{"id":294,"date":"2021-05-13T18:47:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/?p=294"},"modified":"2021-05-13T18:56:11","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:56:11","slug":"all-men-desire-to-know-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/2021\/05\/13\/all-men-desire-to-know-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“All Men Desire to Know” (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In light of the introductory post to this series<\/a>, I will here engage with the first of the three questions I posed. Arising directly from Aristotle’s discussion of the topic that all human beings desire by nature to know, the question I posed is: What content<\/em> do all men by nature want to know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance of this question – along with the fact that I have rarely ever seen any classical educator either pose it or significantly engage with it – has been pressed home to me for some years by the weight of much less-than-stellar pedagogical experiences in real classical schools in real classrooms with real students really engaging with classical materials. Multiple complex factors converge, of course, and there is surely plenty of \u201cblame\u201d to spread around in evaluating the implications of such negative experiences, but it is not my purpose to do so here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, having acknowledged the backdrop of a great variance between the overly rosy picture one tends to get from classical education promotional materials and the actual experiences of classroom teachers, I want to approach the problem by drawing from Aristotle\u2019s dictum and asking, What content<\/em> do all men by nature want to know?<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a good classicist, knowing my rhetoric, I begin by saying that a division of the matter is critical for clarity.  In my judgment, dividing the question into parts in reverse order of the terms is the best way to proceed. Thus, to begin, what does it mean, precisely, to say that human beings “want to know”<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I’m talking Aristotle, allow me to borrow from Socrates, who presciently argued many times that a want<\/em> is based on a lack<\/em>, and that no one goes looking for what he already has<\/em>. If you want<\/em> something, it’s because you don’t have it<\/em>. If you don’t<\/em> want something, it’s because you do<\/em> have it. Simple enough, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s not let apparent simplicity divert us from examination, for already, even with so simple an observation we have stumbled upon a gold mine of principles and applications. For the Philosopher plainly says that “an indication” of the truth of his principle is “the delight we take in our senses,” most particularly sight<\/em>. For sight “brings to light many differences between things.” Sight, that is, generates knowledge of distinctiveness, and, though Aristotle does not say it in so many words, knowledge of distinctiveness can provoke desire<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, if you will, that with respect to sight, wants <\/em>can arise from recognizing something lacking in oneself that seems to be present in the object of sight.  Now consider, if you will, the radical notion (at least to our jaded era) that not all wants are created equal<\/em>. A want is not good simply because it is<\/em>, nor is a thing wanted good simply because it is wanted<\/em>, nor has good been achieved merely because<\/em> a thing wanted has been obtained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At every stage of this human wanting to know<\/em>, then, we must beware of what Eve (and Pandora) discovered to the great detriment of all. Some things appear beautiful but aren\u2019t, and immoderate or disordered wants have the power to ruin entire lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To bring this seemingly abstract discourse around to education, let’s go with Aristotle as he tells us that the major difference between animals and humans, both of whom have the sensation of sight, consists in the fact that “The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now art and reasonings<\/em> is just code for what makes the Liberal Arts even possible: the ability of the human mind<\/em> to make judgments<\/em> about the objects of sensory experience (especially sight). Unlike (mere) animals, the human animal (made in the image of God) doesn’t only perceive differences between things, but also discriminates between them, retaining and then drawing upon “connected experience” in order to advance in actual knowledge of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This discrimination and reflection upon connected experiences gives rise to the arts<\/em>, or skills<\/em>, each of which in a particular domain sees and judges and organizes and extends human understanding such that again, unlike the (mere) animals, we do not only<\/em> have our first and most rudimentary perceptions to live by. We have more: the considered reflections of active reason, plumbing the depths of cause-and-effect, searching out connections, rejecting fallacies, creating by the power art <\/em>– what Dante called “God’s grandchild,” born of human subcreative work on created Nature – real bodies of insight<\/em> into the world and human life in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(This is, by the way, why the adjective Liberal<\/em>, Free, has been historically paired with the noun Arts<\/em>: these bodies of insight into the world and human life in it are precisely the sorts of things that free<\/em> the human being from mere brutish perceptions and reactions to those perceptions. By implication, there are also Servile<\/em>, Slavish, arts that may, if not ordered to Virtue, aggrandize rather than civilize mere brutish perceptions.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristotle goes on: “But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience (which implies that Wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not.” Here we see (!) the elementary distinction between people who just experience<\/em> the world (like animals) and people who pursue arts and reasonings in order to “know the cause” of what they observe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distinction is critical for what<\/strong> it is we as classical educators should be expecting to occur in our real schools in real classrooms with real students. Of course – a thousand times of course!<\/em> – we should treat all students as equal in legal status, in human dignity, in educational opportunity. No student should be a priori<\/em> written off as undeserving of our best efforts at all times to ennoble and inspire toward a higher, non-brutish mode of living.  As the Declaration of Independence<\/em> puts it of all<\/em> human beings, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All men want to know.” Nevertheless, acknowledging the equal legal status, human dignity, and entitlement to educational opportunity of all does not in any way entail romantic idealisms about either ongoing progress or eventual outcomes. If a portrait of a classical education program looks too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true. If it’s pushing off criticisms of its current <\/em>state by appealing to an epic vision of a future <\/em>state, it’s resisting the call to lasting Wisdom and preferring changing mundanities. Sight is our primary sense, says Aristotle, the one that brings us the most delight. But that is precisely why we should not take it for granted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as we can lead a horse to water, we can make a student decline a Latin noun, parse a Greek verb, sit around a Harkness table trading “What it means to me” first impressions about Herodotus’ Histories<\/em>, answer comprehension questions on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo<\/em>, write a progymnasmata on the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, memorize the first ten lines of Fitzgerald’s translation of The Aeneid<\/em>, and expound a 20-page senior thesis on what the Biblical Worldview has to say about tattoos, and not one bit of any of it may ever constitute real knowledge<\/em>, let alone a “classical education.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All men want to know.”  But want <\/em>isn’t a neutral category, for it is already pregnant with a complex array of anthropological and epistemological and ethical habits that may be undermining all the work being done as fast as it can be done. (In this connection, wants<\/em> might be thought of as Jesus’ types of ground in the parable of the sower – a metaphor no classical educator should imagine he has ever adequately grasped and applied to its fullest.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All men want to know.” But if Aristotle is correct – and he just simply is<\/em> – that the human animal can<\/em> live like a mere animal, subsisting on “appearances and memories, and hav[ing] but little of connected experience,” it simply does<\/em> follow that not all students “want by nature to know” in precisely the same way – which means that no classical \/ Liberal Arts education worthy of the name ought ever<\/em> to portray itself as “for everyone” in precisely the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“All men want to know.”  Indeed, but there are frequently worlds of difference wrapped up in that seemingly simple word want<\/em>. As classical educators, we should be far more invested than we are (as a rule) in discerning and disciplining not only the wants<\/em> of our students, but of ourselves as well. Before we can even discuss what<\/em> we want to know – a discussion that easily draws our minds to curriculum and lesson plans and grades and classroom management skills and the like – we first need to ponder for a while the very nature of this want<\/em> that directs the phrase “want to know.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For if we do not want<\/em> the right things, we will go looking for<\/em> the wrong ones to supply the lack<\/em> implied by the want<\/em> – and to sort of fuse a bit of Socrates with a bit of Dante, on a misbegotten quest like that, we will invariably find that desire isn’t only the root of every good thing in life, but also of every evil thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the next installment, I’ll move further back in the question What contentdo all men by nature want to know?<\/em> by focusing on the phrase “by nature.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In light of the introductory post to this series, I will here engage with the first of the three questions I posed. Arising directly from Aristotle’s discussion of the topic that all human beings desire by nature to know, the question I posed is: What content do all men by nature want to know? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classical-pedagogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgenloe.com\/rescogitandae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}