Both/And, not Either/Or

A story in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports: “A new national survey of faculty members shows that the proportion of professors who believe it is very important to teach undergraduates to become ‘agents of social change’ is substantially larger than the proportion who believe it is important to teach students the classic works of Western civilization…. Observers say the difference results from influences as diverse as conservative criticisms of curriculum and Barack Obama's call for social activism during his presidential campaign.”

One professor is quoted as saying: "The notion of a liberal education as a set of essential intellectual skills is in transition… It's also about social and personal responsibility, thinking about one's role in society, and creating change."

The key word is “also.” For us it’s not a matter of either reading classic texts or caring about making a difference in the world.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living and one of my teachers, David Tracy, used to tell us that, simultaneously, the unlived life is not worth examining. Both/and.

Education includes the deep and intensive contemplation of those profound expressions of the human spirit that so disclose a surplus and excess of meaning for our lives that we keep returning to them again and again to learn more, to drink deeply and to be transformed. These productions of the human spirit, Mr. Tracy used to say, are “classics.”

They may be books, or artistic creations. They may even be places or events that so resonate with meaning that no one single interpretation of them suffices. We keep coming back to these classics because they keep speaking to us. They’re not mere “period pieces” that lose their power to challenge, critique or inspire us when circumstances change. Instead, they are always fresh, always new, always interrogating us and our times—and inviting us to interrogate them.

Classics come in all flavors and from all cultures, “Western” and “Eastern,” “elite” and “ grassroots,” and the more we learn about those cultures the more we can hope to engage the profound questions these classics raise.

We must do that and at Dominican, we do. The good news is that we can benefit from the wisdom of those who came before us. These classics help us examine our lives. Of course we bring our own questions, our own convictions, to these classics, so that as we enter into dialogue with them we do so critically, challenging their worldviews and assumptions just as they challenge ours. That’s what dialogue is all about and education is at its very core a dialogical phenomenon—a conversation about possibilities in the pursuit of true knowing and true living.

And since the unlived life is not worth examining, the other good news is that the classics help us figure out how to live lives of rich meaning and deep purpose. They are so very relevant to contemporary society, because the questions they ask are still our quintessentially human questions. What does it mean to be good, to lead a good life? What is the meaning and purpose of my, of our existence? What are the causes of injustice and oppression and how can they be changed? What should I do, and why should I do it? Where is it all going?

So yes, yes, we are dedicated to the principle that higher education is about making a difference, about participating in the transformation of society and creating a more just and humane world. And we are grateful, deeply grateful, that we have classics, from so many times and places, peoples and cultures, just waiting for us to learn enough to engage them, to let them interrogate us and vice-versa, in a wonderful conversation about probing life’s greatest questions and discerning our true calling in this world.