Seneca on Liberal Arts Education 3

"It may be, perhaps, that they make you believe that Homer was a philosopher, although they disprove this by the very arguments through which they seek to prove it. For sometimes they make of him a Stoic, who approves nothing but virtue, avoids pleasures, and refuses to relinquish honor even at the price of immortality; sometimes they make him an Epicurean, praising the condition of a state in repose, which passes its days in feasting and song; sometimes a Peripatetic, classifying goodness in three ways; sometimes an Academic, holding that all things are uncertain.

"It is clear, however, that no one of these doctrines is to be fathered upon Homer, just because they are all there; for they are irreconcilable with one another. We may admit to these men, indeed, that Homer was a philosopher; yet surely he became a wise man before he had any knowledge of poetry. So let us learn the particular things that made Homer wise."

--Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to  Lucilius, 88 (tr Gummere)

We must be careful, I think, not to assume any sort of anti-intellectualism on Seneca's part. The problem with the the pull of scholarship is hardly studying the patterns of poetry, the nuances of history, or the many different schools of philosophy. The problem is when we treat these exercises as ends in themselves, and forget to order their study toward living well.

Homer was a master of language, a weaver of gripping narrative, and he possessed a keen insight into the full range of human thoughts, motives, and actions. To understand this is indeed a great and noble thing. But what is far greater, and without which a knowledge of Homer's poetry will be of little use to us, is how his art can help us to improve our character.

I have sometimes walked away from a book a smarter man, but I know I have used it well if in some way it has encouraged me in virtue, in choosing to dedicate myself to excellence of thought and action.

I had always been raised with a reverence for the 'Great Books', the canon of authors and texts that have defined human civilization. By my early college years, I was so inspired by this model that I would often use my spare time to build my own master list, the works of art, literature, philosophy, history, and science that could help me to become truly educated. I would one day, perhaps, finish reading all the texts on that list, and somehow the scales would be lifted from my eyes.

I did much the same thing with music during those same years. If only I made myself familiar with the great composers, artists, and works of classical, jazz, folk, and rock music, then I'd be on my way. I would often sit with friends until late in the night debating if Handel was superior to Haydn, which period of Miles Davis was the most inspiring, if the Bothy Band were actually real Irish traditional musicians, or whether Frank Zappa was a genius or a madman.

I began to see the cracks in my approach. This happened gradually, but it did happen inevitably. I was in love with all the books, with all the ideas, and with all the sweeping insights and the clever observations I could make about them, those that would have other people nodding their heads in profound agreement, or shaking their fists in anger.

None of the ideas, none of the '-isms', none of the intellectual shapes and patterns were going to be of any use to me, or to anyone else, until they changed how I lived. Was I going to become a man whose words and actions were charged with integrity, justice, and charity? If not, all the books and music were just props, and self-serving props at that.

We hadn't quite worked out the contemporary use of the term 'hipster' back when I was in college, but that is exactly what I was in danger of becoming, a person concerned first and foremost with a clever intellectual image. If only I smoked unfiltered French cigarettes (Gitanes and Gauloises were acceptable, but Celtique were best if you could find them), wore yellow laces in my Dr. Martens, and had an artificially weathered copy of a novel by Dostoevsky sitting nonchalantly on the coffee house table, then I was surely doing well.

If someone said something even remotely useful or inspiring, I would feel tempted to make even the slightest criticism, perhaps about how a word was pronounced, or perhaps about some obscure literary reference, just to seem clever. It falsely seemed that it was better to dwell on a difference of detail than to humbly embrace a unity of understanding.

I even went through a more reactionary, religious stage like this at one point, when I was sure that reading the right pious books and magazines, attending the best churches, rubbing shoulders with the most profound tweed-wearing professors, and criticizing all those heretics would make it all worthwhile.

I should not have been surprised when I still felt lost and empty, and that I was a worse person than when I started, even as such stages may be part of growth for a lover of learning.  I remember when I started working a reception desk at an inner city social services agency, and I was feeling sorry for myself. I was bemoaning the fact that I had spent years upon years dedicated to higher learning, and here I was, cleaning vomit from the front steps.

It was finally coming together by that point. Here I was, doing a small part in making people's lives better, and in only a few months I had probably been of more use than I had been during the rest of my life. I needed to care less for the appearance, and more for the content, and take all that 'book learning', as one of our clients called it, and turn it into 'life learning'.

I eventually came to a certain insight, one that should have been obvious to me from the beginning. It was all good and well to be able to list and define the virtues, in ten different ways and in five different languages, and with all the right footnotes, but none of that made any difference if I wasn't living them, and helping others to live them.

I was beginning to grasp what Marcus Aurelius had meant in Book 10 of the Meditations:

"No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be one."

Or what Thomas a Kempis had meant in Book 1, Chapter 3 of the Imitation of Christ:

"A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.

"Yet learning itself is not to be blamed, or is the simple knowledge of anything whatsoever to be despised, for true learning is good in itself and ordained by God; but a good conscience and a holy life are always to be preferred.

"But because many are more eager to acquire much learning than to live well, they often go astray, and bear little or no fruit. If only such people were as diligent in the uprooting of vices and the seeking of virtues as they are in the debating of problems, there would not be so many evils and scandals among the people, nor such weakness in communities.

"At the Day of Judgement, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, but how well we have lived.

"Tell me, where are now all those Masters and Doctors whom you knew so well in their lifetime in the full flower of their learning? Other men now sit in their seats, and they are hardly ever called to mind. In their lifetime they seemed of great account, but now no one speaks of them."

Written 1/2010