The first two of these three paragraphs is intended to precede the posting of April 19, and the third paragraph is to follow it; but I’m still learning how to edit this stuff so I’ll place it here as a separate post for now.
Mortimer Adler proposes one way to organize the Great Conversation: by means of the Great Ideas. I have sitting on my bookshelf, within arm’s reach, a tome of almost a thousand BIG pages in which Adler presents 102 essays under such headings as God, Justice, Love, and World.
Some time back I organized the Great Ideas in a way that made sense to me. By “organized” I mean I put them in an order where each concept could be seen as building on the preceding one. On this blog we could discuss both if proceeding by means of “great ideas” makes sense and is useful and whether putting the ideas in some logical sequence, with this one as a starting point, is worth talking about:
It seems to me we talk to each other about these ideas in one of two ways: by means of stories or statements—I want to say philosophical statements, in the sense that we pay close attention to the language because the meaning of our terms is especially important. Can we fit both the impact stories have on us and our attempts to use language precisely in order to manage our world well into the categories above?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Great Ideas
Mortimer Adler proposes one way to organize the Great Conversation: by means of the Great Ideas. I have sitting on my bookshelf, within arm’s reach, a tome of almost a thousand BIG pages in which Adler presents 102 essays under such headings as God, Justice, Love, and World.
Some time back I organized the Great Ideas in a way that made sense to me. By “organized” I mean I put them in an order where each concept could be seen as building on the preceding one. On this blog we could discuss both if proceeding by means of “great ideas” makes sense and is useful and whether putting the ideas in some logical sequence, with this one as a starting point, is worth talking about:
“Every one of the Great Ideas is an important adventure.” –from the preface to Adler’s How to Think about the Great Ideas. (underlined=one of Adler’s Great Ideas; italicized=discussed in Adler’s philosophic dictionary)
Idea concept, cognition, thought; proposition, judgment, principle
Language naming, words, terms, definition, sign and symbol
Thinking questioning, asking and answering questions, reflective thinking, problem-solving, theory, hypothesis, evidence, dialectic
Reasoning logic, induction, deduction; terms + propositions + syllogisms=movement, premises + conclusions; vs. intuition
Knowledge epistemology, facts, information, certainty; vs. belief, opinion, probability; vs. doubt, skepticism; vs. ignorance
Meaning hermeneutics, understanding, significance, interpretation
Truth reality; vs. error, falsehood, taste
Wisdom philosophy, balance, harmony, insight, vision, perspective, self-control/discipline, repose, foresight [sound judgment based on experience]; vs. folly, stupidity
Values good and evil, absolute and relative, excellence and mediocrity, mature and immature?, productive and non-productive?, decent and indecent? (value judgments, value conflicts)
Ethics I:
LOVE caring, kindness, helpfulness, good will, empathy, prizing, affection, attachment, self-sacrifice, altruism
Nurturing growth, development, fulfillment, potential, identity
Peace nonviolence, force; vs. war*
Justice fairness, equality; vs. mercy
Ethics II: morality, virtue and vice, right and wrong, ends and means, same and other, generosity and greed, philanthropy and exploitation, benevolence and oppression, decency and cruelty; duty, prudence, selfishness, arrogance, decisionmaking, conscience, habit (893)? choice? will?
War* violence, hostility, hate, revenge, conflict, the military
Liberty/Freedom autonomy, self-discipline, temperance; vs. slavery, tyranny, coercion and duress
Power desire, intension, authority, privilege, prestige, status, cause-effect, manipulation?
Heroism greatness, courage, honorableness, genius? prowess? mastery? “instinct of workmanship”; vs. frailty?
Leadership influence, vision, inspiration?
Law rights, crime, delinquency, punishment, sanctions, order
Society culture, civilization, community, fashion, custom and convention, patriarchy, class, common good, cities, urban planning
Community connectedness, alienation
The State government, constitution, politics, administration, citizen, oligarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, totalitarianism, anarchy, revolution, civil disobedience, patriotism, nationalism
Honor fame, reputation
Trade business, commerce, money, The Market
Capitalism and Socialism (private) property, wealth, poverty, slavery, fascism, communism
Labor/Work career, hardship, stress, unions, leisure
Leisure entertainment, play, games, sports, humor, renewal, relaxation
Prejudice racism, colonialism, stereotypes, superstition
Communication rhetoric
Family romance, marriage, parenting, motherhood, fatherhood
Friendship fraternity, “brotherhood,” solidarity, loyalty, trust
Sexuality eros, gender
Science hypothesis, element, system, astronomy, physics, experiment, proof et al
Social Science history, psychology, economics, et al
Technology mechanics, machine
Literature texts, books, reading, criticism, poetry
Imagination creativity, flow, fantasy, visualizing
The Arts painting, film, architecture
\Beauty form
Education learning, pedagogy, reading and writing
The Universe/Cosmos infinity, space, time, order vs. chaos, one and many
The World matter, energy
Nature animal
Evolution progress, change, competition
“Man”/Human Nature experience, instinct, reason, attitudes, attitude change, will, habit, attribution theory, motivation, aggression, pleasure and pain, sense, identity, vanity, narc injuryàrage; curiosity, attitudes. escapism?
Soul spirit
Mind consciousness, awareness, memory and imagination
The Unconscious the unknown, masks, defenses, secrets
Madness insanity, mental illness
Purpose teleology
The Future
Health medicine
Emotion happiness, fear, joy, despair, depression, jealousy, revenge, et al
The Holy God, The Divine, Harmony/Union, the Spirit, contemplation
Immortality loss, grief, hope, eternity
(Life and) Death
Religion faith, spirituality, metaphysics, mysticism, revelation, sin, salvation/savior, forgiveness, angels, cults, prophecy, magic, dogmatism, piety, worship
Mythology inspiration, trickery
Fate destiny, chance
It seems to me we talk to each other about these ideas in one of two ways: by means of stories or statements—I want to say philosophical statements, in the sense that we pay close attention to the language because the meaning of our terms is especially important. Can we fit both the impact stories have on us and our attempts to use language precisely in order to manage our world well into the categories above?
Friday, April 10, 2009
FIRST READS
I said earlier that I joined the Great Conversation in high school, prompted by Adler’s How to Read a Book. But it could reasonably be said that my participation began at 4-years-old when my mother took me to get my first library card at the Ben Franklin Library in Detroit. When our family moved to Hudson, Michigan, two years later, one of the first events there was my getting a library card from the Hudson Public Library (an Andrew Carnegie library where, as it turned out, I also got my first paying job in high school).
But as important as my library cards were, just as important was the Scholastic Book Service catalog that came into my hands, through my mother, during each school year. I’d do small jobs around the house to earn quarters, which I’d invest, one per book, in Phantom Roan or Big Red or Bertie Makes a Break—the first three titles that now pop into my mind. I put them on a shelf my dad made for me (later he’d make me two big bookshelves that I use to this day). In those initial lonely years out in the country these books were very much my friends. My mother bought me a stamp to mark my ownership of the books, but after a while I decided I couldn’t really “own” the books—somehow they had an existence of their own—and I stopped using the stamp, an attitude toward books I pretty much have carried into my later adulthood.
I’m sure all who read this page have similar experiences with “first reads.”
In 2005 I came across a book titled Rereadings, in which distinguished writers chose a book “that had made an indelible impression on him or her before the age of twenty-five and reread it at thirty or fifty or seventy.” The resulting essays are fascinating. I tried it myself with Big Red, by Jim Kjelgaard. What stands out to me from that rereading is how this time through I looked at things a lot from the father’s perspective, which I’m sure I never thought about as a kid.
Anyone out there have any interesting rereading experiences to share?
But as important as my library cards were, just as important was the Scholastic Book Service catalog that came into my hands, through my mother, during each school year. I’d do small jobs around the house to earn quarters, which I’d invest, one per book, in Phantom Roan or Big Red or Bertie Makes a Break—the first three titles that now pop into my mind. I put them on a shelf my dad made for me (later he’d make me two big bookshelves that I use to this day). In those initial lonely years out in the country these books were very much my friends. My mother bought me a stamp to mark my ownership of the books, but after a while I decided I couldn’t really “own” the books—somehow they had an existence of their own—and I stopped using the stamp, an attitude toward books I pretty much have carried into my later adulthood.
I’m sure all who read this page have similar experiences with “first reads.”
In 2005 I came across a book titled Rereadings, in which distinguished writers chose a book “that had made an indelible impression on him or her before the age of twenty-five and reread it at thirty or fifty or seventy.” The resulting essays are fascinating. I tried it myself with Big Red, by Jim Kjelgaard. What stands out to me from that rereading is how this time through I looked at things a lot from the father’s perspective, which I’m sure I never thought about as a kid.
Anyone out there have any interesting rereading experiences to share?
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Hermeneutical Principles
HERMENEUTICAL PRINCIPLES
To have a conversation people must decide who will participate in it and how the discussion will be conducted. In a “conversation” dealing with texts this means people must establish and agree on, as much as possible, sensible hermeneutical principles.
My older son was once asked to write an article with the working title “An Astrophysicist Looks at the Book of Genesis” (he being an astrophysicist) for a volume titled The Quaker Bible Reader (he being a Quaker). He had then, necessarily, to talk about principles of textual interpretation.
Early in the essay he writes, “What I cannot do is willfully insist that the author must have meant something completely beyond his or her cultural context in order to achieve agreement with a claim that I believe to be true. I cannot bend the author to fit my perspective. I feel compelled to read the author’s words as clearly and as thoroughly as I can, and then either agree or disagree. To force these words to fit my desires feels inconsistent with the intellectual and spiritual honesty that both Quakerism and science demand.”
Later he says, “I believe that the ancient authors were trying to express their own faith, within their own understanding and their cultural context, and this is the perspective from which I approach their writings. My goal as I approach Genesis is not to prove or disprove the correctness of the stories it tells. I do not want to stretch their message to fit my understanding; to claim we are really saying the same thing. I want to appreciate their stories and discover what they can say to me.”
Finally I’ll mention his assertion, relevant to the topic of this blog: “the Bible as we know it was not born from one single vision but encapsulates a sprawling and ongoing conversation [!] about the human race, God, creation, and our role in it.”
Much food for thought—and reply—here, especially for those of us interested in carrying on the Great Conversation wisely and well.
To have a conversation people must decide who will participate in it and how the discussion will be conducted. In a “conversation” dealing with texts this means people must establish and agree on, as much as possible, sensible hermeneutical principles.
My older son was once asked to write an article with the working title “An Astrophysicist Looks at the Book of Genesis” (he being an astrophysicist) for a volume titled The Quaker Bible Reader (he being a Quaker). He had then, necessarily, to talk about principles of textual interpretation.
Early in the essay he writes, “What I cannot do is willfully insist that the author must have meant something completely beyond his or her cultural context in order to achieve agreement with a claim that I believe to be true. I cannot bend the author to fit my perspective. I feel compelled to read the author’s words as clearly and as thoroughly as I can, and then either agree or disagree. To force these words to fit my desires feels inconsistent with the intellectual and spiritual honesty that both Quakerism and science demand.”
Later he says, “I believe that the ancient authors were trying to express their own faith, within their own understanding and their cultural context, and this is the perspective from which I approach their writings. My goal as I approach Genesis is not to prove or disprove the correctness of the stories it tells. I do not want to stretch their message to fit my understanding; to claim we are really saying the same thing. I want to appreciate their stories and discover what they can say to me.”
Finally I’ll mention his assertion, relevant to the topic of this blog: “the Bible as we know it was not born from one single vision but encapsulates a sprawling and ongoing conversation [!] about the human race, God, creation, and our role in it.”
Much food for thought—and reply—here, especially for those of us interested in carrying on the Great Conversation wisely and well.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
For 45 years, since my last year of high school, I’ve been inspired by the idea of the Great Conversation. I suppose it began when Mortimer Adler asked me, in How to Read a Book, wouldn’t I like to attend a university in which Plato lectured on philosophy, Shakespeare on poetry, and so on; and if so, all I had to do was learn how to read the Great Books. I pursued this ideal for many years until finally, in 1989, I became a trainer for the Great Books Foundation.
Over the last 20 years I have led book groups in bookstores, churches, libraries, and for a year in a maximum security prison. For four-and-a-half years my wife and I co-led a Great Books group in a mental hospital. Eleven years ago we started a group in a bookstore that continues to this day with an average attendance of about 15 people each month. For about 18 months we had a Henry James Club that existed as an adjunct to the main group, and now, similarly, we have a Novels Group. You can, by the way, see a list of what we’ve discussed and what we plan to discuss during the coming year at http://geocities.com/gbgnv.
How does a book make it onto our list? I don’t have a clear opinion of what makes a book great, and I find discussions of what should be in the “canon” tedious—though I suppose this must make up at least a part of the Great Conversation—but I think I’ve developed over the years a sense of what makes a book “worthy” or “worthwhile,” that is, worth the time and attention of my group. As a consequence every one of my monthly group’s discussions is lively and meaningful, or at least a solid exchange of ideas among members.
Everyone, of course, has preferences as to whom he wants to “converse” with. For me, staples in the Great Conversation are Plato, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Henry James, John Dewey, three mystery writers (Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, and Jane Langton), and any number of writers about psychology and psychotherapy, including Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, Heinz Kohut, Sigmund Freud, and others. (I worked for 10 years as a therapist at a community mental health center.) As a young man I spent hours immersed in the Bible and other religious literature. On the other hand, at the top of my “Writers I Hope to Never Read Again” list are Nietzsche and Kant. Obviously others who join in the Great Conversation will have different lists. Part of the fun is getting opinions on who to talk to.
What is the point of the Great Conversation? Why do you engage in it? What is its value? Robert Maynard Hutchins wrote a small book on the subject, which I haven’t read for a while. (It’s somewhere on the shelves of the Great Books Foundation.) A single sentence that inspires me comes from Matthew Arnold, quoted by Henry James in The Art of Fiction: “[Criticism’s] business is simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and, by its turn, making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.” This “miracle of dialogue” (to use the title of a book by Reuel Howe which has inspired me since I first read it in the ‘60s) seems to me the best way for us to fulfill the excellence of being human—Plato’s virtue or arête.
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