Aristotle exert influences in many other threads or conversations or discussions

  • that are taking place in the western history of ideas.  For instance, the encounter with

  • Socrates enters very strongly into Soren Kierkegaard’s work in the nineteenth century and Kierkegaard

  • is the godfather of existentialism.  Ultimately Kierkegaard produces all these other philosophers

  • like Heidegger and Sartre.  Socrates also provoked and gave shape an encounter; a philosophical

  • encounter gave shape to Friedrich Nietzsche’s thought also in the nineteenth century.  As

  • Nietzsche actually seeks to try to undo what he considers to be the disaster the Socrates

  • had bequeathed to western civilization.

So you simply cannot study the history of western

  • thought without running into Plato and Socrates just around about every corner.  You can’t

  • read a thinker who hasn’t been influenced himself or herself by these ideas in some

  • way as well as the way that they actually posed the original questions, what is the

  • best sort of life for a human being and what is the best kind of society in which that

  • sort of life can be lived.  So the Republic is still what I would call a living book.

  •  It still fuels encounters.  It still provokes us, provokes students in my classroom, I think,

  • just as much as Socrates provoked them in the streets of ancient Greece.  It has something

  • to teach us.  It has something to connect us very deeply to the ideas of many others.

  •  It’s something that has made our society in some very deep respects what it is.  You

  • might say that Plato and his inspiration Socrates are the opposite of outdated thinkers.  

Now

  • on this rather quick dash through the centuries I've not forgotten the question that I'm supposed

  • to answer, which is, so what.  Why does it do you any good to know these things?  I

  • haven’t said what good it’s going to do you in particular to read the Republic or

  • why it would be better to read the Republic than the latest book on American politics,

  • particularly given how little time for reading weve all agreed that we all have.  So

  • I'm trying to get to that.  All I've done so far is to give you a sense of what I'm

  • calling a classic and why I'm calling it that.  That is I've tried to give you a rough and

  • ready way to define the kind of book that were discussing.  So let’s revisit

  • briefly my criteria for a classic.  Plato’s Republic I think weve got the first four

  • nailed.  One, the work addresses permanent and universal concerns about the human condition.

  •  Two, the work has been a game-changer.  It has created profound shifts in perspective

  • in people’s perspectives over time.  Three, the work has stimulated or influenced or formed

  • directly or indirectly many other important works.  Four, many of the most expert readers

  • and critics over time have valued the work very highly even if they agreed on almost

  • nothing else among themselves at all, but now let’s look at that last criterion I

  • gave you for a classic that the work takes a strenuous effort to engage and understand,

  • but rewards it in multiple ways.  What is all this about strenuous effort and what has

  • that got to do with something being a classic?  Aren’t there any classics that are easy

  • to read or to cut to the chase in regarding all of this strenuous effort why do I have

  • to dig into Plato’s Republic at all?  Why can’t I just hear about it from you or why

  • can’t I read the Cliff Notes version or why can’t I find a summary or a digest or

  • look on my neighbor’s notes?  Why won’t Wikipedia tell me everything that is truly

  • important for me to take away from the book?  Why can’t I take advantage of the fact

  • that all these other people have read it, commented on it and used it for some purpose

  • or another?  What is the takeaway? If I just happen to be a Christian and I happen to believe

  • the things that youve told me about Plato so far what difference is it going to make

  • to the way that I practice my religion and if I'm not a Christian why should I care at

  • all?  

So let’s try to take these questions one at a time.  Let’s see if

  • some specific examples will help, but the bit about strenuous effort actually turns

  • out to be important.  So let’s stop for just a moment.  Why is Plato so hard to read?

  •   So for one thing Plato occupied a very different cultural, moral, political and religious

  • universe than we do.  The Greeks lived in these small city states.  They believed in

  • lots and lots of Gods.  They subscribed to kind of a hero type of morality or public

  • ethic and beyond that these epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were sort

  • of like their popular culture.  That’s where they got all their songs and all their

  • stories and they shared that with each other, but they don’t share it with us.  To really

  • understand Plato you have to travel back in time and put yourself in the middle of a very

  • strange world and you have to understand that world to some degree to understand Plato.

Two,

  • Plato was exceptionally clever and his work abounds in these highly detailed arguments,

  • enormous amount of logical give and take.  The thing is working on many levels and

  • some of it is actually meant to confuse you.  Part of his core purpose in fact is to confuse

  • you enough that hell force you to work harder, that he is going to force you to think

  • more deeply about something than you had done up until the point where of course Socrates

  • begins to embarrass you with these questions.  He is dealing with complicated and puzzling

  • things Plato is and therefore, his thought can be complicated and puzzling.

So even

  • though Plato is talking about lots of everyday things, there are shepherds.  There is boat

  • pilots and there is things like that and even though he can be actually extraordinarily

  • entertaining and humorous as well as from time to time dramatic and moving he is trying

  • to express new thoughts and in order to express new thoughts he has to create new ways of

  • using language and in fact he pushes language up against the limits, that is up against

  • the limits of what you can express and understand, so part of the work of the dialogues is to

  • get you to realize this, but that means forcing you up against the limits of language and

  • giving you strange and difficult things to decipher because youve got to follow the

  • path by which Plato creates the language in order to understand what it is that he is

  • actually talking about.

His language also slips around a lot, so a term like justice

  • or the just man it’s used in one sense in one place.  It can take on a very different

  • sense in another place.  What is he trying to do there?  He is trying to make you actually

  • aware of the way that language changes and shifts and that language as you know from

  • listening I hope to your own political leaders can be a very slippery thing.

So of course

  • there, in addition to the language, things going on in Plato there is a lot of other

  • things going on as well.  Sometimes the personal relationships that are on display or the relations

  • between people or the emotions that theyre experiencing are actually more important than

  • the discussion that theyre having.  It takes you awhile to pick this up in Plato

  • and realize he is not just talking about disembodied people having these rational conversations.

  •  He knows that people are situated in lives where they care about all kinds of things

  • other than the answers to philosophical questions.  Also like Socrates himself, Plato is extremely

  • ironical.  Now what does that mean?  That means that he can be saying one thing, praising

  • someone or the beliefs that someone has while meaning actually to mock that person and call

  • their actions or their beliefs or their language into question.   So I've taught Plato many

  • times.  I've never had a student who thought that Plato was easy, but I've never seen a

  • student finish with Plato without understanding that he is also extraordinary and even wondrous,

  • but think about it for a minute.  What do you expect?  This tends to be true of every

  • really great work of the human mind just as it is true that is that things are complex

  • and difficult about any important action in the world, whether it’s business or law

  • or government or whatever complicated field youre going to end up pursuing.

Now

  • recognize that I'm not saying that the classics are good because theyre challenging and

  • difficult.  Frankly, there are a lot of very challenging and difficult books that I would

  • never recommend you read in a thousand years, right.  It’s the great works, the ones

  • with the lasting influence and the biggest ideas are challenging for a different reason.

  •  Theyre not challenging because the writers were incompetent.  Theyre challenging

  • because theyre the best attempts to make the best sense that we possibly can out of

  • a very complicated world. 

All right, so Plato is a challenge.  Aristotle is a

  • challenge.  Dante is a challenge.  Shakespeare is a challenge.  But why should I have to

  • read them myself?  Why can’t somebody just tell me what is in them, summarize them, tell

  • me what is relevant and give me the takeaways?  Well the twentieth century philosopher and

  • critic Mortimer Adler put it this way:  “But, he says, someone may say that the great books

  • are too difficult for most of us in school or out.  That’s why were forced to get

  • our education from secondary teachers and from textbooks.  I'm not denying that the

  • great books are likely to require more effort than the digest.  I am only saying that the

  • digests cannot be substituted for the originals, and this is the important point, because you

  • cannot get the same thing out of them.  There is no royal road, Adler says.  The path of

  • true learning is strewn with rocks, not roses, but I am still saying, he goes on, that the

  • great books can be read by every person.  In one sense of course they are the most difficult

  • to read, but they are in another sense the most readable both for the less and more competent

  • reader because they are the most instructive.”  Professor Brenzel’s saying, “You get

  • bigger bang for your dollar.”  “Obviously, says Adler, I do not mean most readable in

  • the sense of with the least effort.  Even for the expert reader these books are hard.

  •  I mean that these books reward every degree of effort and every degree of ability to the

  • maximum.”  So what Adler is trying to tell us here is that just because something

  • is difficult doesn’t mean that the time you spend with it is not worthwhile and in

  • fact that any amount of time that you spend with one of these kinds of works will actually

  • be more valuable to you than the same amount of time that you spend on a work of lesser

  • quality.  You might different levels of reading ability.  You might have gotten further down

  • the road in studying this subject than someone else, but Adler says that for a truly great

  • book it should be something that rewards even a beginning reader, that is a beginning serious

  • reader in some important ways and in fact these books would not be read if they didn’t

  • make those rewards available even to beginning students.  Now it’s also important to be

  • in a context where you have a guide and a college course is a wonderful place to obtain

  • that guide, but what Adler wants us to understand is the principle of no pain, no gain and in

  • fact that in the case of works of the mind that whatever the pain you experience, whatever

  • time and study that youre going to give to these works these works pay a greater return.

  •  You might say they have a higher interest rate than the ordinary stocks and bonds that

  • youre going to be exposed to in the rest of your courses.  So Adler has claimed that

  • these books are not just rewarding, but they do something for you that ordinary books simply

  • can’t.  That is theyre going to reward every degree of effort to the maximum possible.

  •  It’s a big claim.  If he is right then youve got a reason to exercise your principle

  • of necessity that is the principle of having to choose from a very small number of books

  • with your limited and precious time.  You have a reason to make those choices in the

  • way I'm advising, but is he right?  


So what I'm going to do now is to try to give

  • you five takeaways that is five valuable things that are specific to you that you can pull

  • out of these books and takeaway with you to the other things that youre studying and

  • also to your own life.

Number one, the value of forgotten ideas; some old ideas are

  • not actually outdated.  The entire period that we call the European Renaissance actually

  • consisted of people rediscovering a bunch of ideas from the ancient world and giving

  • them a new application.  So point number one is some of these old ideas are actually

  • valuable.

Number two, the value of making connections between ideas, there is less new

  • under the sun than what you might think and seeing the connections that tie one thinker

  • to another in a tradition also gives you a measure of how far weve come on some problems

  • and what problems seem to have heavily resisted the attempts of human beings to give them

  • answers.  The one that weve been considering from time to time through the course of this

  • talk is one of those.  What is the best sort of life for a human being?  This is a question

  • that youll be asking yourself as you try to figure out things like where am I going

  • to get a job, where am I going to live, who am I going to marry, how am I going to raise

  • my children.  These are questions that are permanent aspects of the human condition.

  •  Youre also going to discover that this is not the kind of question in which science

  • has suddenly delivered a fantastic new answer.  People have been asking and answering this

  • question for a long time and looking at some old thinkers can help you see the connections

  • between the ways people originally asked these questions and the way we do, but also give

  • you a perspective on what has been solved, which in some of these cases is very little

  • and what remains for you to consider and actually determine by the way that you live your own

  • life.

The third thing is that great books of the past are going to engage you with a

  • number of great minds who don’t share any of your assumptions just as we were talking

  • about with Plato.  It’s a different culture, a different morality, a different religion,

  • a different politics.  Call this the value of strangeness, which is not only an additional

  • perspective on what you believe, but I'm going to claim it’s also a primary source of human

  • creativity.

So the fourth value here is very straightforward.  It’s simply building

  • up your intellectual muscle power.  You are not going to get to be a better wrestler,

  • right, by whipping all the little kids in your neighborhood and sending them home crying.

  •  If youre going to be a better wrestler youre going to have to get your own nose

  • bloody by going up against people who are bigger and stronger and better than you are.

And

  • then finally, five, there is the value of forming better judgment, making more discerning

  • choices.  Once youve encountered and wrestled with the greatest minds of all time youre

  • going to be in a much better position yourself to tell the trash from the gold and to pick

  • out what is worthwhile for your time from what you can safely discard with the other

  • 99.99% of the reading material and youre going to be able to do this without being

  • able or having to consult past experts.  You don’t have them to consult for contemporary

  • books.  Youre going to be able to do it without deciding what other books has this

  • book influenced or will it influence.  Youre going to be in a better position to make that

  • judgment on your own.

So let’s dig down a little bit into the value of some old

  • and outdated ideas, forgotten ideas.  A couple of examples, a man name Malthus in 1798 published

  • a classic work in political economy.  It’s called An Essay in the Principle of Population.

  •  Now the basic idea is that populations can only grow up to the point where the necessary

  • collapse because of limited resources, famine and disease, but the essay explores the ideas

  • in a lot of very interesting ways and actually it was a major influence on Charles Darwin

  • and the development of the theory of evolution.  So Malthus, Thomas Malthus.

Despite

  • the game-changing nature of this work economists and scientists of the industrial age have

  • generally held that Malthus was wrong.  Why, because he predicted we were all going to

  • die back in the eighteenth century.  He thought that we were going to outrun the food sources

  • with our population and that nothing could stop a head long rush over the cliff.  What

  • he did not take into proper account were the game-changing aspects of human ingenuity and

  • creativity that would find a way around resource bottlenecks.  

Now during the oil shocks

  • of the 1970s and if you go back and look for this youll see that the ideas of Malthus

  • came very much back into view.  Why, because people were seeing resources begin to run

  • out.  The world’s population had doubled over a period of about 30 to 60 years and

  • it was going to be set to double again, so Thomas Malthus and his ideas about what happens

  • when you increase the population past the carrying load came around for more currency.

Today

  • if you Google the name Malthus youre going to get over three million hits on the internet.

  •  His fundamental ideas are once again at the center of debates about peak oil, environmental

  • damage, global population, the prospects for global catastrophe.  There are books out

  • with titles such as The Future in Plain Sight, Collapse, Peak Everything.  Malthusian ideas

  • are everywhere and his work is being invoked as people wonder if the world is about to

  • prove Malthus right in the end.

Here is another example of old ideas being mined

  • for new insights.  In ancient Greece Aristotle wrote a book called the Nicomachean Ethics

  • or for short the Ethics.  It’s actually a book about human happiness about what it

  • takes to be a happy person.  Now we don’t ordinarily associate the idea of ethics with

  • a work on happiness.  We think about ethics as being things like moral obligations, duties,

  • what were called upon to perform despite our desires to do other things.  

So

  • Aristotle had a different perspective on this.  He was an original proponent of the idea

  • and you may have heard this idea that virtue is its own reward, that in fact, the things

  • that make you an excellent parent, the things that make you an excellent citizen are also

  • the things if pursued consciously and done well make you a happy human being.  In other

  • words, that there is a dedication to excellence where excellence consists of the virtues that

  • are required for us to live well and do well with one another that is the foundation for

  • human beings to be happy.  This goes these days by the name virtue ethics and philosophers

  • and psychologists all over the world are studying in fact and I'm sure that youve probably

  • encountered some of this material, perhaps some in this very lecture series of what makes

  • for human happiness.  Aristotle actually has something extremely contemporary to contribute

  • to that debate.  

This same example about Aristotle can help me illustrate the

  • point I was making about takeaways, that you can measure how far weve come with certain

  • ideas, so ideas of human happiness and psychological research into human happiness you might say

  • is a big industry these days and I've made the note that I think Aristotle actually has

  • something to contribute and from a different direction than most psychologists look.  However,

  • Aristotle was also a biologist.  In fact, he founded the study of biology.  He went

  • around dissecting animals.  He made lots of observations.  But guess what?  Weve

  • come a very long way since Aristotle and our understanding of biology and no one is going

  • to go to Aristotle except as a historian of science that is an academic who is interested

  • in this story to learn something about biology.  So again reading these works gives you a

  • very different sense of what progress consists of in one whole area of human thought and

  • what even our notion of progress might mean when we start to talk about some like human

  • happiness.  Are there really new messages coming from the cosmos about what it takes

  • to be happy?  
 My third value or takeaway involved what I call the value of strangeness.

  •  Now this one is a little harder to explain, so let me use an analogy.  Youve probably

  • traveled.  People like to travel.  Some people travel a great deal.  What do people

  • feel like they learn from traveling, particularly travel to another society?  One of the things

  • that good travelers, people who have done this well and spent enough time in a foreign

  • society to really learn something about it they generally say that what they bring back

  • from that are two things.  One is that theyre struck by the ways that that society is different

  • from our own and theyre struck by the different kinds of answers that people give to questions

  • that we suddenly discover weve made a lot of assumptions about.  That is weve made

  • an assumption about our lifestyle or an assumption about what people want out of life or an assumption

  • about how people are going to get those things that actually isn’t operating in this other

  • society at all and of course it might make us stop and think is our way of doing this

  • actually the best way of doing it, might I pick up some idea from this other place.  

You

  • wouldn’t notice what was going on so strongly if it didn’t appear strange to you because

  • what is strange pops out to us, but the intriguing thing is that when people return to their

  • own society from a significant encounter with another society they generally find that suddenly

  • their own society looks a little strange.  Some of the things that they took for granted,

  • some of the assumptions that they were making, the unquestioned assumptions about what they

  • were doing or how they were living suddenly come to the surface and some travelers have

  • said I never really understood America until I visited Europe and Japan, when I came back

  • and visited or I never understood China until I went to Africa and South America, why, because

  • I didn’t realize that people could think so differently about something than the way

  • that I do and this gave me a new perspective on what I myself find most familiar.

This

  • is something, by the way, that Americans are actually quite notorious for, having blind

  • spots, not being able to see how many assumptions that theyre making about politics, about

  • government, about the world in part because Americans don’t learn other languages generally

  • speaking and Americans don’t travel, don’t have to travel in the ways that people in

  • some parts of the world do.  Well great books can have some of this same affect through

  • the value of strangeness.

Let’s consider two women writers for a moment and if you

  • have been paying attention you might have noticed that I haven’t talked about women

  • thinkers or writers up to this point and in that regard it’s important to remember that

  • until very recent times very few women had access to the kinds of education or were given

  • the kind of encouragement to engage in this kind of thinking or this kind of work or this

  • kind of reading as they are today, so you might say it’s only very recently that women

  • have entered this long conversation.  Why, because they were excluded from it.  

But

  • Jane Austen was a brilliant novelist.  She described her writing as being something done

  • with a fine brush on very small pieces of ivory.  In part what she meant was that she

  • kept her subject matter very confined and what Jane Austen wrote about were the manners

  • and the ways of life and the marriage and family arrangements of English country gentry

  • of the late 1700s.  Now it’s very unlikely that youre going to have much knowledge

  • about the ways of life that were current among the English gentry in the late 1700s and that

  • is just what makes encountering them valuable and what makes encountering Jane Austen herself

  • valuable for she knows this world and these people inside and out and she is an exceptional,

  • clever and devastating observer of the human heart.  You come to know both the world that

  • these people occupied and the ways in which they occupied this world in a way that no

  • other author is ever going to reveal.

 Of one of Jane Austen’s male heroines she noteson

  • one of Jane Austen’s male characters she notes this.  Her heroine, the woman, the

  • heroine of the story, was of course only too good for him, but as nobody minds what is

  • too good for them he was very earnest in the pursuit of the blessing or take another example,

  • Emily Dickinson.  Now Emily Dickinson was one of the two or three master poets that

  • the United States has produced.  She had an even more narrow and an even stranger world

  • to show us consisting primarily of the workings of her own mind and her emotions, which were

  • exceptionally focused and intense.   

It was Dickinson, a virtual recluse who said,

  • Parting is all we need to know of heaven and all we need of hell.”  I got that wrong.

  •  It was Dickinson, a virtual recluse who said, “Parting is all we know of heaven

  • and is all we need of hell.”  She also said, “One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”

  •  And also this, “An ear can break a human heart as quickly as a sphere.”  “We wish

  • the ear had not a heart, so dangerously near.”  Reading Emily Dickinson will introduce you

  • to a mind and a heart that simply does not work like yours.  It doesn’t work like

  • mine, but she knows yours and she knows her own as well.  So I would say the same thing

  • about a classic that is outside of western civilization, the Analects of Confucius, which

  • is a foundational work in Chinese civilization and it’s one that the Chinese themselves

  • are returning to, to examine with new eyes.  Now Confucius had a profound sense of family

  • and social relationships and the way that those things could construct the world, maybe

  • a more profound sense of family and social relationships than any thinker east or west

  • and not only that.  He was capable of quite fresh and startling insights into places and

  • people.  Youve probably noticed that I've actually said very little so far about eastern

  • philosophy or eastern literature, but that is only because very sadly I haven’t had

  • the chance to dip into it in the ways that I would like, but I did want to drink in some

  • Confucius because there are some strong parallels between Confucius and Aristotle who is a thinker

  • that I'm very familiar with. 

Here are some of the things that Confucius has to tell

  • us:  “People, he said, can be forced to follow a path of action, but they cannot be

  • forced to understand what they do.  An inferior person should not be given something important

  • to do, but he can be quite useful doing something small.  A superior person may be quite poor

  • at doing elementary things, but extraordinary when something of sufficient importance must

  • be attempted.”

Now Confuciusmind is, in many ways, so different that his thoughts

  • like Dickinson’s and like Austin’s can dislodge us from the everyday world, the things

  • that were familiar with and the ways that we tend to find it natural to think, but isn’t

  • that the value of an education and isn’t one of the most practical things that the

  • world is seeking, the world of business, the world of law, the world government, the world

  • of the arts, even the world of academia?  Aren’t they seeking for people who take up new and

  • strange and different and creative perspectives?  In other words, isn’t this takeaway from

  • these great and classic works maybe among the most practical things that they have to

  • offer us?

My fourth value involved building your muscles and your reading skills and the

  • ways that youre going to tackle increasingly difficult material.  Now I don’t think

  • this one requires illustration so much as it does a reminder.  As we said, you don’t

  • get to the Olympics by training with weaklings and these works have survived in part because

  • theyve been written be geniuses.  That is we know that these are minds worth wrestling

  • with because so many have.  The good news is that does mean that you have to be a genius

  • to understand them.  Thank God or I wouldn’t have made it very far myself.  You have heard

  • the sayingshe got to where she is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.  So here are

  • the giants.  Master the skills that it takes to get up on their shoulders and youre

  • going to see quite a distance.  Youll see more than they saw.  Youll also be

  • prepared, better prepared to grapple with lesser works that don’t stand as tall.

So

  • for the fifth value I said that to the extent that you encounter and engage classic works

  • successfully you’d be a better judge of modern works and my example here has to be

  • Shakespeare.  Now many of the greatest critics and readers of world literature, including

  • across cultures and across boundaries have had the same basic view of Shakespeare and

  • that is whatever his flaws, whatever the weaknesses and whatever the strengths of other writers

  • no one, no literary giant has ever written more profoundly or more inventively or more

  • imaginatively about the human condition than Shakespeare.

Harold Bloom, the great

  • literary critic where I work and teach here at Yale called one of his books on Shakespeare

  • the invention of the human and he meant by this that Shakespeare with these characters

  • like Falstaff and Hamlet and King Leer quite literally created around the year 1600 our

  • modern sense of what it means to be a human being acting and thinking in the world.  Many

  • of his hundreds of memorable characters, men and women either vividly or unexpectedly respond

  • to their life situations in ways that we couldn’t predict of typecast or they open up new perspectives

  • on what truly motivates each of us.

So once you have successfully engaged Shakespeare

  • in his comedies and in his tragedies youre going to very quickly sense in other writers

  • whether or not theyre capable of doing the same thing and if they are youre going

  • to be drawn onto read them and if theyre not you can safely set them aside because

  • youve got a better standard against which to make your choices.  Must you read Shakespeare

  • in order to be a better reader of literature in general?  No, there are other routes,

  • but there is no better route both for the judgments that youre forced to make about

  • what else to read or for the kinds of things that you can get out of imaginative literature.

  • Let’s say that youre persuaded of these five valuable things that I say you can take

  • away from these works if you include some of them on your course schedule in college.

  •  The question still remains.  Do I think you can be happy without these works, without

  • ever reading any of them?  Of course I do, otherwise, the world would be full of very

  • miserable and unhappy people because most folks don’t dive very far into these kinds

  • of works, but that’s not exactly the right question.  Is it?  The right question is

  • the one posed to you.  Could your life be better personally if you invited some of these

  • authors into it and how so?   

Though I think I've given you some good reasons to

  • believe that there are some things that you could get out of reading say and author like

  • Plato I don’t think I've been yet able to give you a full sense of what youre going

  • to get out of reading Plato that you can’t get out of hearing me talk about it in a lecture

  • or reading some summary or some digest, but there is a good reason for that as it turns

  • out.  Think about it like this.  I shared an experienceSo think about it like this.

  •  I shared an experience a number of years ago when my son got involved and I got involved

  • as well in the Boy Scouts.  We hiked.  We camped.  We made friends.  We had lots of

  • families in the troop, lots of other adults on the trips.  It was all fine.  It was

  • wonderful, but then we came to a point in the development of these young men and their

  • skills where were prepared to introduce them into something more adventurous and we planned

  • a two week wilderness expedition, something that we hadn’t come close to doing with

  • these young men before.  I was very excited.  It was something that I had done and I wanted

  • my son to have the same experience as I had, had.  “So let me get this straight.”

  • He said.  “Well have to carry twice the weight on our backs that we ever have

  • before, including the food.”  “The food is going to be pretty bad.”  “Were

  • going to have to purify every single drop of water we drink.”  “Well have to

  • figure out our own trail.”  “It’s going to be in rugged mountains.”  “Well

  • probably spend some time getting lost.”  “This is going to take like a couple of

  • weeks, not a couple of days and the hiking is going to be hard work and we could get

  • injured and there is going to be bugs.”  “What exactly am I going to get out of

  • this that I can’t get from the hiking and camping that weve already done which I've

  • liked perfectly fine and which we did without all this pain and hassle?”  Smart boy and

  • good questions, I tried to appeal to his sense of adventure, no go.  I tried to tell him

  • hell learn useful stuff about surviving in the wilderness and that he would also see

  • nature from a new perspective.  He said he never planned on having to survive in the

  • wilderness and that he could get all the perspective on nature he wanted from watching the Discovery

  • Channel.  So I finally said you know I don’t think I can really tell you what youre

  • going to get out of this.  You have to experience it for yourself and then youll know, so

  • I guess I'm just asking you to trust me on this.    So my son Paul certainly had some

  • skeptical company among the other scouts in the troop and sure enough a few days into

  • this expedition, things began to deteriorate.  We had some lousy weather.  There were

  • blisters.  People were hungry.  The boys are ragging on each other.  No one is really

  • getting along and my son is looking at me with those all knowing eyes of a 16 year-old,

  • but then the boys started to toughen up.  The weather cleared.  We got higher up in the

  • mountains.  They started to rely on each other more.  They figured out how to break

  • camp efficiently.  They figured out how to make the best of the food, how to fuel up

  • for the day, how to keep from blistering and so one day we get to a really terrific climb

  • during which there was a fair amount of complaining.  It was a brutal effort and when we emerged

  • from the tree line were on top of the highest peak in the region and were down in the

  • New Mexico Rockies.  You could see forever.  In fact, we could see from where we were

  • and trace the entire path that we had taken from the moment that we started the expedition

  • because of how high we were up.   We were exhilarated.  The boys were exhilarated and

  • my son came over to me and he said, “Hey Dad.”  I said, “What?”  He said, “This

  • is fantastic.”  I said, “I know.”  And he said, “I just want you to know I get

  • it.”  And I said, “What do you mean?”  And he said, “This is by far the most

  • fantastic thing that weve ever done together.”  So what had we learned by virtue of taking

  • a much more arduous, a much more difficult journey than we had taken up to that point

  • in our scouting experience?  

So like me, he has now got an experience of the outdoors

  • that has given him a permanent interest that he can pursue in life and of course there

  • was also the element of the experience that revolved around the connection that he and

  • I made together by virtue of having the experience together.

So remember what Adler said.

  •  In one sense of course the great books are the most difficult to read, but they are in

  • another sense the most readable both for the less and the more competent because they are

  • the most instructive and that is the keyword.  “Obviously I do not mean, says Adler,

  • most readable in the sense of with the least effort, even for the expert.”  “I mean

  • that these books reward every degree of effort and ability to the maximum.”

So here

  • is something else to think about and it’s something that Adler has to say and it goes

  • beyond the five takeaways that I gave you for things of value that you can derive from

  • these books.  Youre going to encounter a lot of things in your life that you need

  • to know and things that you need to learn about that aren’t going to change you much

  • at all.  Youve learned many of these things already.  You learned how to drive a car,

  • but that didn’t change who you were as a human being.  I'm suggesting to you now that

  • youre going to be in the same position with relation to these works that weve

  • been talking about in this lecture as the scout who has done the weekend hiking, taken

  • the daytrip, maybe cooked breakfast at the camp and so forth.  

Remember how I

  • said at the beginning that Aristotle said it’s our nature to want to know things.

  •  Well just as it’s our nature to work, to play, to find a mate, to live in society

  • remember how I said that wisdom is something different from knowledge.  Well here is my

  • final thought for you and it’s a deep paradox of learning.  You don’t necessary know

  • what you are looking for until you find it and it’s the effort of finding it that actually

  • turns you into a different person than the one who set out on the journey to begin with

  • and that’s why reading these great works is very similar in fact to the experience

  • that my son had of a wilderness expedition after never having attempted anything more

  • than what you can get on the low lying ground.  

 So when you finally do achieve a

  • radical new perspective, when it’s not just a matter of taking in bits of information

  • and knowledge, but it’s a matter of changing how you put them together and also it’s

  • a matter of changing who you are as a result you will see a different value in these things,

  • in for instance, these books and youre also going to see yourself in a new light.

So

  • there is also a reason of course here to start young with these works and in fact to make

  • the choice to include them in some of your college courses.  First of all, youre

  • going to need some serious guidance and some coaching as you learn how to navigate this

  • new kind of mountainous terrain and youre going to need some support as you encounter

  • these game-changing, person-changing kinds of works and youre going to need some help

  • trying to make the connections between these works and the other things that youre currently

  • studying and that youre learning about in more contemporary kinds of context, but

  • there is another reason to dive into these works when youre young in addition to the

  • fact that you could use a guide and that’s that youll find there is another very strange

  • thing about them, which is as you age they change as books.  Macbeth is not going to

  • be the same book for you at age 50 that it was at age 18.  Milton and Plato are not

  • going to hit you the same way at age 40 that they do at age 25.   

Now it’s sort

  • of odd.  We don’t think about going back to books that weve already read and you

  • might say acquired or put into our storehouse of knowledge and we certainly don’t expect

  • books to change just because we read them the second time.  Isn’t that boring?  Well

  • one of the interesting things about the kinds of books that I'll be recommending to you

  • in the materials for this lecture is that nothing about the book changes.  The text

  • is just the same as it has always been.  The words are there just as you remember them.

  •  What has changed is you and what you find is that there is a certain inexhaustible aspect

  • to these books.  That is they are operating on so many levels that as you come into a

  • new zone of experience or a new zone of reflection or your own connections expand, the connections

  • that youre capable of making between things or that youre creating new thoughts or

  • creating new ways of looking at things yourselves what you find is what makes these authors

  • great is they keep talking to you.  They keep opening up new things whenever you go

  • back to them.  There is no more inexhaustible source of provocation, stimulation, entertainment,

  • intellectual development and excitement than the great works of the past.

So I give

  • you the only answer that I really can, the best answer I know.  Why read these books?

  •  It’s the same answer I gave my son.  You climb up into the mountains.  You make your

  • most strenuous effort.  You give it everything you have and what is your reward?  It’s

  • the view.  It’s the view.  Thank you very much.  

  •  

What is the best sort of life for a human being?  Socrates claimed in 400BC that a

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