Victoria S. Cech
Greek
MSU-Billings
Robert Proctor, in the second edition of Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, traces two linked developments in education and in the Western perception of the self: one is the evolving definition of the humanities, and the other is the change in the relation of the individual to his or her studies, the State, and the community. This is rather a lot to take on in 199 pages plus a brief appendix, and I confess I am still rather winded after following him through this very lucid but densely-packed argument.
Proctor's thesis, in brief, is that one of the reasons we have such difficulty in defining the "humanities" today is that we are using a phrase which had meaning in classical antiquity (studia humanitatis), and which has continued in usage through significant transformations of the world and western humanity's worldview, but which no longer is related to its original meaning. Proctor illustrates the confusion about the term by quoting, among others, William Bennett, who commented to Newsweek during his tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, "'There is hardly anything that has not been called humanities or humanistic something or other'" (xxiii). The reason for the confusion about what the humanities are is that: "...the original humanities are dead, and we have found nothing to replace them" (xxiii).
Not only are the humanities dead, but, according to Proctor, they molder in a forgotten grave: we have lost touch with the classical humanities and their original purpose, which was to shape a better soul and, well, a better human. We do not even recognize, in his opinion, what we have lost and what it was ever used for. Education and humanity would be enriched, if not saved, by a true re-cognition of the humanities. Proctor concedes that we cannot go backward and genuinely recreate past curricula or systems of learning, but he insists that we as a society need to engage the classical tradition of the humanities, acknowledge what it meant, and incorporate it into our secondary and postsecondary education.
More than one academic has suggested a return to the classics as the salvation of Western civilization. What I find exhilarating about Proctor's defense of antiquity is that he provides a reason to study it other than nostalgia. The reason to study both classical antiquity and the evolution (and death) of the humanities is linked to the change he posits in the Western perception of the self.
Proctor notes that the use of the phrase "studia humanitatis" changed between classical antiquity and the Renaissance. He contrasts Cicero's use of the phrase with that of Leonardo Bruni, a Florentine statesman who lived from 1370-1444. Whereas Cicero did not have a specific list of disciplines in mind which comprised studia humanitatis, but used the phrase to indicate the sciences, arts, letters, and sum of learning expected of an educated citizen, Bruni and others of his period had narrowed the meaning "to denote the specific disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, history, moral philosophy, and poetry" (16). But between the two periods, something else had happened: people had ceased to view themselves as parts of a whole society and cosmos, and had begun the process of distinguishing themselves as individuals separate from, and potentially opposed to, their state and their universe. This process has continued until, Proctor avers, we have achieved a state of "pathological narcissism" from which we must rescue ourselves for the sake of society and our own (selfish and individual) peace of mind.
Why, then, have previous generations studied the classics when we have abandoned them? Because during the course of the degeneration from the classical model to the current dystopia, there was a period of several hundred years during which the study of the Classics was used to better the individual self--a personal and inwardly-focused self, to be sure, but nevertheless a noble effort at emulation of the relatively heroic behavior (behavior not attitude) of the ancients. Then, following the development of classical philology (which contributed greatly to the demise of Greek and Latin in the schools by elevating the pedantry of the study of form and rules above the appreciation of content), along came Nietschze, Marx, and Freud, and their various propositions divorcing the individual from any responsibility to previously compelling moral authorities. At about this point we just completely lost our grip and slid into the narrow maundering abyss of Self, in which we have become more and more deeply mired ever since.
Two passages from Proctor's work may illuminate all this more clearly. Of the post-classical struggle to perfect the self through the emulation of the ancients, he writes:
...the Greeks and the Romans are the only...models capable of such emulation. The reason is clear: from the Renaissance on, our literature knows nothing but personal selves. And the personal self, in all its glorious autonomy--which is also a form of isolation from both the cosmos and society--is too little, too weak, too "self-centered"--too imperfect in short, to inspire another human being to self-perfection. We can learn a great deal about ourselves and our experience of the human by reading...Hamlet. But if our goal is...[the] "perfecting" of a self, there is nothing in Hamlet to emulate. And it is not just a question of irreconcilable conflicts. Sophocles' characters had conflicts. But...they were built into the very structure of being.... Sophocles' tragic heroes believed in an objective moral order in the universe....(109-110)
As for the implications of the foregoing for fashioning a modern curriculum, Proctor is clear that we can advance only by looking backward: "Anderson is thus wrong when he says in his English Education: 1789-1902 that [Farrar's] Essays on a Liberal Education 'assert the possibility of a modern humanism, the possibility of extracting from modern studies, and especially from modern literature, much which was commonly thought to be derivable from the study of Greek and Latin alone' (Adamson 1964, p. 310). Or rather, to be more precise, he is correct in reporting what Farrar's volume asserted, but the assertion was wrong. There is something to be derived from the study of classical antiquity which no modern literature can provide: an experience of the human as participating in the whole world of being. There can thus be no such thing as a 'modern humanism' divorced from what the humanities originally/1/ were: the study of the Greeks and the Romans as models for individual and collective behavior" (110).
The curriculum proposed to distract our eyes from our internal hall of mirrors begins in high school with the study of Latin and Greek, with the presentation of Renaissance and classical writers such as Petrarch and Cicero, and with a more conscious examination of the view of the self presented in the post-Renaissance works commonly found on high-school syllabi. The college curriculum, summarized here by course titles only, but treated much more fully by Proctor, includes the following: "Freshman Year, 'Classical Antiquity and Its Transformation in the Renaissance: The Birth of the Autonomous Self." Sophomore Year: 'Science and Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: The Autonomous Self and the Objectification of Nature." Junior Year: 'The Social Sciences as Moral Theory: Individual Autonomy and the Origins of Modern Society.' Senior Year: 'Moral Philosophy: The Search for Wisdom and Virtue.'" This, along with a serious engagement of ancient texts in the original (hence the language preparation), is advocated for every liberal arts graduate.
The immediate objection to this course of study is that it will never gain popular acceptance; it is far too difficult, and therefore elitist, to use as a program in general education. To this objection I am tempted to reply that if people have been concerned with the alleged "dumbing down" of instruction, then here indeed is the antidote. More to the point, I believe that Proctor obliquely addresses such a criticism by emphasizing that language instruction must not get bogged down in tedious philology, as it has since the mid-1800s. Defining the Humanities spends some time exploring both how the study of Greek and Latin became not a liberating passport to new worlds but a terrifying prison term for hapless students (96-103), and also how these languages, well-taught, can enable students to encounter Greek and Roman literature more authentically (197-98).
Despite the validity of Proctor's contention that classical languages used to be better taught, and could be well taught again, there is still some justification for the objection that requiring them of all students is unrealistic. Proctor's suggested curriculum focuses on integrating the true humanities (Greek and Roman language, history and culture) into four-year college programs, with a high-school component as preparation for that endeavor. However, the implication of his work is that an education in Greek and Roman history and literature should be extended to every student, college-bound or not, who will live and work in a Western society, which is to say a society built upon classical principles and traditions. Yet, despite the belief that every practicing citizen needs this preparation, Proctor himself notes that "in classical Rome as well as in colonial America, the liberal arts tradition prepared men of the ruling classes to become statesmen, legislators, and good citizens" (205, emphasis mine). In the years when the classics were a larger part of the "standard" curriculum, the curriculum was offered to a much narrower range of students. What would be the result of requiring the classics of all students, in the way that we require literacy and numeracy? Would we have an enlightened society, or unparalleled drop-out rates?
Whether practical or not, Defining the Humanities seems to offer a solution to an issue which has immediate and general resonance, and which has been raised in several venues. Proctor outlines, I believe convincingly, a cultural movement away from a community-centered life to a literally self-centered life, where virtue, or integrity, is often defined as the ability to stand up against the state or community. But concurrently, scholars in other disciplines are lamenting the loss of community and interconnectedness. Robert Putnam's recent book, Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital, is perhaps one of the best known recent works to examine the trend toward individual disengagement from society: the tendency to join interest groups with no time or connectivity demands, but which provide an individual benefit (e.g., AARP); to drop out of traditional service clubs; to bowl alone and not in a league. Proctor suggests an educational remedy for this disengagement. If we plan to "fix" community and attempt to recreate the bonds that used to make society cohere, we may have to retrace our steps. We may need to remember how a community really worked, how the individual fits within it, and why and how we have moved so far away from what Proctor contends were societies in which individuals had stronger values, external standards and a sense of moral orientation.
Proctor sees those values, standards and moral orientation as distinct from the Judeo-Christian tradition which has become such an integral part of Western culture. "The humanities," he asserts, "...when we define them historically, do not include the Judeo-Christian tradition...while most humanists engaged in a dialogue with both the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions, the latter is not definitive of the humanities, even though in many cases Christianity was the matrix within which classical culture was recovered in the West" (189). Rather, he believes we have lost any external ideal of "the good," including even "the common good," against which to measure our integrity.
My fear is that Proctor may have correctly diagnosed a critical flaw in Western social development, which may before long validate Benjamin Franklin's prediction that all of us will hang separately due to failure to hang together. But suppose we adopt, without regard to the anguished screams from high-school study halls and university admissions offices, Proctor's curriculum? Will we marginalize cultures whose literatures and histories are not placed at the curriculum's center, and will that do a disservice to students of non-Western origins?
Pre-eminent among many excellences of Proctor's book is that it has remained just above the myriad frays in academics. He laments the loss of personal and community qualities that he believes were provided by the classical humanities, and urges a return to them without condemning the prevailing philosophies in modern universities. (There was one brief swipe at post-modernism, but he only noted that Nietzsche's condemnation of classical philology did tend to suggest parallels with literary theory [97].) The weakness of this admirably scholarly and detached analysis is that it fails to argue key questions: (1) is it possible for the benefits of classical enlightenment be equitably distributed among the populace, or will this solution polarize education; and (2) is there an underlying assumption that only Western civilization is worthy of emulation, and that therefore we should place it at our educational and intellectual center, with no consideration that perhaps it has led us astray and we should examine other models? While worrying about these issues, I find myself compelled by Proctor's work. Studying the humanities resembles Fitzgerald's description of Humanity: "We beat on, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past."
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