In 1916, John Dewey referred to education as “a social process—a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” While I think Dewey got many things about education wrong, I think he got this one right. Education is a social process. It is life and for a lifetime, but defining it seems to limit it. Definitions are ends for the means they serve. Education, for me, cannot be put into a box, nor should it be, which suggests that I am engaged in a fool’s errand. Let’s find out.
Aristotle implied that education was not formal instruction nor was it just knowledge; it was much more, but what was it? For Aristotle, it involved developing both intellectual and moral virtues through practice and experience, and it was for a specific purpose, to produce flourishing human beings. This idea of human flourishing was, for Aristotle, the ultimate telos, i.e., the end goal, for all human beings, but this telos implies something else about education.
In this post, I will look at education from one last angle with the hope that I see something that makes sense to me. I want to look at education from the perspective of how we experience it. One author I recently read referenced Erich Fromm and his distinction between having and being. This is as good of a lens as any other to use. Fromm defines “having” and “being” as modes of existence and as different ways of understanding ourselves, the world in which we live and those living in this world with us.
According to Fromm, “having” is concerned with ownership and possession with a focus on controlling; “being,” on the other hand, is rooted in love and concern with a focus on shared experience and productive activity. Being engages the world while getting seeks to possess and control the world. Fromm saw these as two modes of human existence: the mode of having and the mode of being. The mode of having perceives everything as a potential possession while the mode of being perceives self as the carrier of certain properties and abilities.
Fromm thought “having” emphasized a duality between the owner and the thing owned. It was a view of the world with self at the center and all other things arranged in a circle around self. They are distinct from self and their relationship to self is only through their ownership by self. Being is about those qualities that merge with our existence … skills that belong to us that we can exercise, but these skills cannot be taken from us. They are part of us. They are ours. What Fromm proposed was that we have a choice on how to live. Do we live lives having or being? Fromm emphasized that there was a difference between a society set to live for people or for things. Where did that difference take root? I think you know the answer.
Looking at education through the ideas of “having” and “being” clarify some things for me. In one sense, education can be something possessed as in, “I have a degree.” In this sense, education is one of those things to be possessed by self. It is part of the circle of stuff surrounding self, but then in another sense education can become part of us in the sense of “being” educated. If education is merely a paper on a wall, then, yes, there is a chance that I could lose that piece of paper, but if I am educated and continue to be educated then I lose nothing and gain everything.
This approach forces me to confront my pursuit of education. I have been looking at education as something to define, but I have learned that such an approach is misaligned and the pursuit untenable. Education is not a thing to possess but instead it is a part of being, of who we are, or at least it should be. If education is as Dewey says—a social process—then we must treat it as a social process. Education, then, is like other aspects of our social world. It is akin to the interaction of family. It is friendships and courtships. It is an evening with friends, a day at work or even a family vacation. How do we define these things? The quick answer is we don’t because they are part of who we are as social beings. We learn these things over the course of a lifetime, starting as children. We are taught by our parents, progress into school and then into college. We eventually have our own children and start the cycle all over again.
If education is “being” then it will define who we are more than we care to admit. It is not a neutral process but one that will impact us. In the same way that our parents defined who we are as children, education will have the same impact if we grant it the right. The push to educate your children at younger ages—there are many K4 programs out there—is a push to replace your impact on your own children with an educational one. This impact is masquerading as knowledge, either a core body of knowledge or a survey of chosen content. There is a hidden curriculum inside this content, and that hidden curriculum is this: every teacher and school teach from a perspective of the world which they will present to your children as true and right. Do you know what perspective of the world your school presents to your children as true and right? Many schools will claim that their focus is only on knowledge and content. Well, that is a perspective of the world, is it not? Shouldn’t you be the one who defines what is right and true for your four-year-old? Do your beliefs and values align with the beliefs and values of the school your children attend? These are good questions to have on your mind when considering educational choices.
As I close this series on education, let me sum up what I have learned. First, education is not just content. It is so much more and no matter how hard we try to make it just about content, it will never be just about content. Two, education is not one dimensional. It is multi-dimensional, and it is always social. Aristotle presented the idea that education is about the posture of wisdom, heath and morality and a lifetime of movement, and there are implications if he is even a little right. Third, the foundation of education is morality whether one cares to admit that or not. Fourth, education will change culture. If we do not understand this aspect of education, then we are doomed to be overrun by those who do. To change culture, you must gain control of the schools. History tells us that there are many who have understood this and used this understanding to their benefit. Fifth, with great wisdom comes great responsibility. One does not gain education for only knowledge’s sake. Education provides power. Finally, education is a social process. It is akin to life and something we should engage for our entire lives in a manner akin to friendships, marriages and families. We work at these over the course of our lifetimes. We should do the same in our educational interactions.
There is much more to address inside this topic of education, but for me, this concludes this series on education. Remember, thinking matters and so does education. Until next time …
A clearer picture of education is beginning to emerge. One that is more removed from current views, which is not really a surprise. As I dig a little deeper into Aristotle’s views, I must confess that I have not been Aristotelian for much of my life, but in the later years, I have seen the errors of my ways and come to him. It is projects like these that add to my appreciation of him and his work.
I begin this section with a quote. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, wrote, “It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philophise … he who wonders and is perplexed is ignorant; but, to escape ignorance [that] men studied philosophy.” The word “escape,” in this instance, is an infinitive which binds itself to ignorance. Ignorance, in this quote, is presented as that which is common, normal, pedestrian and functions more as a trap. The takeaway is that ignorance, to Aristotle, required escape; without escape, every human being was vulnerability to its enticement. Wonder, however, was a door away from ignorance and to philosophy, but be warned, Aristotle understood that wonder would perplex us, especially without philosophy (education). It would become ignorance which would be there waiting to ensnare us if education were not our guide; it would always be waiting for us, to settle, to take the easy way out, to be stagnate—it would always be there to accommodate us if we ever left education. Nothing much has changed.
Aristotle believed that philosophy (education) was the love and pursuit of wisdom, which destroyed ignorance which he saw as temptation in the forms of apathy and sedentary. It was philosophy (education) that was different, but it required pursuit which was proactive action on the part of the human being. It suggested that the nature of education was fluid and active and not stagnate and sedentary. It would have to be pursued and it would demand our work and commitment. Wonder was the key to all of this; it would draw us deeper into the process. It would be there when we were weary or tired. Wonder was always the beginning, suggesting something important. Wonder was the antithesis of ignorance. It was protection and philosophy’s beginning but never its end. We wonder and risk ignorance the moment we stop. Wonder is also education in every sense of the word. It is wonder that prompts us to know. It is wonder that keeps us knowing and learning. Aristotle considered wonder necessary for both the learner and the teacher.
Aristotle saw the process of instruction as rooted in thinking and learning. It was a series of steps that must be taken by both the instructor and the learner with wonder as the first step in each series. To begin instruction, wonder must be present. It was necessary and if not present, the teacher was to create it for the learner must enter the learning process with curiosity (or wonder). But both the teacher and the learner were responsible for the own posture, and part of their postures was always to be wonder. Both were to enter the encounter curious as to what awaited them. They were to be eager in anticipation of the things they would learn. They were also to understand that they needed each other, and that education could not happen in isolation. It isolation it would always be limited.
Aristotle’s second step, “individualized” instruction, rested in his belief that each student harbored unique talents, interests and preferences, which demanded a personalized approach to learning. For education to take place, the teacher had to know the learner, but the learner had to know the teacher and had to want to know the teacher. He posited that curiosity, critical thinking and individual inquiry in a student must all be reinforced through the personal guidance and support of the teacher. The role of the teacher was crucial to the success of the student, but the teacher’s role was tied to the learner’s attitude and posture. If the learner did not enter the interaction curious, ready to learn and seeking to know the teacher then the teacher’s role was limited. Education was threatened and ignorance was possible.
His third step is more well known, The Socratic Method. Aristotle borrowed this concept from Plato and expanded on it. It is a cooperative form of dialogue based on thought-provoking questions and guided reflection thought to produce meaningful learning outcomes. Aristotle encouraged open dialogue between students and teachers for purposes of collaboration and discovery, but they were not to be equal participants. They must respect each other and their respective roles. It was up to the teacher to walk the learner through a process rooted in rigorous debate, which exposed erroneous reasoning leading to deeper understanding. The process was continuous and balanced, and it required both the learner and the teacher to embrace it and respect it.
The fourth step was theory and practice. For Aristotle, the two came together as one. As I have referenced, he believed that for learning to happen theoretical knowledge and practical application must interact. He saw understanding as requiring both. He wrote, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre.” Aristotle often encouraged his students to apply theoretical concepts to practical problems because he believed, in doing so, his students would develop practical wisdom, improve critical thinking and become better problem solvers. For Aristotle, doing was as important as listening and studying. Process was important and could only be learned by doing repeatedly.
Aristotle believed in many formats and methods. His lectures were thought to be littered with quotations, references, examples and images as he acknowledged the power of enhancing understanding through additional means. His goal was always to engage his students in the best possible ways, and he was always seeking new modes of engagement. As Aristotle taught his students, he understood that learning extended into the cultivation of virtue and morality in students. He sought to nurture individual virtues through his teaching. He believed that to live a fulfilled life we must be morally upright and virtuous. We must put these virtues into practice, or we could not be considered educated. He wrote, “These virtues are formed in many by his doing the actions … The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.”
Aristotle was always faithful to what he called “the mean.” The mean was a balanced approach to life. It was not being over strenuous or excessive nor overly simplistic, superficial or sedentary. His answer was living a life of “harmonious balance,” which he saw as wedded to learning. The Mean or, as it has also been called, the Golden Mean, is moral behavior between two extremes: excess and deficiency. As people, he thought the proper way to live was to find a moderate position between two extremes and live that position to the best of our ability. Aristotle saw right living as living morally upright, which was to live a life faithful to the mean.
According to Aristotle, education was that which equipped human beings to live such morally upright faithful lives. Education, to provide the means to live such a life, had to be active, moving and an active pursuit. It was not easy, not stagnate and not reactive but it was intentional. It was a process that rested with the learner and the teacher, and both must enter the interaction willing, fully committed and exerting ample effort or very little learning would take place. Virtue, morality, personal responsibility … all of these were important parts of education to Aristotle and marks of an educated life.
I have found that this idea of education is not simple. It is more complex than imagined but it is well worth my efforts and time. Until next time …
In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presented four principles that I believe clarify his thoughts on education and provide more information in my quest to discover what education truly is. It was Aristotle’s belief that through these four principles human beings think and learn and would think and learn “all the more.” A picture of what education is supposed to be is beginning to form. Let’s get started.
The first principle he called Anamnesis, which loosely translated means reminiscence or recollection. In the Greek, it is literally “a calling to mind.” As a concept, it suggested that we acquire knowledge externally, but we also have it inherently within us. Both were important and both were meant to interact with each other. Therefore, processes of introspection and reflection were considered important as both were manifestations of this interaction. These processes today are considered higher ordered thinking, but to Aristotle, they were foundational and necessary to all learning. Anamnesis, for Aristotle, was many things but it was primarily for the sake of remembering; he also thought it had secondary uses, as also that which facilitated, perceived, imagined, thought and understood. The proper aim of Anamnesis was the establishment of a truthful relationship between the representation (present) and the represented (past) through the interaction of the external and the internal leading to “the” truth.
The second principle was termed Experience, which was thought, by Aristotle, to be required for understanding. A person with experience was one who had acquired external knowledge through interaction over time with one’s environment. It was one who engaged in the education for life. Experience was also that which developed coping skills, an appropriate attitude and a sense of the situation. Experience, to Aristotle, was not a knowledge of universals that could be memorized and applied but instead it was a knowledge of particulars, specifics, much like theories or axioms, regarding the way the world work. Aristotle saw culture and the environment through a lens of particulars and not universals, which speaks to his views on both. Experience, for Aristotle, took the form of the recognitional and the practical. It was not one over the other; it was both. He saw experience as compatible with general facts and was clear; understanding cannot be obtained through reason (inherent) alone; it required more. This idea of experience was not limited to the cognitive (inherent); it also required the engagement of one’s entire being (external), and the interaction of the two.
The third principle was habituation (ethos). This is an important principle as it reflects Aristotle’s belief that we are what we repeatedly do. Aristotle believed that learning, like life, was a process that was active and moving. He argued that virtuous behavior—he saw life as needing to be lived in virtuous ways— was not just something learned, a good idea or even an intellectual pursuit; it was living through consistent practice, moral training and learning, which he thought required intentionality. We live according to what we believe, and we tend to act according to those beliefs with intent. There is personal responsibility applied to each of us and it flows out of our intent. This idea of intentionality was prominent in Aristotle’s thoughts on education and in his other areas of study as well. Believing alone was not sufficient; reactions and feelings were not sufficient. According to Aristotle, we must be actively engaged with and ultimately embody the values we believe. We must live them and be them or they do not exist in us and are not us. They instead become items we carry like luggage and apply situationally. Values alone without consistent application were more emotion than education, more ideas than virtues. To be educated, Aristotle believed one must live that which they believed, which he saw as living virtuously. The implication was that if we did not live the values we believed, then we did not really believe them or worse, they were not worthy of emulation. Living a life without virtues was living uneducated, less civilized and more barbaric.
The fourth and final principle was practical wisdom. Aristotle believed that sound judgment and ethical decision making are the products of a synthesis of theoretical knowledge and real-world application. Practical wisdom was the manifestation of being an educated being. This was a blend of the cognitive (inherent) and the physical (external) coming together in the form of experience, which Aristotle saw as habitation manifesting as deliberation. This was education to him. Deliberation is long, conscious and careful consideration; it is applying those principles that you believe are true and right, that you have become convinced over time through scrutiny and analysis are true and right. Practical wisdom requires deliberation to discover the best course of action for a given situation. It is not a reaction or a quick decision. Deliberation was the result of the first three prior principles applied in full. To deliberate, Aristotle believed, was to function as an educated person.
As I examine Aristotle’s ideas on education I see a balance between two conflicting concepts: theory and practice. Aristotle believed that true education required engagement with knowledge inherent (internal and a priori) and knowledge external (experience) to become wise, but dwelling only in one area or the other was not wisdom to Aristotle. Wisdom was a balance between the two; knowing something was not the same as living the something that you know. We find these same beliefs present in his ideas on pedagogy. He believed teaching required personalized instruction, active engagement, and the cultivation of wisdom; all focused on the learner and not the teacher and yet, he considered the teacher vital to the learning process.
To many of us, these concepts are strange. Our perception of education is as a door. Education is the key that unlocks that door and on the other side of that door is a wonderful world of opportunities that await us. But that is not the picture that Aristotle paints. Education for him, was much different. It seemed more like maturity or growth, more a norm than a privilege. It seemed to be something common and necessary to human beings much like food and water. It was individual but for the sake of community. It was almost as if community would not happen without it. There is more to explore and discover as this quest for the origins of education continues. Until next time …
Raphael’s The School of Athens featuring Aristotle and Plato and many others!
Education: Painted and Soiled
Part II: Aristotle
That nagging question has not gone anywhere. Back peddling to the 16th century helped but not nearly enough. If going back the 16th century helped, then it can’t hurt to go beyond the 16th century, to Aristotle and his views on education. Aristotle lived in the 4th century BC; he was born in Athens in 382 BC and lived until around 322 BC. He studied and wrote on many topics, education being one of those.
The first Aristotelian idea I bumped into related to education was the idea of hexis, which is “a readiness to sense and to know.” This was a posture of sorts referred to as an “active condition” of a human being. Aristotle saw this condition as acquired and not innate, which is a statement about his thoughts on education. Aristotle borrowed this term from multiple sources, the Greeks and Plato to name two. The importance of hexis was its emphasis on habitation. Aristotle believed that one’s virtues were one’s habits and living a good life depending on living a life of virtuous habits. The adage, you are what you do most, comes from Aristotle’s thoughts on habits.
For Aristotle, hexis was a constant disposition composed of character, heath and wisdom. It was a blend of personal responsibility, cognitive development and the environment, i.e., the educational process. It was a “habitual state of having” and was something uniquely human. According to Aristotle, it was this “active condition,” this continuous “having (or wanting),” that positioned human beings to live in wise ways with other human beings. This wise way or posture was perceived as education and as communal. The theme of unity and community, found here, is also found in the Latin and in other ancient ideas of education. There was an connotation; it was not as clear, but it was there. It was this idea that education cannot be education in isolation or in selfishness.
Aristotle referenced another important concept in his writings on education, a “guiding eidos,” referring to it as a leading idea. Eidos was the Greek word for “form,” and Aristotle used it to describe the essence of things. Aristotle believed that all physical objects are made of both eidos (form) and hule¢ (matter), two contrasting notions that he saw as necessary in the making of things. This eidos, for Aristotle, prescribed the nature of a product; he used it to describe his thoughts on education, which reveals some of his beliefs and thoughts on education. This “eidos” was a state of being, an attitude, a disposition when referenced regarding human beings … It was a suggestion that human beings live to be happy and to flourish and that both could only be reached together. Aristotle suggested that one of the best ways for them to come together appropriately was inside the process of education.
As I explored more of Aristotle’s ideas on education, I continued to bump into many subtle references to community. Community, for me, cannot be built without a concern for others, but inside this concern must be something else: a willingness to sacrifice self for the sake others. It was living away from self and towards others. Aristotle’s philosophical theory, virtue ethics, emphasized the development of moral character, i.e., virtues, for this reason. This was living ethically for others; it was living away from self and towards others. Aristotle encourage people to live virtuous lives of courage, justice, liberality, patience and truthfulness. This was a virtuous life, in some respects, for Aristotle. It was as if he saw selfishness and the lack of virtue as signs of being uneducated.
This “guiding eidos” that he referenced was a unique disposition he used in discussions associated with education; Aristotle used the term, halting in connection with it, implying that it was a characteristic of the educated. Aristotle used the term, Halting, to reference movement. He saw this movement, this halting, as a process that “had already begun and would continue” into the future. By connecting this halting to education, he was implying that education “moved” in a similar manner. It was, as processes go, movement which had already begun and would continue into the future. There were no suggestions that it would slow or even end. It was a lifelong process akin to life.
All of this, according to Aristotle, ultimately led to praxis, which was “informed committed action.” This was not reaction, selfishness nor individual pragmatism; it was educated intentional intimate action for the sake of others and eventually for the greater good. For Aristotle, praxis was one of the three basic human activities, which were praxis (action), theoria (theory), and poiesis (making). Praxis was considered practical, thoughtful activity that was to be goal-directed and voluntary, and it demonstrated human freedom. Theoriawas theoretical activity with a single purpose focused on discovering truth. And poeisis was making or productive action, and it created something new. Aristotle believed that praxis must be guided by a moral disposition for one to act in righteous ways. Why? Aristotle believed that there could be good praxis (eupraxia) and bad praxis (dyspraxia), which makes sense considering he believed that hexis and most of education was acquired and not innate.
The modern idea of education is nowhere to be found in the etymology of the word, in the Latin or in Aristotle’s thoughts on education. Why is that? Do we have it wrong? As I referenced earlier, I believe education has been painted and soiled to the point that it is not even education anymore. It is something else. I believe this “something else” is being presented as education, whether intentional or not, and is now considered by most of us to be education. When our children walk into their schools, they assume—and we do to— that they are receiving an education, but what if they are not? They are receiving something. Are you confident that you know what it is?
There is an infamous quote attributed to Aristotle regarding education, “Education is the process of training man to fulfil his aim by exercising all the faculties to the fullest extent as a member of society.” In this quote, Aristotle’s goal of education is not just focused on man, but that man would become the best member of society that he could possibly be. This is a focus on mankind, not on self, for the sake of community. It was a thought that every man and woman would be a contributing member of society for the betterment of self and community. How could this be done? Aristotle believed that education was one of the chief manners of accomplishing this goal. Education, for him, was not to for vocation nor for self; it was for personal betterment for the purpose of communal betterment; they went together. They needed each other, but there was a danger if we only focused on ourselves, which was why he promoted a virtuous life and recognized the need for a virtuous education.
We are just scratching the surface. There is so much more and that is if we stay with Aristotle. In my next post I explore his Nicomachean Ethics, which is where he presented more thoughts on education. Until then …
I have had this question about education for some time. I thought it was a simple one, but I soon found that it was not. My problem—I wanted a simple answer. But there doesn’t appear to be one. Defining education is hard. I believe it is now harder than it ever has been. Why? Well, first, I believe modern education is a painted and soiled version of itself and second, I believe it has strayed so far from its true self that most of us have no idea what it is anymore. I see modern education buried under mounds of fads and trends. I have no real rational reason to make such a statement, but, just the same, the thought will not leave me.
The idea of education fascinates me. I still marvel at the process and recall with fondness my own educational experiences. I loved all my schooling and I have had a lot; some might say too much. I loved the small town two-room schoolhouse, my grammar and middle school experiences. I loved being bused to the large city high school, my high school experience, and of course, I loved my college experiences: who wouldn’t love those. The idea of high school has always fascinated me. Students, teachers, lockers, sports teams, class changes, hallways … the whole thing was an amazing experience for me. I saw it as its own little eco-system of which I was a part. I thought the process was as close to perfection as one could get. Then, I messed it all up and became a teacher. I went from the front of the curtain to the back of it and have never been the same. What I found behind the curtain smashed my rose-colored glasses into a thousand tiny pieces.
From my very first day as a teacher, I saw teaching as a craft and a practice; it was something to be honored and respected. I walked into that first class ready to change the world. I still remember my classroom: lots of space, large windows and a big teacher desk in the corner overlooking the student desks that sat under its shadow. That first day I learned a lot and every day after that one. I wanted to be better, and I wanted better for my students, so I read and studied. I talked to my fellow teachers. I talked with my administration. I observed those with more experience. I worked in different schools and in different roles and kept learning. As the years went by, things, both good and bad, happened to me. I woke up one morning and I realized something—this thing I was doing was not really education. It was something else.
What is this thing that I have dedicated the better part of my life to? If it’s not education, what is it? I can’t condemn it based on feelings, can I? That is not very educated of me, is it? Yet, that is what I am doing; I am acting on this sense that what I was doing was not really education but something else. It was, for me, two steps forward and two steps back. It was walking knee-deep in the mud and sense of lostness. No one cares about my opinion. No one even knows who I am. Why should I care? Well, I do. It matters to me. Should it matter to you? That is up to you, but you have experienced education in some of the same ways that I have. It has impacted who you are.
The adage I am using, painted and soiled, is a product of my time in education and the things I have seen over the years. I believe some of what has been piled on top of education over the years has been intentional (painted) and some of it organic (soiled). Some of it was good, but a lot of it was bad. What proof do I have to make such statements? Well, none; it is only speculation right now, but I want to find out more and that means something, even if it means something only to me. Someone once told me if you want to discover hard truth, you must be willing to go backwards. Sometimes going backwards is difficult, but speculation will reign if you never go backwards. When you do stop, turn around and go backwards, you will be on a different path. That is a start. It is also a form of freedom. The process of seeking, even if you never find anything, is freedom and worth every minute you spend on it, at least it is for me. So, let’s stop, turn around and begin the back peddling by exploring education’s etymology.
I found that this strange wonderful English word “education” is derived from two Latin words dating back to the middle of the 16th century, which is my first step backwards. The first of the two Latin words is educo, which is also found in the forms of educare, educavi and educatum. It is generally defined as “to bring up,” “to rear,” “to guide,” and “to direct.” These imply a process akin to the rearing of children either by a family or in a community. There are suggestions that this educo, as an action, has more in common with raising children than teaching children, which intimates that education, in the past, was broader and included values, beliefs and morality as part of its composite. This may surprise us, but it should not. This process was not confined to children; it was extended to adolescents and adults, especially when seeking and needing guidance, which, again, suggests something beyond subjects.
There is another idea that this Latin word conveys. While it does contrasts ideas of schooling, it also complements processes of schooling. As an idea, it is more analogous to a generation-to-generation cultural transfer of information akin to that which would be found in secluded civilizations where elders transfer their history to the next generation of leaders. This transfer is not of subjects but of beliefs, values and even traditions. It conveys a view of the world as true and right. This word, “educo,” implies an extension of learning into the broader culture and community. The use of “educo” does intimate a school setting, but, as I referenced earlier, it also intimates something beyond that setting. Its existence depends on its balanced relationship with all other learning, which is not limited to formal instruction. The implication is that learning is communal and cultural.
There is a second Latin word found in the English word of education, and that word is educere, which is the more common of the two. It is also found in the forms educo, educere, eduxi and eductum. It is defined in the following ways: “to draw out,” “to lead out,” “to raise up,” “to bring up” and “to rear a child.” From this word, we draw closer to current semantics associated with education; one author referenced that educere presented education as “a slow and skillful process of extracting the latent potentialities of comprehension and dedication, in contradistinction with indoctrination,” which is akin to a process of teaching students a core body of knowledge. Sound familiar? This word does push back on the idea of education as indoctrination, instead, embracing the educational ideal of freedom of selection. But there is a difference. Freedom, in educere, is presented as part of the process of education; whereas today, freedom is presented and perceived as a product of education.
When both Latin words come together to form the word, education, ideas of nourishing or rearing are more pronounced than ideas of teaching, but both are there. There is the presence of instruction, but it is systemic to the process and coupled with the idea of rearing or raising. Several authors referenced that the English word education could refer to both the process of training and the product or results of training, which has more to do with 16th century semantics than 21st century ones. The Latin also suggests that this idea of education is less formal instruction, more rearing and raising and more intimate. It is something beyond a teacher, a classroom or even subjects; it is something more relational and more familial. This paints a different picture than the education we have today, and yet, it is still not clear to me.
The etymology does go back to the 1500s and the Latin word educationem, which was defined as “upbringing or training.” It was this word that was the source of the Middle French word for education that gave rise to our English word, which entered the English language around 1530. This pulls us closer to the origins of education, but the picture is still murky. We need to go back farther, back to the Greeks, to Aristotle, and to 300 BC. Will that be far enough back? Only time will tell. Until next time …
One of the my favorite poets is this man, Mr. Langton Hughes. I am not much of a poet and rarely get moved by poetry, but his poetry moves me more than most other poetry. I admit, some of his poetry does nothing for me, some of it I do not understand, but then, some of it that just makes so much sense to me. To this day, I still can’t explain it.
Here is another one of my favorite quotes, which just so happens to be from Mr. Hughes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
“When people care for you and cry for you they can straighten out your soul.”
In my last post, I posited the idea that in the West we stopped pursuing morality in the name of freedom but that is only half the story. We stopped pursuing morality to fully embrace freedom as our new morality. This new morality functioned as the pursuit of whatever we wanted, making freedom something it was never intended to be. It became you and me at the expense of “we.” Freedom will stop being freedom when morality is removed, and when it becomes about you and me it is already gone. We, as human beings, will never stop pursuing. In most cases, we will pursue our own needs and desires, which sounds nice and sounds safe but, it eventually leads to darker places like narcissism and nihilism.
Today, we are told that we are free, and it is Critical Theory that has freed us. It has unshackled us from the chains that have bound us, but were they really binding us? What if those chains were not binding but restraining? What if they were restraining us from becoming evil, from our own demise and from excess? It is excess that the West has given to us as freedom. Let’s be clear: excess is not freedom, and it never will be, and yet, it defines us. It is our desire; it is our dream. Does having more make us free; does it make us happier? I do know that having more makes us want more, and that is not freedom. That is addiction; that is bondage. When we get more, we want more; it never seems to be enough. That sounds oddly familiar, like something else entirely … something at odds with freedom. What happens when I want something that you want? Is that freedom or are we back to a “survival of the fittest” mentality? Maybe, we never left?
Marxism in the West has taken on many forms and addressed many issues, but it has accomplished its greatest task. It has made the West a land of individualism. We are promised everything, and we have been conditioned to believe that we can have everything. It is this promise that has become our idol, worshipped by everyone at the expense of everyone. Remember Spengler’s critique of civilization, excess was not a point of celebration but a point of concern. It was a warning bell and a flashing red light. In the West, we no longer hear the warning bells or see the flashing red lights? Why? Excess is who we are. This wanting more … it is always there, pushing us to think about ourselves, and every time we do, it is at the expense of someone else. We no longer see others. We only see ourselves. This is what excess does … others become obstacles preventing us from getting more.
Excess has seeped into our being. It now defines our excellence and is our passion. More is better, easier and what we want most. Best is a distant memory. Excess produces no loyalty, no common sense and no honor; there is only individualism and the striving for more. When we stop and look in the mirror, we see something unfamiliar, something we no longer recognize. We have been living in this land of excess for too long. Excess has become who we are. We think it is good for us, but it is a sickness that is slowly killing us. We are no longer ashamed our actions; we no longer take responsibility for anything. We stopped seeking humility long ago. Our only concern is to get as much as we can for as long as we can.
This is the West. Excess has replaced our desire for excellence and our concern about goodness with itself; all we want and care about is more. Sound familiar? This is you and me. This is survival of the fittest, chaos theory and AI all rolled up into one. This is what death looks like at the cellular level right before oncosis. Our concern is for ourselves at the expense of everyone else, and it is not moral, not ethical and certainly not civil. It is gluttony; it is embracing profligacy as if it is the air we breathe and the water we drink. Excess has become life to us. We have been told that we can have it all and we have believed that we could, never giving a second thought to what getting it all would do to us or do to others. Just look out your window and watch the world for a moment. What do you see? Bigger, better, more … everywhere. No one is immune. Excess is us and it is everywhere.
It is 2025; there are few if any traces remaining of the West and its past. The Athens of old is gone and so is Rome, but there is America. It is the land of opportunity, the shining star of the West. It represents all that we could ever want. Is it the West or something else? One author put it this way: “Call American civilization brutish, materialist, or racist (it has been called all of those things), but don’t call it Western. Western civilization declined and fell a century ago, and it’s not coming back.” In other words, the West (America) is not sick; it is not in decline. It is not being rescued or revitalized. It is dead.
The West is dead. We have been living in its decay and rot for some time now. And, to make matters worse, we killed it. That’s right and its death was due to our individualized gourmandizing. It was our wanting more … our never being content with what we have. We embraced excess without considering the consequences and, there are always consequences. We did not think it would matter, but we should have known better. We should have known that having it all was not possible; that everyone can’t be excellent, happy and wealthy all at the same time. Individual fulfillment does not produce collective excellence, community or even a future and it never will. I thought we learned this lesson over 200 years ago. Have we forgotten them already?
It is the end of the story for the West. There is no looking back nor is there wishful thinking. Death is final. There are no second chances and no rescues. Death is death. There is now only looking forward towards a new beginning. This is the way of civilizations; instead of mourning death and avoiding it, we should embrace it because the end of one thing is always the beginning of something new. The death of the West means something new is coming, or it might already be here. It might not be what you want or what I want, but it will not be what we have known. It will be different. We have a choice. We can sit and wait, or we can be part of its development. The choice is yours; the choice is mine. Let’s hope that we make a better choice this time. Let’s hope we are together and not apart, and that we have not forgotten the hard lessons of the past as we move into new beginnings. We will need to remember them, or we will be doomed to repeat them.
This concludes this series. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time …
My intention was for this to be the last post in this series, but the more I read the more I realized that there was more to say than could be contained in one final post. Therefore, there will be one more post after this one. Let’s get started!
In the 21st century, we have seen many cultural changes. Tried and true traditional beliefs have been attacked, longstanding norms have been destroyed and many new ideologies have emerged. There are those who would suggest that these new ideologies are by-products of the West. Gregg would contend that these new “influential and secular ideologies” offered themselves initially as “emancipations to rationality and science,” which have always been perceived as pathways to reason. Karl Marx and his philosophy, Marxism, asserted itself as one of those pathways, but Marxism, ironically, does not value reason. Marx regarded the human mind as “extremely limited” when it came to knowing truth. His colleague and fellow Marxist, Friedrich Engels, shared this belief, believing that “ultimate truths” are rare in the natural sciences and that the final and ultimate moral truth was “the rarest of all.” Marx concluded that man’s ultimate origin and the nature of good and evil were futile pursuits not worth time or energy, forcing him to embrace a more Promethean view of man as a self-created existential being (Prometheus was a Greek god who modeled humans from clay and taught them agriculture and all the ways to live. He also stole fire and gave it to them, allowing them self-sufficiency.). Reason, or any higher ordered thinking, was not needed in a pragmatic Marxist world. What was needed, according to Marxists, was more Marxism.
To provide Marxism to the masses, Marx and Engels created a secular more widely accepted Marxist ideology, intentionally designed with religious nuances to be presented as more a religious faith than a philosophy. Marx, Engels and other Marxists sought to replace traditional religious beliefs with Marxism, and they did it through the synthesis of faith and reason, a process already adversely impacted by the Enlightenment. It was their intent to replace faith with Marxism through the reason of the Enlightenment. Marxism was entwined with this reason to consume it and squeeze faith completely out of it, turning it into something Marxist-like. It was Marxism that was now synthesized with this new reason, which produced a Marxist worldview that could be packaged and delivered to the world. It was built to critique, not in constructive ways, but with destructive tendencies that weakened and destroyed, paving the way for it to rule. But it was built with a flaw. It assumed a particular understanding of the human condition as true and right.
It was Nietzsche, initially, an advocate of the Enlightenment and of Marxism, who saw this flaw and the manifestations of it. He, ultimately, rejected the Enlightenment, the reason it produced and the Marxism it embraced, recognizing that while it was built to undermined Christianity and those traditional religious norms associated with it (Christianity was both a traditional belief and longstanding dominant ideology.), it would never stop there. Nietzsche understood that it would eventually undermine the entire culture and everything in it. The flaw was an assumption … That human nature was good, and that it only needed a better culture in which to live to thrive. It soon discovered that the human condition was just as corrupt inside a Marxist culture as it was outside of it.
Nietzsche is an interesting case study when it comes to the West. In The Gay Science, he wrote, “it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.” I think Nietzsche understood that truth, God, Christianity, science—all of it came together as one in this culture known as the West. It was this culture that was unique and unlike any culture before it. It was a culture of the many functioning as one; it acted as one, moved as one and changed as one. Nietzsche understood the West, but he also understood that if they stood as one, they would fall as one, and that included everything.
Marxism, to overcome the West, had to undermine the West and overtake the beliefs and ideologies that were so dominant for so long. It forgot that once it had overtaken the West it would, itself, become the dominant ideology, and go from the hunter to the hunted. This is precisely what Nietzsche was addressing in The Gay Science. When he wrote, “God is dead,” he wrote that “we” killed him. Not you or me; not he, but “we” killed him, implying that this collective whole of the West, this many acting as one, was in trouble. He understood that a rejection of any one thing in the West would ultimately be a rejection of everything, including those things that were good. This was the nature of the West.
Freeing individuals to pursue life, liberty and happiness sounds like freedom and functions like freedom for a time, but it does not take long before freedom become excess, and excess becomes selfishness and narcissism. In the West, we stopped pursuing morality in the name of freedom because, in our excess, we became confused regarding what freedom was. Freedom become something it was never intended to be. What happened? You will have to come back and read my last post to find out! Until then …
Many consider the “West” a nebulous term with no meaning and no history and yet most consider it in decline. As I have referenced, when Oswald Spengler published his epic, The Decline of the West, he posited that the West “wasn’t just in decline; it was being dragged under.” His thesis was that all “cultures” go through a process of birth, blossoming, fruit production and withering to the point of death. The withering phase he called “civilization” because he associated it with a process within the withering phase of excess, debilitation, loss of identity and finally, death. Spengler first published his masterpiece in 1918, and at that time, he saw the West in the withering stage. As he pointed out, the beginning of the withering stage is excess. When civilizations reach the point of excess they become fat; that is not a point of celebration but one of warning. Spengler saw the West at this stage, which forces us to consider a question we would rather not: where is the West now?
Let’s be clear: the West is not a country, nor does it have geographical boundaries, but it does have a birth, and because it has a birth, it will ultimately have a death. Its birth, according to Spengler, occurred with the fusion of German nobility and the Western Roman Empire, as Spengler saw his native Germany as part of the West. Others point to the marriage of Athens and Jerusalem, but all are references to the merging of the two known worlds at the time into something new and different. Spengler thought the West “blossomed” in the Italian Renaissance, bloomed in the Baroque period and produced its greatest fruit in the 19th century. Gregg posited that the Enlightenment was one example of its fruit, but fruit is only good for a time; eventually it rots.
The Enlightenment, most would say, was not united with Christianity but instead at odds with it. Gregg rejects that idea and any idea that the Enlightenment advanced individual reason at the expense of personal faith. He acknowledges the rise of and focus on reason, but he also points to examples of reason and faith coming together for good during the Enlightenment. He presents one important Enlightenment figure in support of his supposition: Sir Isaac Newton. It was thought that Newton wrote his Principia Mathematica in response to the “materialist assumptions” of Rene Descartes and his views on planetary movements. Newton believed that the entire cosmos, including planetary movement, were governed by a Holy God and his divine providence. It was his faith that drove him to study the world and understand it. Many Enlightenment thinkers considered religion as superstition, but others, like Newton, did not.
As far as products of the Enlightenment, the founding of America is often referenced as one of its greatest. While there is evidence to support this assertion, there is also evidence, i.e., its foundational documents, that tell another story; one where its founders grounded virtue and human morality in reason bathed in a belief of divine goodness. Those Enlightenment ideas that were at odds with the Christian faith coincide with the rise of reductionism and the scientific method as both were coming of age at this time. It was reductionism and modern science that attacked faith, presenting it as incompatible with reason, for the purpose of crowning reason as the only king.
According to Gregg, there were two claims that severed the reason of Enlightenment with the Christian faith; the first was the belief that there was no fixed human nature, which clashed directly with the Christian belief of a sinful human nature. The second claim—that the only true knowledge was scientific knowledge from the scientific method—contradicted the Christian belief that all knowledge belonged to a Holy God. Gregg argues that both claims isolate science away from faith and subvert all belief in God. Science and faith were presented as mutually exclusive with science celebrated and faith mocked, but, quite unintentionally, the position science claimed and occupied alone would eventually subvert science and reason. We only need to look at current culture and the presence of Critical Theory as proof. It cares nothing for science or reason; it only cares for itself. There is no logic or scientific methodology; it alone is king and ruler. I would like to posit one notion to consider from this point forward: As the Enlightenment was attacking the Christian faith, it was also attacking itself; it just did not know it.
The ideas and principles it deployed eventually came full circle and were deployed against it. Reason, the scientific method and humanism, all used by the Enlightenment to directly benefit itself, were critiqued, undermined and turned against it by other movements like Romanticism, Idealism, Rationalism and Postmodernism. They revealed that the limitations and exclusions the Enlightenment sought to eliminate from the world were alive and well inside its own ideas, in part, due to its own nature. It is this nature that was, in my opinion, adopted, manipulated and used by Critical Theory to assert itself in the West as the new authority. It is Critical Theory that now pushes the West to the brink of decline and death.
Stay tuned for the last post in this series as I discuss where the West is now. Until then, remember thinking matters!
Happy New Year! Welcome to 2025! Today is the day resolutions begin to dance in our heads as we contemplate new beginnings. A new year is strange, is it not? It is the one day of the year when the whole world welcomes … no, celebrates change. Every other day of the year most of the world fights change. Leo Tolstoy provides us a little insight on this. My new year’s gift to you is this quote from him. Read it twice as there is wisdom in his words. Happy New Year!
“We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.” Leo Tolstoy
We, in the West, love our freedom, our liberty and all the choices afforded to us. We love free speech, the right to an education and class movement. We vote, are free to be critical and free to believe different things, if we choose. All of these “rights” are ours, at least we believe that they are ours. There is just one minor problem: these rights we claim as ours are found only in the West and nowhere else. They are not really ours but on loan to us from the West, which begs the question, why, then, is the West in decline?
I ended my last post suggesting a connection between Christianity and the West, and in this post, I am going to defend that suggestion. Whether you believe in its truths or not, and you are free to do both in the West, there is no denying the impact Christianity has made, not only on the West, but on the entire world. Many of the beliefs, the values and the traditions we hold dear came to us in the West and from the West, and most of those came to us, like it or not, from Christianity.
When Christianity entered the world, it came into a world that was a mixture of Roman, Greek and Jew. There were three, Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, major civilizations in the world at the time, all trying to conquer each other, but it was Christianity, according to Gregg, that did the conquering. It made the Jewish God of Abraham available to both the Romans and the Greeks while also appropriating and transforming much of the Jewish thinking into a synthesis of reason and revelation. It was Christianity that changed the world by granting rights to those who had never had rights and introducing change that applied to all people. These ideas morphed into what is known as the West and “Western” thought today. According to Gregg, all of it came out of Judaism through Christianity. It was Christianity that introduced three major ideas that were new and radical; it was these three ideas that contributed to the development of this distinct “Western” culture and “Western” mindset.
These three ideas were distinct to Christianity and, as we shall see, versions of them were foundational to Western Civilization. First, reason was viewed as divine, which suggested that the world was created by a Holy God and had order and purpose. Second, there was the idea that all human beings had reason and could employ it with assistance in redeemable ways to know truth, including the moral truth of a Holy God. And third, this Christian revolution started by Jesus Christ emphasized a new form of freedom that the world had never seen before. It was a freedom that unfettered all human beings from rulers and their power and provided them a means to a Holy God and to their own betterment. These three ideas changed the entire world and forms of them took root and became foundational to the West as we know it today.
Those three Christian ideas that changed the world have morphed into three tenets of Western Civilization that we assume to be our own natural rights. They have become a bit distorted over time, but they are still very much alive and active today in the West. We assume they are distinct to the West and products of the West when their geneses are rooted in Christianity. We don’t’ think about them. They are ours, and we assume that they will always be ours because we possess them and have always possessed them. They are part of our normal, our worldview and our paideia if you will. These three ideas are distinct to Western Civilization, and yet they are even more distinct to Christianity, although they are better known by their Western nomenclature. What are they? Well, you will recognize them because they are you and me. These three ideas are three rights we take for granted and call our own; they are the right to an education, the right to a democratic way of life and the right to personal freedom. Each one came to us, not from the West, but from Christianity and along with a host of other “norms” now residing in the West.
Those three ideas created a revolution of sorts that changed the entire world. They gave everyone power that had only been reserved for kings and queens of old. They put totalitarian regimes and those like them on notice, offering something else, a better form of government, and as much as we want to, we cannot ignore their connection to Christianity. It was Christianity that was affirmed as “the true philosophy” by Clement of Alexandria and lauded for its “integration of faith and reason.” It was Christianity that produced churches, hospitals and schools, including the university, which was founded for the training of the church’s clergy and for the pursuit of truth for the sake of truth. This one product (the university) was a statement on the change that Christianity brought to the world. You can find the university in almost every country in the world today and in its vision, you will find a pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. This educational pursuit was a pursuit that the world had never had the liberty, the ability nor the desire to pursue until this Christian revolution, and all of it was rooted in a belief and in a conviction that there is a Creator God who created a world of order that could be known. Today, our colleges and universities have all but forgotten this connection, but they owe their very existence to Christianity.
There is wonderful book entitled, The Dying of the Light, that traces the origins of all colleges and universities in the United States. The striking point about this book is that almost every college or university in this country was originally the product of a denomination … the product of some form of Christianity. The Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, and the Catholics … every denomination that created a colleges or university is in that book and almost every single college or university that was created in this country is in that book. The point not to miss is that these institutions of higher learning were created, in part, due to a mandate from a Holy God and a conviction that this God created a world of order that could be known and should be known, which prompted a curiosity and a desire to learn more about this God and the world he created. One author put it this way, “It [Christianity] launched an age that saw the world as characterized by order, that the human mind can comprehend and a world that merits study simply because it is the world of God.” So, when we talk about the West, in most instances, we are taking about Christianity and its impact on the world.
It is the West that ushered in the study of science, mathematics and medicine. It is the West that employed democracy in real time and presented it as a better more copious option. It is the West that concerned itself with poverty, slavery and racism, albeit imperfectly. No other country, people group, religion or mindset offered anything close to what the West has offered to the world. It is the West that has taken its advances and advanced itself for better or worse, and while it has had its share of issues, indulgences and mistakes, it has still provided the world with so much. This is Western Civilization and the Western mindset all rolled up into this innocuous phrase we use without a second thought, and today, we find it close to death. Why? In my next post, I begin to examine its fall and death. Until then …
A Christmas tradition of mine is to post this poem on Christmas Day. It is one of my favorite poems. It was written on December 25, 1863 by Wadsworth in response to hearing that his son, Charles Appleton Wadsworth had been wounded in a battle in Virginia.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!
Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
I recently read an article about the decline and fall of the West, which produced a single thought in my mind in response to this article … Are we living through what many are calling the decline of the West or has the West already fallen? These two questions produced more thoughts and prompted me to do a little reading on the subject. In several articles I read one book was referenced more than all others, The Study of History by Toynbee. It turns out that this is not just any book but, by most accounts, a masterpiece when it comes to Western Civilization. Let me explain why.
Arnold Toynbee suggested in his book that the West was already in sharp decline. Why did he do this? The Study of History is a multi-volume study of civilization, in which Toynbee studied twenty-one different civilizations across the span of human existence and concluded that nineteen of those twenty-one collapsed when they reached the current moral state of the United States, but here was the shocking part for me: He first published The Study of History in 1931, and in 1931 he posited that the West was in sharp decline and was, according to him, “rotting from within.” Toynbee died in 1975, but I wonder what he would think of our culture today. Are we living in a culture rotting from within or is it already dead?
With this post, I begin a series on the West with the goal of answer the question, is the West in decline or has it already fallen? There are several other excellent books devoted to this topic. Oswald Spengler wrote The Decline of the West, Christopher Dawson wrote Religion and the Rise of Western Culture and Tom Holland wrote Dominion and each author grappled with the same concept regarding the decline of Western Culture. Is Western Culture dead or is it in decline? Let’s find out together. First, let’s explore how the West came to be.
I begin with Samuel Gregg and his book, Reason, Faith and the Struggle for Western Civilization, which is also excellent when it comes to our topic. In his book, he offers his account of the West, which is like the others but also nuanced with some differences. Gregg argues that Western Civilization was conceived in a marriage of Jerusalem and Athens. His answer is like many others and yet he posits that Western Civilization was born through a marriage of “faith and philosophy” in a version of Christianity born in the West that embraced and applied both faith and reason as one. He sees this “one” coming out of ancient Judaism, which he suggests was a synthesis of both faith and reason as applied in the living of life in a new way. Life was no longer about survival, at least not in the West; there were advancements that made life better and allowed progressions in thought and religion. Gregg states that Judaism “de-divinized nature” and was the first worldview/religion to completely reject the ancient idea that kings and rulers were divine and everyone else was to be under them. Judaism, unlike all other religions around it, offered the world a new king. Its rejection of the old idea was through a new view of the cosmos that was spiritually oriented. Judaism saw the cosmos as part of the created order of a universe created by a Holy God and because the universe was created by this Holy God it had order and intelligence and was not formless chaos as all others saw it.
There was good, in time and space, and hope and all was not lost, according to Judaism, which was a much different narrative of the world than most other historical and religious narratives of the time. What Gregg was proposing was that in Judaism the Jews found a liberation of sorts of the cognitive from time and space. Judaism affirmed that there was a good God in heaven who was a Holy Creator God and that human beings were part of his created order, and not merely interchangeable parts of a larger machine. Human beings were seen as created in the image of this Creator God; they had purpose and were given responsibilities to live as moral beings in this created order. This was a radically different idea than all other ideas before it and what first makes Western Civilization unique. This was a vastly different worldview and would be distinctly western and a foundational mark of Western Civilization.
The merging of Athens and Jerusalem cannot be underestimated as to its impact on Western Civilization and the Western mind, especially regarding our own current modern Western mindset in the United States. It is the United States that has been the pseudo-capital of Western Civilization for many years now, and it has been the United States that has served as the poster child of the West. The United States has impacted the West, including the Western mindset, more than most. And, now it is this mindset that has become compromised as referenced in part by Alan Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind. It is the American mindset that was so free and so creative that now seems to be more vulnerable and more impacted than all others by the attacks against it. Bloom, in his book, attacks the moral relativism that he claimed was now in control of the colleges and universities. The very freedom brought to us by the West was the very thing being transformed before our eyes. Again, Bloom published his book in 1987, but he appeared to be saying some of the same things. The West, often seen through its colleges and universities, was in decline and dying back in 1987 according to Bloom.
Back to Gregg, he references that Athens brought both contributions and obstacles to human thinking. It was Athens that was known for its skepticism, its irrationalities and its philosophies; most of them stood in stark contrast to the distinct and different worldview of Jerusalem (Judaism). So, how did they merge when all indications are that they should have clashed? The merging of Judaism and Greek thought, according to Gregg, predates Christianity, which is marked by the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There can be no denying the impact of Jesus Christ on the world regardless of your belief about him. Prior to Jesus Christ, educated Jews were more than familiar with Greek thought and moved easily back and forth between Hellenistic and Jewish thinking. This was due to purely pragmatic reasons as the Romans controlled the world and therefore controlled thinking. The Romans were borrowers and refiners. They invented little of their own, but they borrowed from those they conquered and bettered what they borrowed. The Romans allowed those they conquered to keep certain elements of their own culture if they accepted the elements of the Roman culture considered important. It was the Jews who were different than all other cultures; it was the Jews who had this One God who refused to bow down to any other god. Both the Romans and the Greeks viewed the Jews as barbarians. Why? Ironically, it had little to do with their religion and more to do with their thinking and their disposition. The simple answer was that they were not Roman or Greek; the better answer would be to say that they were not Western prior to Christianity. So, there it is … a connection between Christianity and Western Civilization. In my next post, I will explore this connection, but until then …
My father passed the bowl of planta to me. I was starving and grabbed it with both hands. I set it to the side of my plate and took a large spoon-full from the bowl and placed it on my plate. The meat and sauce were waiting. I mixed them all together before beginning to eat. I loved to mix my foods together. My sister, however, did not, which I found strange. She like to keep everything separate on her plate with each food in its own special space. I did not understand this and thought it was another reason to support my assertion that she was from some far away planet.
I loved planta. It was my favorite food. My mother was a great cook and made many fine meals for our family but this one, for me, was her very best. As I inserted my fork into the planta, there was a knock on our door. My father looked up from his plate, looked at my mother and then informed all of us that he would get the door. He put down his fork and rose from his chair and walked to the door and looked out the window.
“Its Butch from next door,” he said as he opened the door. “Hi Butch! What can we do for you tonight?’
“Hey, sorry to bother you, especially at dinner time, but can I talk to you? It’s kind of important and all. Again, sorry folks for interrupting dinner.”
“Sure,” my father said.
“Outside,” Butch said. “On the porch, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, Butch,” said my dad as he followed Butch out onto the porch, closing the door behind him.
My mother looked at me and then at my sister as she ate. She hated when people called on us at dinner. Dinner was her domain, her happy place. She deemed dinner time as a sacred and protected time that should never ever be interrupted: it was gold and to interrupt it meant whatever Butch needed had better be real important. I looked at my sister and she looked at me, we knew our mother was not happy.
“I am sure there is an emergency at work,” she announced to us as she ate.
My sister looked at me again, but she said nothing. I just kept eating my planta. I knew my father would be in trouble with my mother if it was anything other than work. As I took another bite, I heard the door open and turned to see my father come back through the door.
“What is it?” asked my mother.
“Well, I am not sure. Butch said there is a strange light in the sky tonight—up behind the school.”
“What?”
“Yea, he said most of the town is up there looking at it right now. It has been in the sky for a few hours now. No one really knows what to make of it.”
“Really?” said my mother.
“Yea, and we should go look at it too. He wants me to see it in case it is something more.” My father was one of the three selectmen who ran the town. He was always busy doing something for our little town. My mother supported him, but, at times, she thought it demanded too much from him, like tonight.
“Not until we finish dinner,” said my mother firmly. “There are two other selectmen in this town. Let them look at it until you finish dinner.”
“Right,” my father said with a chuckle. “Let’s eat and then we can go for a walk and see it for ourselves,” he said in his usual calm manner. He knew that dinner was my mother’s sacred time. It would take a real emergency to break away from dinner without finishing it first, and he did not deem this as that kind of emergency.
I looked at my mother and then my father. “What light? I asked as ate more of my planta.
“I don’t really know,” my father said. “Butch said it is the strangest thing he has ever seen. Let’s finish eating first and then go see it for ourselves. The rest of the town apparently is already there.”
We ate what was on our plate as this was my father’s rule for dinner and it was always in play. My sister and I always had to eat at least one portion of everything being offered for dinner. Any complaint was rewarded with another spoonful, which we were also required to eat; nothing ever went to waste. My father grew up with very little. There were times when his family did not have enough to eat for dinner so whatever food we had was a blessing to him and he did not want us wasting any of it.
After we finished dinner, which always included washing the dishes—my mother’s rule—we put on our coats and hats and went out the side door onto the driveway.
“Where are we going again?” asked my mother.
“We are going up street to the back of the school,” said my father. “That is where everyone is looking at this light in the sky.”
“Light in the sky,” said my mother. “It probably just a bright star.”
“Maybe,” my father said, “but let’s take a look for ourselves.”
And, with that, we started walking up the street towards the school. It was a cold brisk night. As we walked we could see our breath in the night time air. My sister did not seem to care, but I couldn’t wait to see it. I tried to look into the sky to see if I could see the light, but I saw nothing. The trees stretching over the road preventing me from seeing the full sky. As we approached the school, we could see others walking up the sidewalk and around the side of the school. We followed the Carriers and the Newtons who were also walking up the sidewalk.
As we walked around the back of the school, we were surprised to find that almost the entire town was there. Butch saw us and motioned to my father. He pointed up into the dark nighttime sky, towards the hill just over the trees. I followed his finger and looked up in the sky and then, I saw it. Bright, round and clear with no movement. It was not a star. It was too close. It just hung in the air and did not move. It was like a moon, lucid and clear but so close and low in the nighttime sky. As I looked at it, I began to get a little anxious. What was this thing, I thought? Butch walked over to us and pointed at it.
“That thing … right there … has not moved in three hours,” he announced.
“You don’t say,” said my father with his eyes glued to the round object in the sky.
My father moved us to an open space on the bank behind the school, which inclined up leading to a flat field the town used as a softball field. There was snow on the bank but not too much as we had not had any large snowstorms yet. As I moved up the bank, I could hear the snow crunch under my boots.
As I looked up into the sky, there it was just sitting there. It was so round and bright, and white but not too white, sort of milky white and stationary. I did not know how else to describe it. It just continued to hang there in the sky like a small secondary moon but much closer than our real moon. It seemed like it was watching us as much as we were watching it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Most of the families from the town had now joined us behind the school. They were looking at the light in the sky, pointing and talking to each other. My father walked over to where Butch was standing.
“Butch, that thing is no star,” said my father. “I am not sure what it is, but it’s no star.”
“It’s not, that’s for sure. What do you think it is?” asked Butch in a low whisper. “Is it something to worry about? Is it … you know … a UFO?”
“I have no idea,” my father whispered back, “but let’s not get too excited. And let’s not say that out loud right now.”
I kept looking at the circle in the sky. I looked at it through the trees. I could see it between two branches that formed an X directly on it. I looked back over my shoulder at the families that had assembled behind the school. Some were laughing and having a good time. Others were whispering to each other and appeared concerned. Some just stood silently starring a that light in the sky. It was clear to me that no one was sure what this thing was and what we should do about it if anything. I was not sure what it was either, but I knew one thing … It was there, it was real and I was watching it.
I looked around and saw that two of the three selectmen were behind the school with us looking at the light in the sky. My father, of course, was one of them; Tillie Manago was the other, but that was not a surprise. Tillie never missed anything in this town. So, that was two of the three. Where was the third? Where was Bruno Mowe and why was he not here? His house was almost directly across the street from the school. Maybe, he knew what this thing in the sky was? Bruno was the elder statesman of our town. He knew everything about our town and always had an answer to give us. I began to wonder why he was not here.
Our little town was situated across the river from one of the very first nuclear power plants built in the country. We benefited greatly from the location of this plant, but not as much as Towson, the town in which the plant was located. The plant bought our little town the finest fire engine in the area and charged the town $1.00 for it. Our town had gotten used to seeing bizarre things related to that plant. Helicopters, investigators in dark suits and dark SUVs had all visited our little town at one time or another, but this … this was different. Was this related to the plant across the river? I began to wonder then I heard a little commotion behind me and turned to see Bruno Mowe in his rubber boots and hunting hat walking up the bank.
“What’s everybody doing here?” He asked.
The crowd said nothing at first, then, my father spoke up.
“Bruno, look,” my father said pointing to the sky. “What do you think that is?” asked my father continuing to point to the light in the sky.
“You know, I don’t know,” Bruno said rubbing his chin as he did when he was thinking, “but I am sure it is nothing to get too excited about.” I am sure there is a very good explanation waiting to he heard,” he said with a smile. He was always positive and said everything with assurance. I looked up and it was still there … in the same spot, right between those two branches of that one tree.
It was getting late and getting much colder. I was starting to get cold, and I could see others were getting cold too. The younger kids who were playing on the playground on the side of the school started to wander back to their parents, complaining of the cold. The adults who were talking among themselves began to shift back and forth to stay warm. I was looking at my mittens and wondering how I could generate more heat for my hands because the mittens were no longer working. Then, I heard someone gasp and a little scream. I turned and looked up and caught a glimpse of the light as it moved quickly to the top of the mountain and disappeared over it. There was a moment of silence and then everyone started talking at once.
“Ok, everyone, calm down,” Bruno said walking through the crowd. “I am sure there is a good explanation for what this was. We will make inquiries. I promise you that.”
“It is like nothing I have ever seen,” said Tullie.
“Me neither” said Olga who lived between Bruno and Tullie. “I have never ever seen anything like that in my life. I think we just saw a UFO!”
“Now Olga let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Bruno with a chuckle. “We don’t know what that was, but we will find out.”
Did I just see a UFO? My 14-year-old mind equated a UFO to a flying saucer from another world, but the reality was a UFO was any Unidentified Flying Object, which could be something from the government and this world. I had just read that last night in a science magazine.
Everyone was cold and with the light in the sky now gone people started to head back to their homes. My father collected us and ushered us back down the bank, across the playground and back on to the street. It was time to go home. As we walked back home, I kept looking behind me, hoping to see the light in the sky again, but I never saw it again that night nor any other night after.
For the next two weeks, I looked up into that night sky every night hoping to get one more glimpse of that light in the sky only to be disappointed again and again. As weeks became months, I stopped looking in the sky and started to forget what that light actually looked like. Other things became more important and soon spring was upon us. The townspeople stopped talking about it, and it faded from all our collective memories. After a year, I forgot about that night all together. That is until one Christmas when I was once again reminded about the light in the sky.
I was at a Christmas party with Alice, who lived in Connecticut with her parents but visited our area often because her grandparents lived next door to mine in the tiny Vermont town my grandparents called home. Alice was my age and every Christmas she came with her parents to stay with her grandparents. We usually hung out with each other because there was no one else our age. We were at a party at her grandparent’s house when someone ask if anyone saw the light in the sky from a year ago. I perked up to see who was asking the question. It was Mike, Alice’s uncle.
“Mike,” I said confidentially. “I saw the light in the sky that night.”
“Yea, how long was it in the sky,” he asked.
“Well, when I got there someone said it had been in the sky for about 3 hours.”
“How long total? He asked.
“Probably, about 4 hours or so.”
“Four hours,” said Mike. “You sure?”
“I am. My family was there too. You can ask them.”
“Did you see it disappear?”
“Sure did! It went over the mountain.”
“Well, I saw it too and it’s been a year, and I still can’t get that light out of my mind. It is driving me crazy. What do think it was? Was it a UFO? Was it something to do with that plant down near you guys?
“I have no idea. I kind of forgot about to be honest until tonight,” I said as I looked over at Alice who just shrugged her shoulders, knowing nothing about the light in the sky. It was funny to me that Mike saw that light and still could not get it out of his mind, and me, well, I had completely forgotten about the light in the sky and that night. I was surprised that it had slipped my mind. I tried to remember what it looked like, but even that memory was faded.
Alice asked me about it later. I told her about that night and how the whole town came out to see this strange light that hung in the sky over our town. I told her about Butch, my father and Bruno. I told her about the cold and snow crunching under my boots, but the light, I couldn’t really tell her what it looked like. I told all that I could remember, which was not much. Mike, on the other hand, remembered everything about the light like it was last night. He saw it from Towson, just across the river. His memory was different. It was not as bright to him and much smaller. It was white and a perfect circle, and as much as he tried, he could not forget it. I, on the other hand, had forgotten all about it. I had to go ask my father about it. My father did remember it. He related the evening to Alice, told her who was there and what the light looked like. As he spoke, my memory of the light started to return to me.
Later in the evening as the people began to go home, it was time for me to say goodbye to Alice. I knew she was going back to her home in Connecticut tomorrow. We said our goodbyes. She gave me a hug and left with her parents. Alice and I were very much alike. We enjoyed each other’s company when we could, but then when it was time to go back to our own lives, hers in Connecticut and mine here, we had no issues doing that.
I never saw another light in the sky again and as far as I know, no one in our town did either. We never found out what the light was, and you know what, that was fine with me. It was a UFO, by all accounts. Was it from this world or another? I do not know, and I probably never will, but I am comfortable with that. As the years went by, I thought less and less about the light in the sky, and more and more about other things like baseball, college and life, but every once in a while, something would trigger that memory and I would, once again, pull it back out of the recesses of my mind and think about it.
I could still recall the tense mood of the people there that night. I could remember the whispers and the cold, and then I would wonder, again, what that light in the sky was, but I am not Mike, who still talks about it to this day. I resigned myself to the very real fact that I will never know, and I decided that I am fine with that. It bothered me for the first few weeks after seeing it, but every week that went by something else filled its void. As I grew older, I realized that life is about mysteries, and becoming comfortable with them. You can’t possibly know everything and that is fine with me. Everyone has mysteries; if you don’t, you need to get out more.
We have now come full circle to the point where the theory is to be normalized. As Horkheimer and others developed this theory, the initial intentions, I believe, were rooted in standardizing it in ways that positioned it to become “normalized” in culture. To do this positivism and interaction with it had to be addressed; it was, for all intents and purposes, foundational to almost everything … science, philosophy and even worldview. Horkheimer, in his essay, intentionally presented Critical Theory as if it had positivist intentions; he wrote, “In so far as this traditional conception of theory shows a tendency, it is towards a purely mathematical system of symbols. As elements of the theory, as components of the propositions and conclusions, there are ever fewer names of experimental objects and ever more numerous mathematical symbols.” While it appeared in this statement that Horkheimer embraced positivism, we learn later in his essay that he did not embrace positivism as it was, but as it needed to be for Critical Theory to assume its dominant position in culture. He saw the positivism that he encountered in much the same light as capitalism, as that which was “dominated by industrial production techniques,” or by the bourgeois, and as that which needed change.
To combat the positivist dominance he encountered, Horkheimer, as I highlighted in an earlier post, destabilized traditional theory, which was foundational to positivism, allowing Critical Theory the needed space to surpass positivism. To do this, he believed that Critical Theory must be capable of doing two things: it must push traditional theory to view culture within a historical context, which I discussed at length earlier on why this was important, and its critique must incorporate all the social sciences. Horkheimer explained that a theory can only be considered “a true critical theory if it is explanatory, practical and normative,” but to do this required the presence of all social sciences in its foundation and its practice. His theory must explain social issues through practical means in responses that stay inside the parameters of the field addressed, much like traditional theory, but it also must speak to and address all of culture to change it. This was “critical” theory and Horkheimer and others created it to be much different than traditional theory.
By offering a “critical” theory rooted in all social sciences that addressed a field while speaking to and addressing all of culture, Horkheimer presented a better and more improved theoretical option, but for whom? His “critical” theory was constructed to present Marxism as the norm and position it to assume the dominant positions of culture. Through his “critical” theory, he deconstructed “traditional” theory and its production for one reason; his perception was that traditional theory failed to address power and the status quo through the social sciences. Horkheimer presented Critical Theory as a theory that not only addressed power and the status quo but would use the former to deconstruct and the latter to fundamentally change the foundation of traditional theory, creating the means for Critical Theory to engage and transform culture.
Traditional theory has long been confined to the field it served, and it worked best inside the parameters of that specific field because its goals were confirming true propositions within specific fields. Critical Theory, while technically not part of science, was built to interact aggressively with all fields, including science, for greater purposes. Its interests extended beyond specific fields and into culture itself, positioning itself as dominant over all fields for the purpose of changing culture and the norms of it. Critical Theory was to interact with all of culture through power structures where it assumed the dominant position. Its goals were not confined to one experiment or one field; instead, they were much larger and more broad, purposeful and directed at cultural transformation.
Traditional theory had always focused on coherency and on the distinction between theory and praxis within intimate settings. It followed the Cogito in its view of knowledge, embracing the idea that knowledge was grounded in self-evident propositions, which Horkheimer used to introduce the idea of individual genius into the concept of traditional theory. Traditional theory typically explained facts through the application of universal truths or laws by subsumption that either confirmed or denied the truth proposition proposed. Horkheimer, as I discussed, posited that the “universal” part of the theoretical equation was rooted in the individual and not in the process, which rooted traditional theory in time and space, leaving it exposed. To confirm truth, traditional theory willingly partnered with positivism, rooting itself in an objective process, which had historically been considered the better option of confirming scientific investigative truth. Traditional theory would defend a scientific truth through empirical confirmation which embraced the idea of an objective world where knowledge was confirmed through empirical means, thought to be a mirror of reality. This view was not only rejected by Critical Theory but overrun and changed by it.
Horkheimer and, for the most part, all the Frankfurt School, rejected the notion of the objectivity of knowledge due to its historical and social foundation, which, ironically, came courtesy of Horkheimer’s hand and was used later to normalize Critical Theory. Horkheimer wrote, “The facts which our senses present to us are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ.” In other words, Horkheimer, with this statement, was confirming that it was the individual genius of the observer that made traditional theory work, which positioned it in time and space, allowing it to be overrun by the “better” and more dominant Critical Theory. Traditional theory, with its roots in an objective view of knowledge, was now susceptible to Critical Theory because of its objectivity, which was now grounded in the time and space of the individual and not in the dialectic process of theory. This made traditional theory historical, which exposed its past dominance, making it as vulnerable to the criticisms of Marxism as everything else. Critical Theory, for Horkheimer, was that which would solve the issue of the “partiality” of the “culturally impacted” observer and of the past dominance of the oppressors; for Horkheimer, it was Critical Theory that would free individuals from what he saw as their entanglement in a social embedded perspective of interdependent oppression.
Traditional theory, historically, had been evaluated through practical implications with no real practical consequences of significance outside its field; knowledge, as a mirror of reality, was more a “theoretically-oriented” tool than anything else, which clarified knowledge as a product and one that was objective. Critical theory was presented as “the” theory, void of any kind of bias towards knowledge that is objective; it presented itself as that which considered knowledge through functional relationships to ideologies and societal liberties. Considering this perception, knowledge becomes what Critical Theory needs it to be … societal critique, cultural action and subjective, directly impacted by the dominant and ultimately a means to transform reality. This is where we find ourselves today, living in a reality that is being transformed before our eyes. So, how do we recognize Critical Theory as we live each day?
Six Ways to Recognize Critical Theory:
Here are six ways to recognize Critical Theory in everyday life. First, Critical Theory views language as a social activity and as a vehicle of ideology so the adage, “sticks and stone may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is wrong to Critical Theorists. Words will hurt you and are considered harmful to advocates of Critical Theory therefore, they need to be attacked and treated as acts, and those inside Critical Theory will treat them accordingly. Words will be attacked and treated as criminal acts. Second, there will be no rules associated with anything rooted in Critical Theory for one purpose; it is Critical Theory that is the ultimate authority, and it makes all the rules. If norms are being assessed and critiqued through Critical Theory, almost anything goes. Stealing, vandalism, rioting, and fighting are all justified if they are manifestations of the oppressed who are “rightfully” pushing back against their oppressors. Who are the oppressed? Well, they are anyone who has not been in a position of power in the past regardless of their personal efforts. Third, those critiquing and assessing generally have authority even if they have no experience in the area that they are critiquing and assessing. Their authority comes from believing and rooting themselves in Critical Theory, which is ultimately “the” authority over all fields and all theories. For example, a political philosopher critiquing a medical procedure with no formal medical training will have more authority than the medical professional due to the authority of Critical Theory. We can expect to see more of this if Critical Theory continues to rule.
Continuing, fourth, there will generally be hypocrisy associated with any movement made under the authority of Critical Theory. For example, those condemning wealthy company CEOs and their high salaries who produce a product and provide viable employment to many will, with the same breath, embrace professional athletes and celebrities who are, in most cases, much wealthier than company CEOs but produce no product and contribute little to society other than entertainment. This phenomenon is a fascinating study waiting for someone to take the time to address it. Fifth, any movement in Critical Theory will trump tried and true established theories and truths in science, medicine or philosophy. It will be Critical Theory that pushes the agenda and the change in the field and not expertise or experience. We see this taking place in government, law and even medicine. And, finally, Critical Theory sees everything as embedded power structures existing in a binary world of oppressed and oppressors. Everyone is either looking to oppress or being oppressed. Everyone is either bias in some way or the victim of some sort of bias directed against them. Dominant norms that are good for society will be condemned, not on their merit or quality, but because they have existed in a dominant position for too long. Overall, we must remember that Critical Theory has as its foundation Marxism, and it will always have Marxist’s tendencies which identify it. Each of the examples I have presented have one thing in common: all of them are Marxist in nature.
This is the world in which we live, and it is a Critical Theory world … for now! One thing I know, all things eventually come to an end. The Babylonians, The Roman Empire, the Greeks … all of them came to an end at some point and so too will Critical Theory. When that day comes, and the history for this movement is written what will it say?
This concludes my series on Critical Theory. I could spend the next year on this one topic, but all things must come to an end; it is time to move on to something new. Thanks for reading and remember, thinking matters!
Bridge Roe: Where Thinking Matters 