Hamza Yusuf and Eva Brann | The Value of the Liberal Arts

Salam alaikum bismillah r-rahman r-rahim was a lot I see the Muhammad wada and he was like you said them welcome everybody greetings to all of you we're very honored tonight to have dr. Eva brand with us dr. bran is I think it's quite acceptable to say a very brilliant scholar writer and has been a professor for 60 years at st. John's College teaching what's known in the West as the Canon of the the great works in in Western civilization she's taught everything from Ptolemies book on astronomy to the Platonic dialogues political philosophy Aristotle's politics and and many other things she's also written on some very interesting subjects that are not really thought about very often she's written on feelings she's written on the idea of negation the philosophical concept of negation and she has a book that we have available in the bookstore for people that are interested on the paradoxes of Education in a republic which looks at three broad paradoxes of Education in a Republican and other aspects other paradoxical aspects of Education but I think for us here at say tune in for people that are familiar with what we're doing here we have a lot of the students are here tonight and many of the faculty but we also have some guests that are warmly welcomed the the idea of teaching great works is something that would have been simply not even discussed even a hundred years ago or 200 years ago in in most places and now many of these works are seen as things that need to be set aside or that we don't need the kind of Western hegemonic discourse that has created and wreak such havoc on the world so there's actually a lot of places now that want to eliminate the cannon from education I think one of the tragedies of that is many of the people that wrote in the cannon were actually persecuted in their lifetimes so they were certainly we we we have a unfortunate saying in America that goes back to the 19th century Indian Wars the only good Indian as a dead Indian and in many ways the only good author of a great book is a dead author of a great book I think there's a lot of similarities to that so these people tend to be accepted long after they're gone Malcolm X gets a postage stamp by the government after he's vilified during his lifetime so having said that she has an incredible knowledge of the canon and able to draw from it in her writings with great ease and adroitness so we're very honored to have her at Zaytuna College we're a fledgling college that is committed to the liberal arts and and hopefully we'll get into a discussion after the lecture about what what are the liberal arts and what is a liberal education and I think her lecture is going to address that also topic so without further ado we warmly welcome our esteemed scholar and sister dr. Eva brand so I'd like a hearty welcome [Applause] thank you Jeff Harmon sir can you hear me okay the title of this lectures liberal education number one a prelude for the undergraduates of the tuna college when she Hamza did me the honor of inviting me to speak to you he said that he wanted me to discourse plainly and definitively on liberal education I was good and ready since it's been a decade since I've tried my hand at doing that what you're about to hear consists of a blunt list of general characteristics of liberal education as I think of it a second part goes into detail of a particular version I mean what we do in our program at st. John's College we have been a tutor for sixty years to us the fact that we avoid avoid calling ourselves professor is significant we don't claim to be professing authoritative Lee anything but only to protect tutor is the Latin word for Guardian so only to protect our students learning I'm hoping my talk will affect you in this way some of my general characteristics you may agree with a small great books colleges my school and yours are after all twins though by no means identical twins for we differ in a huge element despite the name of st. John's College we are a secular institution while you in every classroom supplicate Allah to further your studies as for the particular version of liberal education that my school actualizes you who are experts in a different way may strongly agree to strongly disagree with for example to prepare for my visit I read some of the writings about Zaytuna for instance I found very helpful an expedition of your Deen doctor Delp on the teaching of the liberal arts at your school he makes a strong case for the high value of a good lecture we on the other hand have one lecture at most a week I'm myself no believer in lecturing even as I sit here I'm doing it and yet I have the slightly slightly bad conscience my suspicion is that these different opinions of the lecture as a teaching tool have deep roots in our different frameworks use one of faith hours of non commitment I'm hoping you will tell me in our question period what you think about this by no means trifling issue my suspicion is but I could be wrong that our respective student types I mean a student's not as human beings turn out to be somewhat different in this respect you might be more respectful toward your books and your teachers and ours might be somewhat freer my experience in the years when I was Dean would point that way my door was always open and quite often students watch more would march in full of complaint against their tutor it was bran he dominates they'd say he does all the talking etc etc well I'd say invite him to lunch in the dining hall and talk to him they'd be back he hasn't changed then this was my least favorite activity I'd called him in but they don't know what they're talking about and often they're not even prepared he'd say and I'd say better they should flounder on their own then repeat the truth after you you may strongly disagree with this pedagogics sentiment and I'll be interested to hear your side ephra pitifully Liz little in the Islamic tradition of great books but I have read al-ghazali's past two Sufism he is it seems your guardian Saint to use a somewhat inappropriate figure of speech so I know that it is part of your studies here to recognize as he does explicitly the problem in the very claim I made to the talkative tutor how do we come to choose our authority I'll tell you how I came to know of our Ghazali Zaytuna and st. John's have two students and common John repellers graduated from st. John's went to say tuna for second degree and became a Muslim Asia Dirac graduated from Zaytuna married John and came to st. John's where she's just received her master's degree I was her advisor on her thesis a fine piece of philosophical inquiry just last month she had her public examination in which she did heroically after this oral I took them out for a celebratory lunch being married they melded a library consisting largely of Islamic classics at this lunch they surprised me with a gift a large book bag full of your texts the ones they had to offer so I'm the proud owner of a shelf of great books from our sister tree books I expect to read my way into heavy on al-ghazali so now down to business and number two here is a preliminary description of liberal education and power points first point liberal education is not a professional performance of authorities highly trained and graduate or professional schooled but slight and but slightly engaged and slightly engaged in spectatorship it is rather a participatory activity in which learner's on various levels made effectively equal under the aspect of the magnitude of the task together achieve a sort of intimate distance with each other intimate in the closeness of the cooperation distant by the exclusion of improper invasions of privacy teaching affects the intellect it does not finger the soul on the day of graduation the student tutor connection becomes a lifelong friendship in this relation of student to student student to teacher teacher to teacher the permissible competition is only self competition it follows that schools should be small bigness draws down quantification and this measuring disfigures the soul to the characteristic frame of mine befitting liberal education is what I call reverent radicality deep respect and penetrating questions in a serious mistake to present liberal education is preoccupied with questioning a surreptitiously skewering skewering aggression on the very way things are Christian's may indeed sometimes dissipate prejudices but they are as likely to clarify and so to confirm a heritage a real radical is one who goes to the roots digs them up often more for secure reburial and having examined them in the light of reason rather than the murk of rationalization parents who find the children's little interlude who fun parents who fund they lift the children's liberal interlude may indeed get them back alienated but if it was a genuine education they will find the more sympathetic in the long run three liberal education is costly it requires letter here's a fact to make you smile the word that gives us school scollay and Greek signifies letter it requires tutors the guardians of this learning to whom their vocation is not only their life but also a living consequently the night of a child's conception should be followed that morning with a small investment in this guarded leisure activity for the prime object its be-all and end-all is happiness all else is unintended the hope for consequence the less intended the more likely to eventuate it is emphatically neither to teach students to think a patent and possibility no to make them productive citizens a Denver's wish until you know what they'll produce much righteous defense of non vocational education is if you'll forgive me drivel and people who have its future at heart should come clean so once more the four years conventionally assigned to such education should themselves be gloriously happy always remembering that true happiness requires the heightening delimitation of occasional agony confusion and even despair in fact happiness as a pursuit specifically American and unalienable right meaning not an anxious chase but a steadily pursued activity so says our declaration which is public law number one other ways to put this view of the aim of liberal education is that it is not a utility a means but has lived for its own sake so liberal schooling must be a present experience of fulfillment and the acquisition of the unwearying habit of thoughtful happiness five this mode of life needs concreteness it is inherently non virtual virtual you may know means in actual that's the meaning of the word virtual it requires a fixed place the location call it the crystal bubble in which its participants readily meet face to face in fact the decoding of human expression the reading of faces and bodily gestures is part of a liberal education hence distance learning is not compatible with a close up experiential setting of a liberal education the mode of togetherness fitting this education is conversation not argument debate or discussion but talking together taking terms which is what conversation literally means speaking and then listening domination winning does not fit but there is room for self respect and pride as such as comes from the mutual and attention and admiration that we give each other excellence can mean being good or standing out the way the liberal education the way of liberal education is to emphasize inherent worth of a comparative valuation sum number six some human works a best learn by doing improving worldly conditions is not among these a time of receptive learning should precede active intervention first shape yourself then shape society in particular form views about what makes for human contentment then interfere judiciously the necessary acquisition of technical know-how should follow the stocking of the human souls Treasury with desirable goods soul as you may know is largely a prescribed term currently but you can say subjectivity consciousness etc whatever suits you and let those who don't want to soul do without it in brief the learning matter of liberal education should be the lovable per se seven it is an immediate consequence that education should not be preoccupied with current evils and every and their eradication the project requires political and changement and usually involves ideology ideology prepackaged thinking does not belong in a community of learning political philosophy yes politics know the shortest is this if people get hot under the color it's politics if they become deeply interested its philosophy the program of a liberal education should concentrate on works of great quality rather than of so-called relevance we with it's thoroughly complicit instrument namely information information is purely his pure relativity it gains its standing as knowledge relative to a prejudgment of purpose and a preempts meditation dislodging reflection the works of highest worth used to be called classics after Roman ranking of social classes the highest of which was classic simply I prefer the adjective great used with articulable special fills for specificity as I will explain in a moment the chief reason to her it had that herring to attain to a temporal greatness of quality over relevance to current condition is that liberal at learning should raise us out of ourselves the Greek word for that condition is extra cess such learning should be on occasion a soberly ecstatic experience third part there are respectable alternatives to liberal education which help to delineate its proper conception it cannot be a grab bag of choosable commodities consumer oriented knowledge produce like a supermarket many of whose advertised items are however usually out of stock it is rather a coherent plan designed and maintained by a collegial faculty in devoted service not to its own several careers but to the program survival new members signed voluntarily onto a plan they have not themselves originated but in which they have some faith the Faculty's attempt of devotion its ever critical faith is the essential human ground of such a program's maintenance that and the backing of the administration the agency that ministers to the plan beyond them stands the government and supporting agency its board the broader requirement is the plan for being should neither be too confining Lee ideal for actual implementation nor to permissively chaotic for holding its shape in other words what's wanted a sensible practicality in the service of high reaching people have to combine high purpose with common sense as my professor at Yale taught me these were his terms pure principles and corrupt administration there are I think quite a few possible patterns for programs of liberal education but once adopted the roiling destruction of curricula revision driven largely by faculty members tired of actual learning and real teaching is destructive let a plan once instituted in some venerability and gather the gravity of accumulated experience some of these alternative plans are educational but really a liberal that is they intentionally doctrinaire some are liberal but not very educational that is they excessively permissive but so as not to be fertile my account with refined combinations let me offer for common variants which clarify the conception of true liberal education when distinguished from it these four are training which is coaching for competent know-how indoctrination which is inculcation of an ideology formation morning of the soul to a faith cultivation which is acquisition of the liberal arts this is the moment not to define my terms the finding your terms is a vocabulary exercise with little and intellectual resonance but to sketch out the meaning of the phrase liberal education education it is a common place to point out is derived from the Latin duration indicating verb at Dakara to keep on leading out presumably from the dark cave of ignorance it is indeed an extended activity for years in this country devoted to learning by means of texts traditions and conceptions years of absorbing systematically the treasures and the tragedies of one's civilization liberal qualifies this are you asleep exhilarating effort as being free-spirited it is actually Aristotle's term he writes in the politics the word not for free which is allow Suren liebherr in Latin meaning education for the sons of nun slaves but he writes in a free mode liber Alice the difference is but an eye and iota adopt but is full of meaning this education the education not its beneficiary is objectively free it is carried on in a free spirit neither constrained by utility nor by ideology so liberal education is inherently not a kind of training for practical use which results in competent NoHo and is best done by apprenticeship and practical applications indeed competence qualified capability is not a remarkably frequent result of being liberally educated a friend of my college whose admiration for our ways was not wholehearted used to say that johnny's our students come knowing nothing and leave knowing knowing that they know nothing it was a huge compliment they're not so intended a clear applicant apprehension of our limits is a very accurate sort of knowledge self-knowledge is surely one aim of liberal education nor is liberal education indoctrination with set of opinions because that is the very opposite of free spiritedness a flexibility with respect to our own opinions free spirit li spiritedly educated people do not have a mindset but mind mobility reexamination is ever possible however as I said before this freedom of mental motion does not mean that nothing is ever to be unreservedly approved what Auden of the port Auden demands of a port you may expect from good schooling he says in the present of his days teach the free man how to praise that's from the poem in memory of WB Yeats the notion that liberal education is necessarily subversive is not only false but somewhat dangerous because it divorces what should be acknowledged as everybody's good from popular feeling moreover it is best I think to be boldly honest about our ignorance concerning the true cause of out of outcomes was it the four years of schooling that this school gave you or was it mere life gone by that made one student this and another that on graduation day our students there gratefully claimed that we did it I can but wish then finally this faith based education and it can be liberal colleges that are both formative in the faith and seriously liberal in the sense of free inquiry a rare I know of some Christian colleges for fundamentalism of Thomas Aquinas College for Catholicism and recently your own Zaytuna College for Islam such schools pose the most intellectually engaging questions for themselves and for the sympathetic outsider what does it mean for inquiry to start from ground s relating tools of faith and to reach a ceiling on open question asking what or who bestows Authority and doctrine and how does a layperson discern what does it mean to believe in the divinity through a human intermediary be it scripture or human profit not to be seized by these issues betokens a lack of seriousness about the question asking that is the beating heart of liberal education that's the existence of faith-based schools protected in America's Constitution should be regarded as a blessing to the secular schools that deal with these particular problems of interpretation but only do so occasionally when the reading assigned is the sacred book of any faith so now finally to distinction between liberal education and the liberal arts whereas liberal education is a mode of learning the liberal arts are the skills of learning their enumeration comes to us from Roman and medieval writers this arts were regarded as the preparation for the study of philosophy and theology the distinction between these finalities diminishes when we consider that the grand philosophical systems Plato's Aristotle's Kant's Hegel's all culminate in some form of divinity while the great theologies such as Augustine's and Thomas's affirm that faith seeks understanding in contemporary liberal arts colleges the term is used loosely it means mostly scholarship in the humanities human studies are of course what the liberal arts were precisely not being in the surface service of divinity more ever the humanities nowadays exclude mathematics and science while these form the major part of the medieval arts so term liberal arts is now untethered from its more cosmic origins for the account of the liberal arts as a major part of liberal learning I shall draw as I said on my own threescore years as a tutor at st. John's College which has revived and adapted this learning matter as you have so number for liberal arts are the proper preparation for the liberal way of learning the traditional counts seven liberal arts arts because their skills not to be entirely captured in formalisms methods and rules for the direction of the mind but they require spontaneity and ingenuity the first set of three the so called Trivium consists of grammar rhetoric and logic these arts are less concerned with the skills of mminton and of its language their unfortunate decline is captured in the current meaning of trivial that is insignificant grammar includes everything from syntax which is the correct connection of words into sentences that propose a thought to the composition of sentences into paragraphs that connects thoughts and these into whole works that are spawned at large down to punctuation which might be called the gestures of writing plus etymology which uncovers what word meant before you rubbed out its origin rhetoric is the art of using language seductively so as to persuade a listener that's something perhaps even something true is being said be it by means of an aggressively appealing style or of artful lying logic finally is the art of apprehending and applying the rules by which we compel thinking in two definite courses or perhaps by which sink thinking kill compels us to proceed in these courses it is also the skill of dealing with symbols and assigned stripped of natural verbal connotations having bare strictly assigned meanings the Trivium has its own pedagogy more conventional and the ways of teaching that the fit liberal liberal education it is pursued with us in something we call the language tutorial in the language tutorial a certain loneliness on the part of the faculty comes into play for we want to avoid reducing these arts to abstract techniques and methods that means that we must be rich in illustrative materials in models paradigms exemplars our own or those given us by colleagues here's some examples of such concreteness in rhetoric for instance what would it do to America's greatest speech the Gettysburg Address if we substituted eighty eighty seven for four score and seven years ago or what would it do in logic if the fundamental law of asset or speech that the same Property cannot be asserted and I denied of the same thing at the same time with valid when any child is both were said to be valid when any child is both fully human and not yet quite so at any moment or sex theory how does a non dimensional thought morph into two-dimensional space that is how does the abstract sort of class inclusion become visible in a spatial figure like a Venn diagram in the language too in trivial circumstances a tutor will intervene more direct and correct more demand some rote learning and even give quizzes the chief exercise of this class Oh thinking the chief exercise of this class is translation best done from a dead language because of this fixity be therefore at st. John's College learn Greek which also supports our freshmen texts as you learned qur'anic that is classical Arabic but later on we learn French in part because it is start to refine Sensibility Plato Socrates who first enumerated the quadrivium in the book called the Republic refers earlier and briefly to the training of children's sensibility by poetry which is to be well censored so as to suppress indecency and a reference it is the Trivium for kindergarten but for our freshmen learning Greek allows us to reach to read such questions as this one the Greeks have a word our tea which can be translated as goodness or as excellence His goodness which seems to include reticent modesty compatible with excellence which be tokens ambitious standing out we read uncensored a lot of poetry ancient and modern and that's are able to ask it's the poetry say of homer the poetry that comes from Olympus different in kind from the modern poetry of which the American poet well a Stevens's in contrast and Academy the poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice it has not always had to find the scene was set it repeated what was in the script he's referring to ancient myths what we are able to inquire what we what we are able to inquire is the difference between the poetry of antiquity whose script was an inherited myth and whose triggers were brought down by the muses in the form of modern times found invented in the posts own mind with no tradition waiting and no divinities descending the signal set of forts is the code review and it consists of arithmetic plain geometry solid geometry and music arithmetic introduces number and calculation plane geometry mirrors flat surfaces such as Earth presents locally and solid geometry constructs matalas bodies particularly the five famous five regular solids that's a mathematical counter world as generated with which we give a rational account of the cosmos of well ordered nature the culminating fourth fourth art adds motion it is called music and antiquity because the most spectacular such motions those seen in the heavens were thought to move in systems the Greek of religious harmonies and to generate heavenly consonances we call such systems of solids in motion and their powers physics nowadays for music in the moral sense we do have its own tutorial where from physical production of the diachronic scale and it's consonance onto the elements of composition students learn to listen knowledgeably and to analyze scores and even to compose their own for the modern study of physics we have added an eighth skill that of replicating experiments in which nature's forced as consoles to answer our questions as a prisoner before an interrogating judge it becomes one of our major questions whether the answers forward from the answers forced from nature in the laboratory although they render her rational and operable presenter truly and wholly the progressive skills of the quadrivium represented our core curriculum by the mathematical sciences kinematics through classical dynamics relative athief relativity theory and quantum mechanics we complement these sciences of Mia bodies with the sciences of living bodies and anatomy genetics and evolution the first of the quadrants namely arithmetic has a special standing since it raises fundamental questions a book about counting and account giving Sakura's thinks of it as the engine which first levers us into reflection what he asks is a number say two such that although it is made up of once it has no trace of oneness in it while say a pair of cherries taken together is as cherish and a streusel ii read as watched was each single cherry to be perplexed by the phrase each one together two is he says the mark of a willingness to wonder that is to think on the brink of philosophic reflection and we would like our students to have this experience again the Patrick pedagogy of the quadrivium is fitted to the matter there is the hands-on laboratory and it's novel mathematics of motion developed after the after the cadaverine wasn't discovered namely the calculus there are proofs to be put on the board with help from the class we wanted it together why the proof of a theorem does not allow us as much discretion as a translation of a sentence our characteristic teaching mode for the quadrivium for mathematics and science assumes that it is natural for human beings to understand them that is the very meaning of mathematics from Greek mathematics and Greek means what is learn about so we go here especially slow and deep slow enough to carry along everyone some of the way deep enough to elicit the naive and fundamental questions often most present to beginners that's the quadrivium leaves its mark even on those students who don't take in much detail perhaps the most basic perplexity associated with mattock math mathematical science is however how our world murky variable and a parent comes to be intelligible through the most crystalline lucid and definitive of mental activities which is what mathematics is how does the messy world come to be rediscovered as a cosmos a thing of order beauty and by its very regularity amenable to practical exportation those are questions we ask in the laboratory 5 how a liberal education has great books as just and its essence the arts them are ancillary to liberal learning which has a matter of its own without which it would descend into that vacuous talk for which students have term borrowed from the bovine life processes this matter is the great books great is once more concretely and specifically concretely and specifically signaled for any fine term for us these works are above us we couldn't write them they are also for us their authors meant us to read them more ever moreover they affect us they take us out of ourselves and return us to ourselves the better for it that's their effect on us here's the nature and in a in themselves they're inexhaustible every reading after an often semi stunned first time reveals subtleties unnoticed before they're beautiful it might be a crotchety a canonical a stylish or crooked a perfect or blemish beauty or that's also a possibility the ugly beauty of mere sharp intelligence great books are original they go to the beginning of things great fictions give the lie to reality they imagine worlds and figures with more actuality than me effects possess well would be hard hyperbole to claim that they moved the soul more boisterous and do real existences is fair to say that they move it more resonantly I won't go on though I could books with such and more features the fitting study matter of liberal education they are as I said before better than subjects because they are not yet jigged into preordained categories they are more initial and so more rich in questions once again we arranged them in chronological order because that is or can be thought of as a meaningful mechanical or a meaninglessly mechanical ordering and so devoid of prejudgment about true priorities lets students decide which is intellectually earlier Einstein Yin relativity or the Newtonian dynamics that turns out to be a local instance of the former and which is simpler the time of relativity that is nothing but what a clock tells what the classical absolute time that is an elaborate mental construe requiring a divine mind may may God sensorial and that should take place the great books curriculum too has a spread of proper pedagogy we meet around the table in a class called the seminar seminar being Latin for seedbed our seminars of 20 souls at the very most are normally led by two tutors who guard the conversation among other ways by being too and so not easily addressed directly by students who should be talking mostly to each other moreover these two colleagues offer occasional demonstrations that well read rational adults can give us really from each other my and large tutors are supposed to be very recessive in the conversation pity the oldest tutor stuffed with undelivered wisdom even judiciously allowing it occasionally to go off the trails of the rails as though or through the roof yet its main focus should be able the meaning of the book of the evening followed by and this is distinctive since it is prescribed and most University classrooms so even allowing the board question is this true for our pedagogical is not to leave students in decisively befuddled among our circa 175 texts but to enable them to form opinions they can live with seminar takes place bi-weekly in the evenings and students grow loquacious to just take turns as Nick asking an open question an art which together with its products is a part of the college's teaching tradition although this question really directs the two whole hours of the seminar it starts the conversation off for well and for ill it should of course not be the sort of teachers question that has done away with by a warrant why by one word answer say a fact this question might surreptitiously embody a Stooges theory of the work or it might fix on a detail that contains a key to the whole a great authors love to lurk and little items effective to to spend time preparing their question here's an example when Aristotle eliminates the figure of a natural slave a defective human incapable of making decisions is he rationalizing or D legitimizing actual Greek slavery which was supplied by captured soldiery and defeated populations that didn't fit this definition thuja seminar anxiety derives from this situation they feel and indeed are responsible for the students experience without having the power really to direct it students pressure on the other hand comes from having to prepare faithfully and participate regularly they must control a tendency to supply and marginality such as deprives the class of their contribution or country impulse to answer every question first producing subsequent silence there is no seminal method our seminar is intended to do what professionals think is impossible to conduct doing a prepared scheduled of him and natural spontaneous conversation in fact there are only two rules civility to attain which we address each other as miss mister miss missus whichever students chooses I have to say that I bought that mix which is a no.11 graduation day miss Bennett for four years becomes Elizabeth to me for life and that's a great moment for both of us the other rule is be willing to explain yourself at least to explain why you can't explain and that's it or perhaps a third world listen with respect and regard no expression of the human mind especially no question no matter how naive is uninteresting if you didn't prepare come anyhow and acquire the art of winging it it's all it's always best to be there since the school is a community of learning we mean to have our stress studies and our talk and comment but don't imagine that you just can't tell when you haven't read the book a Dean long-dead used to describe the seminar experience by sweeping out a roller coaster in the air miserable loads and exhilarating highs we give up dismal currency so-called relevance for perennial Heights truths too true to be squalid and we avoid fixture subject for original originality future topics taking shape we avoid history and so as it treats what came before us bygone its history as people say meaning it's gone inactive because we think that greatness is timeless ever fresh as we disregard mere time if it stands in the way of living meaning seaweed so we don't let the mediation of mediation of scholars and the openings of intellectuals come between us and these program books therefore we discourage our students from reading introductions and background Essex essays or better from referring to them in our conversation let them read what they like what they really like it turns out is fantasy literature to relieve I imagine all the actuality we confront them with justice so to sum up the spirit of the liberality in this education we cherish directness immediate immediacy and closure with the text we are convinced that minutely careful the Boris Lee analytic control of passages alternating with the comprehensively sweeping intake of holes far from killing ticks makes them come alive to have learned to read means being able to make much of little by apprehending significance in detail but also to succeed in comprehending concisely in epitomizing large designs with Garet brevity if that seems as if learning how to read with a practical purpose of liberal education there's truth in it providing reading is taken largely enough it ought to be understood as knowing how to interpret everything from secrets of the book of nature to the expressions of the human face from subtleties of poetry's to the potencies of mathematical diagrams what is the truest profit of learning literacy it's simple it eradicate swaram and boredom is the most dangerous human condition it reads cleverly rationalized violence it follows that we wish to be serious but never dead earnest for laughter is the enabler of faithful learning as for the life rhythms of our students we hope they will alternate students studious solitude with communicative sociable mass we hope they will discover the close to the book industry that should alternate with gazing into space leisure with putting the text off and in order to look inward and reflect for study is not yet thinking and thinking which cannot be taught but can be incited it's what we would wish our students to experience am i right and imagining that it's the same at say tuna college thank you [Applause] I want to talk just start off with that last statement you made about boredom something I've been thinking about for some time David Foster Wallace has he has an essay called this is water that the freshmen have been reading and he talks about the day in and day out it was a commencement speech that he gave but he talked about the day in and day out that the students don't yet know about just the difficulty of the day in and day out of life and one of the things I think Pascal said that most of the world's problems were a result of the inability of an individual to sit with himself in his room and Van Dorn's is something in in liberal education he says there's a well-known legend about the citizen who wakes up at 40 to find himself going through a routine the meaning of which he has never known and the value of which he may now doubt his days repeat themselves and he cannot find a theme among the more or less dead sounds they make when they strike in time the reason could be that he had missed the heart of the human doctrine which deals with repetition routine and refrain life is monotonous the arts and especially the liberal arts know what to make of the fact how much to accept it and dignify it with duties how much to defy it or correct it with pleasure pretense play and speculation the heathen of 40 is only one case in point when the liberal arts fail to do their work civilization has become a disease when they are dismissed as a luxury practical affairs suffer the consequence there are the most practical possession men hat and they proceed by method not by knack education has not had at random that we have been acting as if that were the case so I I think one of the things that people seem to love excitement and a lot of I think a lot of wars actually start because people are just bored yeah it's a excitement they love or is it excitation they want to be stimulating right but it's not exciting it's simply stimulation and I think it happens less to people who are well educated because what do they have they're doing something boring some routine that they have to follow usually in fact they have a kind of job that isn't just routine but everyone's got to do routine things well what do they have they have poetry in their head just getting met a little closer okay that all came up yeah I was saying what is the advantage that someone who's undergone liberal education has over someone who hasn't people have poetry and mayhem they have images are measured either of visuals the visual art that they've looked at or of pictures that they formed while reading fictions they've they look at things and they know when they're funny I mean someone's people engaging in routines do give subject our subjects for for a comedy is Charlie Chaplin it's a good example of showing that right I think I think that well-educated people are less bored than people who have no education and as for boredom itself people need excitement and they substitute exert excitation for it and often it ends in violence I really think that boredom is about the most dangerous [Music] I wanted to ask you about well first just liberal arts and liberal education this is a contested term now I think it's not even contested anymore it's just it's meaningless it's meaningless yeah there we read a book the fact is you've read a book together called learning to flourish by de Nicola and he argues that there's five there's five different definitions of liberal liberal arts out there one of them was just the transmission of a cultural heritage to the next generation and and then he talks about the idea of self actualization and then about engaging the world or even transforming the world but one of them was that learning the arts in other words learning how to learn and and one of the things that you said in in the paradoxes of Education and Republic is that that education was essentially learning how to read yeah so tonight - yeah right well we're reading is taking in a very broad way interpreting and I was you look at someone's face you read their face you can tell whether this they're pretending to be lively but they're really feeling melancholy and sad or you just know how to look or this the book of nature so-called it's a very old term and if you learn some mathematics and you know of theories of nature which make make all the variety suddenly loosened and understandable and what is sheer miss messiness becomes intelligible so it seems to me that reading it's I think one might use it can be very broad in which case it really is what education teaches you what to do well one of the one of the things about reading what one is is it's incredibly difficult to read I mean obviously just just to learn basic reading but what I think really well you need time I mean you've been reading some of the most difficult books for 60 years so at this point you might not think reading is very difficult but I mean if you kind of think back about sixty years ago when when you began that journey I mean just let me give you just let me give me an example one of the things that that I actually saw a man recently who's written a book arguing that sentences have become much simpler which is a good thing because sentences were much more difficult to read even a hundred years ago somebody like Melville for instance and and he argued that that since the Elizabethan period sentences has have consistently gotten easier to read but that made me think about why complex compound sentences were there in the first place because I think I mean I'll give you an example in your book I had to read more than once pair at two or three times and not because the vocabulary is all fine it wasn't but there was just a lot in there and I think in some ways language was more difficult because they were demanding that you think more seriously about that what they're right we have learned an age of skim reading where people read online and read very fast and yeah well it's both the way the words are put together but it's to say that the sentences were more complex and the most sub-clauses and qualifying phrases it's also that people had larger vocabularies and I think a large vocabulary is really important because if you want to how to put it as oh see in just the world if you want to make the world your own the way we have to do it is to describe it to ourselves and if it's a complicated and interesting world you need subtle and differentiated words to do it with nuance and I have to tell you my probably my most used book at home is the project versus the sourest you know you look up a word in the index and it sends you to a paragraph of all the similar but slightly different words that are connotations of the one you're looking for then you read food and you pick the one that really means what you're meaning is supposed to be then with that you capture a piece of the world and it's yours so it seems to me a large vocabulary which one gets first from reading a lot then from looking upwards my favorite dictionary heritage diction it's a greater than the rate dictionary and then from using them unabashedly and people but read what you've written or hear what you say they may not know other word it's not necessary to know every word and understand what's being said but eventually you pick things up and you get in the habit of looking words up that you understand once you're in position of a large vocabulary not only is reading books simpler but getting hold of the world is possible and well there's there's something in in in the Arabic tradition which is called Aloha which which means the subtle distinctions of language and so I mean I'll give you an example that the Arabs like this this they would call a caste where but if it didn't have any liquid in it they called a zoo jaja so they distinguish between a vesicle for drinking that has liquid in it and one that doesn't yes or or they'd call like a table that has food on it there's a different word for that than a table that doesn't have food on it and the language is filled with these distinctions which modern Arabs don't know anymore because there's it seems that language we lose these these subtle meanings in English has this fundamental complexity that it's a double language some of its anglo-saxon right some of its Latin it and they often two words mean like three for freedom and liberty freedom and liberty on the face of it the same thing you can to think of begin to think about it you read where these words are used accurately and suddenly you know a lot more about what it means to live in a free country that they wrote a two-volume book on yes sir sir acquiring of a Karenina I'm very much when you're reading especially when you're reading fiction you don't know a word forget it just get on with it you don't want to interrupt yourself all the time but over time this takes time pick it up I have to look it up you have to look at just well it depends I spend more time in the dictionary than any other book because I'm always finding Arabic words that I don't know to which really bothers me especially if you're reading fiction you sometimes just want to get on with it and see what happens yeah well if it's great fiction that they use the there's a reason why they chose that word over other words you know missing something flow better spent a lot of time working on lemo juices but you can't it seems to me if you hold yourself to an absolute standard like that the moment will come when you don't want to do it anymore that story doesn't happen yeah I think you have to love words yeah you know I think to me there's just words are amazing I'm it's just amazing communication and speaking and and I think what's what's broken down our society has an inability right now just to talk to each other there's there's you know you said one of the the most important things is just civility yeah but that's not usually because people know different words well I the same words that means something else they the words mean different things and I think that's why the medieval distinguish is is part in our tradition and in the Islamic tradition bike in the scholastic tradition you had an obligation to know the words that you were using and your interlocutor had the right to demand a definition if you introduced a term and I and I think you know the if if people would take that more seriously just thinking about the words that they use and and being more something really good what happened everything would slow down a lot right yeah so I have to agree with that but it seems to me that if you called yourself or especially if you hold students too rigorous standard about it you might direct the whole thing so I think you're too nice to the students dr. brand yeah we expel them if they are they can't they can't wing it here we just kick them out let me ask you because something really struck me here about what you said about method if I can find it here yeah here you said that it must be observed here that that arts can yield methods when they are applied with purpose and philosophical justification to a certain realm as mathematics may be applied to nature logic to deliberation and music for example to therapy again one or the other may be generalized into a universal art as Descartes did with mathematics to found the analytic method it follows that as is often suggested to teach students methods of analysis as if they were neutral intellectual tools is insidiously to indoctrinate them and very powerfully to in any case both arts and methods are perfectly incapable of teaching students to think you know when I when I actually wrote critical theory on the Sun yeah you're because I you know I think about students that have been indoctrinated into certain ways of viewing as you know a lot of literary scholarship now is is all through the lens of critical theory so young students will go who love literature they'll love reading Jane Austen and so they they go and major in literature but then they get a professor who spends the entire time deconstructing Jane Austen's hidden assumptions about the hierarchy of of Georgian England and the intersectionality between the oppressive nature of the maids and the servants in Jane Austen's novels and English colonization so my point being that it seems to me that method now is everything in academia and I'm just wondering what no I think you're absolutely right and I I keep asking myself what the reason is well one reason I think is the really pernicious business of having to produce articles and the field the actual field which is the books themselves are pretty much exhausted after a hundred years of producing articles so you have to sort of go to another level so one reason for it is its article producing you can always find one more conception which seems novel and settled out as a method of approach that's one reason the other reason is that I think people now go into Graduate Studies for reasons which have nothing to do with the subject they want to prepare themselves for jobs but the ones who go into say English because they loved literature they soon leave they can't bear it right they don't like it was for philosophy too and so a lot of not a lot some of the people who produce these concept constructions never were interested in the subject matter to begin with and they'd live in a higher region and they breathe a pure air and it's terminally boring yeah doctor no SOTA calls most of what's practiced today in philosophy departments he calls it Mississippi that it's it's it's more like the hatred of yeah antipathy towards wisdom yeah there is the ethics of suspicion right everything is supposed to be suspect as being really a service assertion of power and people have power on their mind when very often there is nothing to do with power there's some with somebody having a thought-out opinion and voicing it so there are all kinds of reasons none of them very good for it happening you mentioned earlier and I'd like you to revisit if you don't mind about karma days and about what what that dialogue about the idea of a knowledge sonic dialogue called the Karma Dee's it's a long and interesting dialogue whose main effort is to show and that what the people in the dialogue particularly karma Dee's a young very beautiful young man and his guardian they want to show that there is such a thing as a knowledge of knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge means that you don't actually know any particular thing but you have a theory that covers all knowing so that you're a judge of whether knowledge is profitable unprofitable without really knowing and and the dialogue makes the argument very well but what's interesting to me is that both these people but especially Carly's became really bad actress let's just say cruel murdering tyrants in Athens members of the so-called 30 which were a group of only comfortable to Nazis and I think that when Plato wrote the dialogue even though in the dialogue these people are young i think karma days maybe 1415 he was saying this way of thinking is a way of domination and of tyranny so be careful another thing that was really interesting because 0.7 i want to talk a little bit about that in in your lecture just about the idea I mean obviously since the 1960's temporal politics has become so central now to the educational experience and the idea of stepping outside of the world for a brief period of time to enable you to really think much more deeply about the world as opposed to being completely caught up in the temporality of it I mean CS Lewis talks about he talks about the snobbery of now that you know that everything is about now and losing sight of what's beyond now so I want to read a passage that you quoted from Nietzsche from the gay science in in your book he says when I think of the lust for action which continuously which continually tickles and spurs all the millions of young Europeans who cannot bear boredom and themselves then I uh pretend that there must be in them lust for suffering in some way in order to derive from that suffering a probable cause for doing for a deed need is needful hence the shouting of the politicians hence the many made-up exaggerated critical needs of all possible classes and the blind readiness to believe in them this young world demands that there should come or become visible from the outside not happiness but unhappiness and their imagination is busy even beforehand with forming it into a monster so that they can afterwards fight with a monster you know I thought just about so many young I mean I think that defines so much people wanting you know they they relish the grievances to to get out of yeah the relish of grievances is certainly a strong motive for much that cuz I'm you know this another way to put people enjoy their self-righteousness is because this the Stoics would have just seen that you have a certain set of circumstances and you can't really change them and so what you have to do then is is really think about what you can actually change and for most of them that meant working on the self as as the central project of one's life as opposed to trying to change the world and the idea that you can't really truly transform the world until you've transformed yourself one of the things about dr. King and in the letter from a Birmingham jail he talks about these that if you're going to confront the tyrant you have to go through this process and one of one of the points that he makes is you have to look into yourself and see if those qualities that you want to fight are present in your own behavior or attitudes yeah and another point he makes which is sort of lives in the same world is that if you if you want to oppose what's going on you have to pay you have to be ready to pay and you have to pay and obviously have to go to jail and to ask for amnesty before you to it as absurd yeah so he's he's dealing with a certain kind of agitation that that he didn't approve of but what is what I've never quite understood is how parents would not be happy to hear that these students are going to have four years of learning things that have no immediate application to making a living right they might end long run but no me and the object of which is simply for them to have glorious four years of inquiry into things that are interesting and into themselves that they're not willing to to hear about ought to do but they're perfectly willing to have those same kids drink well through the weekend and watch games and do all kinds of nefarious things I don't understand it's amazing the you call you called one of the things that I liked you said it was that liberal education was pre practical yeah I look to me it seems a simple hypothesis first you have to know what's good then you can change the world what's the point of you know our students they sometimes say this now I'm sure your son's I said I want to change the world right I asked for the better they hadn't considered that that's right in other words producing change or being productive and it's unfinished is an unfinished intention it's got to you've got to know what you're doing right and where do you learn what you're doing except you said there's a misconstruction of enlightened utility that has to do with the notion that education should make one above all useful to others an improver of society students themselves sometimes display a certain dubious innocence in this matter there are some who go to college to learn how to affect the lives of others how to solve the problems of society how to change the world and they state these aims with the perfect certainty that they're feasible and desirable yeah yeah I'm gonna open it up if you don't mind to some questions so people want to as well there's a microphone up front on the left okay if anyone has a question if they could please just line up to the microphone on the left this is one of our great liberal artists here at the school so we're very fortunate to have him dr. Brown thank you very much for being with us this evening it's a tremendous pleasure if I understood you correctly it is not the place of an education in the liberal arts to prepare college-age young people to be productive in society is that correct expressed it a little extremely [Music] it's not the direct it shouldn't be the direct attention it could be an ancillary outcome and yet the Jeffersonian ideal at least insofar as public education is concerned specifically at the level of grammar is not so much to prepare young people for example for a trade or even to prepare them for college but rather to prepare them for meaningful participation in a pluralistic democracy and this in my mind is associated precisely with the stratum of grammar education well could you speak for that for us please it's all it's one of the paradoxes that dr. brandt addresses in the book about this idea of a utilitarian purpose for education despite the fact that the man that was advocating it was deeply steeped in a liberal education himself and not he for instance you he wants to thwart all theology he had big theological library yeah no but so my question I guess it's not so much Jefferson himself but surely we want young Americans to be prepared for meaningful participation in a pluralistic democracy most preparation of that sort is best done in apprenticeships in professional schools in graduate school I'm seriously thinking that they ought to be four years at the moment they usually between 17 and 22 but we do not defer to that age because we've already given the vote to 18 year olds so we've got some we've got in some manner to equip 18 year olds for meaningful participation in a pluralistic democracy either that or defer the the voting age to maybe I don't know him until post graduate school I'm in favor of that myself what's really your what are you saying a college education ought to do I have the sense that the the real weight of this Jeffersonian ideal is meant to be carried in grammar school so that ideally the young person who is himself or herself engaged in the kind of liberal arts education that we've envisioned here is already capable of participating meaningfully in a pluralistic democracy so are you saying that this ideal of a liberal education that is non vocational should simply occur earlier at least at least the first stratum of the Trivium it would have been high school which where a lot of in fact really the Trivium begins in grammar school like you said the grammar you know one of the things about mathematics traditionally mathematics until the late 19th century was not taught to anybody until they reached about 12 or 13 because it was seemed too abstract and the mind wasn't ready for it and I think a lot of math anxiety comes out of introducing mathematics too early to students because like you said math has learn about I mean Socrates shows you know this the young servant boy that's able to penetrate a mystery of geometry the point that it should be done earlier I'm wondering I'm wondering if it's not possible to reconcile that the st. John's I deal with with regard to the liberal arts and the Jeffersonian ideal as well I think it's not a propagator of the liberal of liberal education he look for one thing I think of liberal education it happens to be expensive and therefore it's not as universally accessible as one would hope it would be but Jefferson is seriously a nun Democrat I mean he has this reputation of being the liberal of liberals but as he's he said in that famous rockfish gap report on education that the excuse the word the garbage of refuse has to be separated from the ones that's not the way you talk about your fellow citizens right his notion of an education is thoroughly state directed in the sense that he really wants to he he wants reading lists from which the the Federalists are removed because Jesus states writer he wants theology removed because he thinks that that is an infringement on people's free thinking have the reading list that he proposes is a thoroughly purified reading this is not my idea of a great books list as and Adams has a brilliant refutation to his desire to remove theology from he wanted it out of the colleges and Adam said it's something that won't go away and that it you know you have to leave it in right but without without defending Jefferson himself nor the whole of his pedagogical instinct surely we can agree that there is an exigency to prepare young Americans for participation they're gonna vote meaningful to participation in a pluralistic democracy and since the you know we're talking about eighteen year olds who have the right to vote already it seems to me that some portion of the liberal arts needs to be retro ejected in in the education of children so that welders at least are being formed in minimally grammar if you if you look you know an example that I use is I I inherited from my great-grandmother through my father edward baines book that used to be taught she it was a high school textbook for her on on rhetoric and on the section on on emotions he goes into great detail about the use that demagogues used with fear and and that that in a in a democratic society citizens should always be vigilant when they hear politicians trying to frighten them because they use that to take away their right I think a lot of of what you're talking about if for instance rhetoric a lot of which was taught at high school quite in 19th century everybody who went to high school would have studied logic and rhetoric but I think rhetoric deals with a lot of that is that I thought you were talking about vocational no no I think preparation talking about to be to be citizens right that's this is the great question in my mind because it seems to me to be that if you seriously involved in training citizens you're going to be inevitably ideological they either going to be liberal or conservative or somewhere in between I don't think you can preserve the liberality of liberal education if some sort of a practical intention of forming citizens not indirectly because there have been an environment where they thought about fundamental questions but because they've been urged to be active in some way I think this is invariably political so it's it's not a way to pull the politicizing education would that mean then that the the proper formation for citizens which would necessarily eschew any kind of indoctrination would need to focus on fundamental principles like grammar something less two weeks at my college the one of the representatives of the student government closets of the student committee on instruction and they've taken seriously by by the Committee on instruction that runs the program came to me to ask if I would come to a forum which is the kind of meeting that they run and talk about some currently worrisome problem as it happened I just had a conversation with a colleague who said that she was worried about the politician of the classroom which we had avoided for years and which seems to be creeping back in it comes in with calls for students to be activators of some sort that is to say to agitate in one way the other which they can do on their time off all they want and so we agreed that we would have hasn't happened yet but it will in a couple of weeks to have a meeting in which we're going to raise the question of what it means to have politics in the classroom and one way I think of it is there is political philosophy which we should do a lot of study a lot especially the American fundamental documents and then these politics and it seems to me that calls for students to engage and political act activity are always ideologically motivated it depends on back home but it's if someone wants students to go out and demonstrate incidentally in ordinary life when you demonstrate you have to demonstrate something but here's always you demonstrate right what that depends on who taught you to do it well I think this should be avoided so I'm against such action and thank you very well I'll leave that leave the microphone the next any other okay thank you good evening dr. brand oh it's really an honor to have you I'm a freshman here at the college and I had two questions you could decide to expand on either of them there one of them the first question was from my understanding you said that a liberal education wasn't best achieved through at least in the classroom through a series of questions rather through a series of questions you said rather it was a conversation like the best way to achieve a liberal education was through a conversation could you different differentiate what a series of questions would be in light of what a true conversation would be I missed something so just that you you had mentioned that the the best method went through liberal education is a series of questions yeah and then you talked about the conversation so I think is the question is the the difference between the series of questions and the actual conversation is generated by the questions and how that conversation is really what is the best mode of engagement in the classroom yeah and I distinguish conversation from discussion argument sorry and sometimes you have an argument and often you have a discussion but we like to think that we are in fact simply conversing with each other and such conversation is usually dominated by some problem or question that arises and I think the the way the question enters in the conversation that it's always behind what's driving what we're saying to each other of someone for instance someone might ask what is the role of intellectuals in American politics well we'd have a discussion about what it means to be an intellectual what the difference is between being philosophically interested and being an intellectual and that question would simply stand behind the conversation we are having and guided and the outcome is usually that we let both that participants it doesn't need to be to as many as people get together not that they come away with a solution but that they come away with a lot of clarification they know what they're talking about better than they did we do we do want our students to come to some conclusions for themselves but that's that's not immediately necessary that's in the long run and most our students don't leave being terminally befuddled it's not like that they come usually very clear notions but they can if they were good students they can tell why and that'll be the result of having conversations that were driven by by questions which were not simply problem solving questions but more deep questions I don't know if that and my second question was if you could expand a little bit about you mentioned in the sense of a liberal education that there were tutors who were guardians of knowledge or guardians of that subject and perhaps she comes I can talk about something similar in that in the Islamic tradition about tutors being the guardians of knowledge that seek people engaging in that furthermore shouldn't you tell me what well I think it's interesting the divorce of the liberal arts from religion is pretty recent you know it was certainly at the heart of the st. John's movement I think that they they were grappling with the loss of religion in the 20th century and I think a lot of what what what they were trying to do was to - in reforming education and and I think Adler in 1939 wrote an essay about the Neel ISM that permeated modern universities and and the that the students really didn't believe in anything and relativism was was so prevalent and-and-and what he I think what they were trying to do in essence was to make to take meaning in fact Dreyfuss wrote a book on all things shining recently I don't know if you saw that book but that book was about trying to find meaning in a secular age through the great books and I think what they were trying to do was to to give Western civilization because it had lost the grounding of religion for 2,000 years it was Christianity then that really was at the root of the lot of Western civilization I don't know if that's still true I mean the great research insists of all sorts of religious I know I know this is my point is that that I think what these arts were even Pythagoras who is the first to articulate the arts was coming out of very profoundly mystical religious tradition and and I know that the Jewish tradition the Muslim tradition and the Christian tradition all used the liberal arts in fact seven a lot of them believe that it comes from Proverbs that God has built his house of wisdom upon seven pillars and so I think for for the Islamic tradition that my understanding is that the arts were were a means to try to penetrate meaning itself and and to understand at a deeper level they they were used in the Muslim tradition similar to the way that Saint Augustine and on Christian doctrine is arguing for their use because I think fundamentalism and fanaticism are ultimately when religion becomes divorced from an intellectual tradition that you get you get this this this very dangerous type of character that has an absolute certainty about what they believe I can be certain about my faith but I think I should always have a fallible understanding of the faith in other words that that I can be certain about my belief in its truth but I think it's very dangerous for me to be certain about my belief in in in what that faith how it defines itself because then I want to impose it on other people and and that impulse seems to be a very dangerous human impulse may be something but the problems we face that you probably don't face here we read the sacred books of the Jewish of the Christian tradition we don't do Islamic and I read try that it's it's just more than we can do and the question is this how do we you're in in universities when they're courses on religion you have things like the Bible as literature or the Bible as history that's a travesty we want to read the Bible as a sacred book and both Bibles Jewish and Christian Bible how do we do it some of our students are in fact Christians some of them are Jews most of them are secular how do we get our students to treat sacred texts sacred tracts without believing them it's it's very difficult in fact one might argue that's impossible but we want them to read the books as a believer might read them as they read them as it ought to be read in others we want every way of going at it to be respectful and true to the intention that we can discern in the book it's a big problem and we are not unaware of it well I think I think if you have it just a type of respect for other people and and what they hold sacred that you're going to respect that you might not believe it and I think everybody I mean I personally I think everybody should be free to criticize religion you I think you need something more than respect you need or maybe not more but something and additionally you need you need imagination you have to be able to put yourself in the place of someone that who thinks that this text was not of human origin right and if you can't imagine that you're not doing it right in other words the imagination gives you a way of participating in a way that you don't yourself adopt mmm so that's we'll take one last question for the time and I'm going back to what you mentioned about indoctrination and I guess in response to father Francisco's question about how to prepare I guess students to have an open mind yet not at the same time be indoctrinated because I think at the same time like I guess in my limited experience that I've been noticing that like regardless of what kind of education you have there's going to be some sort of bias and as you mentioned like you're either gonna come out like a liberal or Republican or and I feel like it's hard for students sometimes to navigate like what kind of stuff you're supposed to take and like balancing between being being liberal I guess and being skeptical so I guess more for the student do you have any I guess advice or recommendations on how to best navigate through that would you tell me exactly what I think that you talked about indoctrination the dangerous the dangers of indoctrinating and so and and that the idea that father Francisco was bringing up just about preparing somebody to be civilly responsible but at the same time not indoctrinating them and so I think she was looking at how to navigate between having an open mind and being liberal and at the same time it's a very good question yeah yeah look they here's one way to deal with it it's got to be dealt with what do we mean by an open mind do we mean by an open mind and indeterminate mind that is to say when someone has an open mind does that mean that she has no particular beliefs or faith that can't be what it means right so it must be possible to have an open mind together with a settled faith let that be the hypothesis that seemed affair like a fair hypothesis then the question is how is that possible because by a settled faith one believes that there's a certain closure and by an open mind one believes that there's a certain readiness to change I don't know the answer to that question but it seems to me that that's the right question to think about to keep in mind and it isn't necessary to begin by saying it's impossible it's necessary to begin by saying it's in fact necessary that it should be possible to be both open-minded and a believer I think so it's not a satisfying answer in the sense that it kind of runs away from the question and says we simply have to assume that it's possible but I think it's the right assumption to make and then the question arises what is the human mind such that it is on the one hand open to questions and on the other hand settled in its views so let that be the question based on the hypothesis that it is in fact a possibility hmm I think I was more talking I guess about a classroom setting in particular so it's not like I guess here it's not necessarily about holding on to your own beliefs because like we share the same religion but I feel like even within the religion their nuances whether they're like religious nuances or just I mean every teacher has their difference of opinion exactly every teacher has their own style so whether it's like exactly related to your set of beliefs or if it's just like because like even within a school that's like as small and I guess as small as this there's a lot of diversity even within the teachers so I guess I guess it does come back to knowing your beliefs could you she was just talking about the differences just even amongst the faculty and the students there's a lot of diversity and even though there might be a shared religion but even within the context there's still the diversity and yeah which it seems to me that that diversity is an incitement to thinking about why you're attached to one particular way or why your teachers differ among themselves and I was these diversities are not - I think they shouldn't be taken as a as a way to unsettle oneself but rather as a way to enquire why is this my faith it might be that on the way of that inquiry you discovered that you have to make changes but it could also mean that you simply end up knowing more about what it is you really think and then you're still faced with a question why do reasonable and respectable people whom you have some faith in think differently well that makes that necessary for them to explain themselves hmm that's where the open-mindedness comes in you have to listen and try to understand but it seems to me that the notion that if you open minded it means you have to be deeply unsettled that's just pernicious it's not the way we are and though I can't explain why it's possible I'm coming back to what I said before it seems to me effect and it should be accepted that way so in the beginning of your lecture you mentioned that there are different perspectives held on how a liberal education should be conducted in the classroom and I'm from what I understand one of the things you mentioned is that the lecture format in your perspective may not be the best way to cultivate a liberal education in a student and so what I'm wondering is how or what advices do you have for students particularly in their first year and their second year on how to benefit and cultivate a liberal education yet at the same time being so new to this process like what do they have to contribute to a discussion if in this first year and second year primarily they're building that foundation in and of itself could you get she's asking just about the lecture that the idea that lectures are not the best way - yeah - look - it seems to me that it could be regarded as a trivial matter lectures or some other way what certificate it seems to me it's not a trivial matter and my guess is that dr. dope from whom I got the understanding of the importance of the lecture right would think where is he dr. doe anyhow it's it's he doesn't think it's trivial and the reason it seems to me to be a fundamental importance because when you hear a lecture you're being given something when you have a disk on verse a ssin or even the discussion but better just conversation you're not being given something something's being elicited from you right you have to respond it's and that in turn comes to something very deep namely is authority that is the authority of the interpreter of the Prophet or of the Prophet himself or in Christianity of of the Christ or of the prophets in the Jewish Bible is Authority a necessary part of religious truth or is it unnecessary because you yourself are the best judge i've been telling sheikh hamza that i was reading what i have the notion is the guardian writer of the saint of of your program namely our Ghazali who is it seems to me absolutely deeply involved in this question doesn't really know the answer to it so i don't know the answer it seems to me absolutely the right yeah it's a great question and i can I add something to to that statement I think we would differentiate between certain didactic subjects for instance in in grammar there's eight or nine parts of speech depending on who you ask whether articles and adjectives how you categorize articles are the adjectives are they a separate part of speech but that's something that you learn it's a didactic truth or the fact that the triangles triangles all add up to 180 degrees well it's conditionally true okay it's conditionally true your that's your subject not mine but the point being is that there are there are certain things that like when we teach logic here and dr. del T teaches logic it's not really a good thing to discuss for instance you can discuss the three laws of thought but you can't debate about what they are there there's there's there's a certain if you're teaching that subject in Aristotelian iteration of it yeah if the it seems to me that if the object is with the questioner if the object is to say clearly what Aristotle thinks that I guess not that they isn't plenty debate about it but it has some of the characteristics of what you call didactic knowledge because he himself speaks detective knowledge but if the question is and so let's certainly always seems to me should always be something that happens in class you've tried to figure out what the text actually says and how it's meant but then comes the really important question which is is what asset here unconditionally true conditionally true or plain false and certainly the law of contradiction is only conditionally true because when it comes to certain Western philosophers they might be Islamic thinkers it's not the case that you can't say opposites of the same thing about the same thing at one at the same time I give an example in the electorate it's true of a child that it is a human being and it's equally true of a child that it's not quite a human being at least that's what our several things right so Aristotle know perfectly well you can say the same thing right and there's potentiality and actuality its potentiality and then there is dialectic Hegelian dialectic for instance in which it becomes essential to be able to think opposites at the same time that is to hold them together and to synthesize them so again it gets back to there are certain things for instance in grant in Arabic grammar there are different schools like we have the two dominant schools are the kufan from Kufa in Iraq and the bus or in school and they differ they used to throw shoes at each other in the mosque debating about whether the verb was the source of all language or was it the substantive that was a big debate in early as long and and they got very heated it wasn't like a civil debate all the time but the point is is that there's two positions and and on on that which one is true well the dominant school says it's the substantive the lesser school they lost the debate they said it was okay and the point is you can debate that and discuss that in a classroom but to teach grammar as a didactic subject so that they have the tools to understand and to be able to actually discuss I mean one of the problems and I think this this is a real problem in our universities is that most students don't know grammar anymore the fact that you can get a Bachelor of Arts without knowing grammar is amazing and grammar and our culture has been reduced to punctuation but grammar is least of all you yourself gave the example and what's that big book we were talking about that we both didn't get into no Infinite Jest yeah yeah he was a great grammaire no he had good punctuation yeah David Foster Wallace but sometimes not very gnarly sentences but he was they called him the grammar nazi at school because he was very very adamant about teaching grammar but my point being is that grammar is a subject that that you can learn Euclidean geometry is a subject that you can learn yeah and you can also teach it a different way we we do a lot of grammar with our students because they learned Greek and they know English and the point of learning Greek as with you probably in part the point of learning is to discuss grammatical questions and most of matters which are taking didactically in grammar books can become dialectical in interesting discussions but those discussions are much better when the person has actually learned the subject if they haven't learned this happens you can wait from some renown till doomsday to have a flower students to learn an actual subject in that way mm-hmm and well that's why I think education is a lifelong thing yeah I mean Shakespeare my father argued that Prospero was probably the look I don't want to be too too absolutely about this there are certain things you simply have to take as facts right and learn them but it shouldn't post the discussion shouldn't be postponed until you're tired too and too tired to engage in it we start right away on the first day they open their Euclid yeah a point is that which has no parts well the discussion begins what does a point have if it doesn't have any parts what does it mean but you have to accept that axiom to do Euclidean geometry and that's not even very clear because all the points they deal with will have parts since they use chalk because I mean he's talking about something very abstract and you're just giving a symbol of an abstraction well that's but that's the question the questions which is the true representation the one that is in your mind and invisible and in which the point really symbolize that happen or the demonstration that you're giving on the blackboard and why is it possible to give a demonstration of something of a figure that clearly doesn't have whose angles clearly don't add up to 180 degrees because they will round it and so on and yet to point it and to say that this is what I've demonstrated when you've so clearly not demonstrated that all these matters become subject but you don't I give you a wonderful example of of a mere fact of a didactic factor it is Clemenceau the French politician politician I got into an argument with a German in which he was enforcing the notion that the Germans were wrong to invade Belgium Belgium and the the Germans said well it's a question of a point of view and she said are you arguing that in on August 9th I think in 1914 the Belgians invaded Germany and that was the end of that argument yeah but come so it was a disaster because we owe the Nazis to clemenceau what they did to the Germans let me let me just read a passage because I think this gets to the heart of a lot of what we're talking about if men were angels this from Van Doren at Madison this this is Van Doren if men were angels who is it then don't mark Van Dorn from liberal education that's from it's he said worthless Chen yeah but he's gonna okay the opening is definitely if men were angels they could dispense with tradition if they would know things all at once and if they were animals if for they would know things all at once like angels and if they were animals they could do nicely with instinct as a substitute men must learn and learn painfully by accumulation and in time the human tradition which collects this learning is more than history and it is more than culture as culture is currently conceived it is the ideas we have when we do not know we have them it is the Phoenix nest of language it is the immortality and whose name education offers to secure the salvation of persons it is what leaves novelty possible in science or an art for it marks the end from which beginnings can be made without it there can be no progress of any sort and as civilization dies tradition is dangerous to the intellect which does not know how to love it for it can weigh heavily upon weak heads to accept it is to borrow trouble for it heaves with controversies and unanswered questions it has been said to that to inherit the tradition of democracy is like inheriting a lawsuit and this goes for tradition in general but tradition is most dangerous and most troublesome when it is forgotten it gives strength as well as takes it it brings life as well as threatens it it is life fighting to maintain itself in time for there is the curious fact that tradition is never so healthy as when it is being fought we deny its authority but in doing so we use its clearest terms and end if we are original in enriching it so that it may have strength for future Wars it is orthodoxy at its best thriving on heresies which it digests into nobler problems we return to tradition not for answers but for questions and some of those we find are capable like live wires of shocking us into a condition of dizziness or extreme heat I think for me that passage while I'm not totally in agreement with everything says but I think in religion tradition is definitely inheriting a lawsuit and for too many people they don't they don't see it as that way there's a lot of things to grapple with in religion and one of the debates one of our great debates was between Lucas Ollie and even lucid the Europeans tended to they sided with even Russia and benefited greatly from him that that dialectic died out in the Muslim world but I think it's an important dialectic for each generation and that's why tradition has to constantly be revisited and re-engaged and and it shouldn't if it's if it's just accepted as Dogma it loses its power when you say tradition do you mean scriptural well here's the thing about our tradition is that scripture if you learn the tool the hermeneutic tools of interpretation and you've learned them well you can come up with multiple answers to the same to this the same scripture the scripture itself generates questions and so this idea I mean I think the fundamental is the problem with the fundamentalist is that scripture means one thing and only one thing to a fundamental what I really meant us do you mean written a text or do you mean practices you say tradition no I I mean right well I think tradition to me has has many different meanings religious tradition is one type of tradition customs and rites and rituals is another aspect of tradition it's what's handed down what was given to us I mean the thing that all of us are using is the language we're speaking the language of Shakespeare and it's been handed down to us for several hundred years see I have to say it would be interesting to meet you here what thought about what your thoughts about it are here is a tuna but I think most of my colleagues would deny that we deal much in tradition when we say the tradition we usually mean the great books and which is not what tradition broadly should mean but it doesn't mean well in the other hand reticence so I think in that their hand in that they handed out they are they are I mean in the Arabic word is knuckle which literally means what's transmitted you know what's given and and one of the things that you mentioned in here about one of the prompt we have a saying in Arabic stop where they stopped and then proceed like you have to know the past in this idea that oh I want to be original and you don't know what what's gone before you so much I mean you know I saw something that just struck me in there there was a quote from Aristotle about that it was very important for rulers to to teach that they they have to teach the polity inculcate in the young the polity that their that that they're actually practicing so if you know it's if it's a tyranny you want tyrannical schools and and and then that's congruence theory that's not like a modern theory of Epstein this idea that government should has to it has to government will only succeed to the degree with which the system of government is implemented in the other institutions in a society and so for instance if it's the very meaning of totalitarianism exactly and I think why totalitarianism it exists in so many places is is because of this loss of a liberal tradition this idea of teaching people to think and and and being open to multiple possibilities yeah how come disagree with that yes it seems to me but I would not see as far as a program in a school is concerned or at least at st. John's I would not say that the transmission of a tradition is a great aim for us when something happened is insignificant in our way of going at it what is significant is what is is always alive in other words nothing is we were we would not what to put on the program something that was truly in the past which is mean which means it's gone but only what is alive and when it was actually produced is secondary Ezra Pound said a great book was news that stayed news that's very nice yeah I want to thank dr. brand for coming all this way she flew out from these because she's on East Coast time so out of deference to your time zones and time we're on Pacific we're actually on Muslim time out here so it can get very late for us but I want to really thank her for coming out and sharing with us her views this is an ongoing discussion here because we're I think these things are rediscovered so what is a liberal education is not going to be a question that was answered tonight or anytime soon yeah and I would be very happy if we had some sort of way of talking to each other even though it's across the continent yeah and if any of you either faculty or students find yourself in Annapolis at some point or in the area in Washington you can give me a call and you can come to the campus and maybe visit the class have meet some of the students and they're very happy to meet other students so thank you very much [Applause] you

Channel: Zaytuna College

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Rating: 4.8865247 out of 5

Keywords: islam, muslim, liberal arts, zaytuna college, philosophy, secular, sacred, christianity, religion, academic, Education, Islam, St. John’s College, Hamza Yusuf, Eva Brann, Liberal Education, Trivium, Quadrivium, Plato, Boredom

Id: mFOaY2WJfOY

Length: 139min 50sec (8390 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017