My observations . . .

We live in a dysfunctional, anti-intellectual society, wrought with moral relativism that is tearing apart our families, our communities and even our country. From my observations, it seems that we are in lockstep with the cultural trajectory of ancient Rome.

Former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, Charlotte Iserbyt on the Deliberate Dumbing Down of the World

A free pdf

Brazil Senate passes amendment to make pursuit of happiness a fundamental right

Thursday, November 11, 2010; 7:34 PM

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL - A Senate committee in Brazil approved a "happiness amendment" that, if passed by Congress, would make the pursuit of happiness a fundamental right guaranteed by the country's constitution.

The amendment was the project of a nonprofit organization, the Movimento Mais Feliz (Happier Movement). It was sponsored by Cristovam Buarque, a senator and former presidential candidate who campaigned for greater investment in education as an essential element in promoting growth and development.

Yet Buarque still casts doubt on the effectiveness of guaranteeing happiness through legislation.

"I would rather vote for political reform or a big movement against corruption," he said, "but this amendment came on to the agenda, and happily it was approved. I will try to make other changes to the constitution to bring about other important advances."

Cristiano Paixao, a professor of law at the University of Brasilia, described the amendment as "a useless and worrying change to the constitution."

"It gives the population the idea that happiness can be brought about by an act of the national Congress," he said.

The search for happiness is not new, either in the Americas or elsewhere. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is one of the most famous phrases in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan considers its "gross national happiness" index - which attempts to measure quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than gross domestic product - integral to national policy.

The Brazilian amendment says it aims to promote happiness through access to such services by acting on five fronts: increasing popular awareness, mobilizing social groups, stimulating participation in social projects, training "multipliers" and motivating citizens to contribute to its projects.

"The state has the obligation to create conditions to provide education, health, security, etc.," the amendment says. "The idea is to force the state to assume the responsibility of meeting these needs so that citizens can seek happiness."

Moral Philosophy and Religion are no longer needed!

So it has come down to this:

In this new book he argues from a philosophical and a neurobiological perspective that science can and should determine morality.

Mortimer Adler's Institute for Philosophical Research

Mortimer Adler's Institute for Philosophical Research

2090 Jackson Street   San Francisco, CA

The Whittier Mansion was one of the first California residences built of stone on a steel framework, a construction technique which served it well during the 1906 Earthquake. It was designed by Edward R. Swain and built in 1896 at a cost of $152,000 for William Frank Whittier, who had made his fortune in mercantilism and shipping.

In contrast to the forbidding Richardsonian Romanesque exterior, the interior is opulent. Each of the four levels is 3,500 square feet with an undeveloped fifth level, or attic, for the handyman. Most of the mansion's thirty rooms have carved paneling of mahogany, golden oak, primavera, and tamano with hardware of hand-wrought German silver.

Mr. Whittier lived in the house until his death in 1917 at the age of 85. His heirs retained possession of the property until 1938 when they sold it to the government of the Third Reich. For the next several years, until the United States entered World War II, the Whittier Mansion was the German Consulate headed by Fritz Wiedemann who successfully cultivated the San Francisco Nobs with lavish parties and receptions.

When the United States declared war on Germany, Herr Wiedemann fled. For the next decade, the house was under the jurisdiction of the Alien Property Custodian.

In 1952, Mortimer Adler's Institute for Philosophical Research took up residence, but only for a few years until 1956 when the California Historical Society moved in and remained until 1993.

Today the California Historical Society is located in less flamboyant quarters on Mission Street, and the Whittier Mansion is once again a private residence.

What's your Great Books story?

At the Britannica Blog, Joseph Lane recalled My Britannica Great Books Set: How I Got It, What It Means to Me.

A Question about Capital Punishment . . .

Why do you think this country has not abolished capital punishment, while most other (including our two neighbors, Canada and Mexico) so-called civilized nations have?

Education, Education Reforming Education . . .

That’s what we’re hearing a lot of these days in the media. As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, when the word education is used these days, vocation is meant. Also, I’ve noted that curriculum is never mentioned, only teachers and more money. I submit that our parents and even grandparents received better schooling than we did--even with one teacher, a blackboard in a one room school. Just recently a new public school opened in Los Angeles, at the astounding cost of $578 million.

In my view, if schools did nothing but instill the desire to spend the rest of their lives learning and give them some of the tools for doing so, they would be doing their job.

Lastly in my view, the reason our schooling stinks, is primarily the fault of us as parents and citizens.

Here’s what my late colleague Mortimer Adler, has said on schooling:

For more than 70 years, a controlling insight in my educational philosophy has been the recognition that no one has ever been--no one can ever be--educated in school or college.

That would be the case if our schools and colleges were at their very best, which they certainly are not, and even if the students were among the best and the brightest as well as conscientious in the application of their powers.

The reason is simply that youth itself--immaturity--is an insuperable obstacle to becoming educated. Schooling is for the young. Education comes later, usually much later. The very best thing for our schools to do is to prepare the young for continued learning by giving them the skills of learning and the love of it. Our schools and colleges are not doing that now, but that is what they should be doing.

To speak of an educated young person, rich in understanding of basic ideas and issues, is as much a contradiction in terms as to speak of a round square. The young can be prepared for education in the years to come, but only mature men and women can become educated, beginning the process in their 40's and 50's and reaching some modicum of genuine insight, sound judgment and practical wisdom after the age 60.

This is what no high school or college graduate knows or can understand. As a matter of fact, most of their teachers do not seem to know it. In their obsession with covering ground and in the way in which they test or examine their students, they certainly do not act as if they understood that they were only preparing their students for education in later life rather than trying to complete it within the precincts of their institutions.

There is, of course, some truth in the ancient insight that awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. But, remember, it is just the beginning. From there on one has to do something about it.

And to do it intelligently one must know something of its causes and cures--why adults need education and what, if anything, they can do about it. When young adults realize how little they learned in school, they usually assume there was something wrong with the school they attended or with the way they spent their time there. But the fact is that the best possible graduate of the best possible school needs to continue learning every bit as much as the worst.

How should they go about doing this? In a recent book, I tried to answer the question, "How should persons proceed who wish to conduct for themselves the continuation of learning after all schooling has been finished?" The brief and simple answer is: Read and discuss.

Never just read, for reading without discussion with others who have read the same book is not nearly as profitable. And as reading without discussion can fail to yield the full measure of understanding that should be sought, so discussion without the substance that good and great books afford is likely to degenerate into little more than an exchange of opinions or personal prejudices.

Those who take this prescription seriously would, of course, be better off if their schooling had given them the intellectual discipline and skill they need to carry it out, and if it had also introduced them to the world of learning with some appreciation of its basic ideas and issues. But even the individual who is fortunate to leave school or college with a mind so disciplined, and with an abiding love of learning, would still have a long road to travel before he or she became an educated person.

If our schools and colleges were doing their part and adults were doing theirs, all would be well. However, our schools and colleges are not doing their part because they are trying to do everything else. And adults are not doing their part because most are under the illusion that they had completed their education when they finished their schooling.

Only the person who realizes that mature life is the time to get the education that no young person can ever acquire is at last on the high road to learning. The road is steep and rocky, but it is the high road, open to anyone who has the skill in learning and the ultimate goal of all learning in view--understanding the nature of things and man's place in the total scheme.

An educated person is one who through the travail of his own life has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture, that make him a bearer of its traditions and enable him to contribute to its improvement.

Max Weismann asks three questions . . .

There is a story told by Glaucon in the second book of Plato's Republic, where Glaucon and his brother Adeimantus are trying to get Socrates to explain to them why being just to others is an aid to leading a happy life. They tell him the story of Gyges--Gyges was a servant in the household of the King of Lydia, and Gyges fell in love with the Queen and the Queen with him. The Queen gave Gyges a ring which if he turned it around, made him invisible. Gyges used the ring, made himself invisible, murdered the King and married the Queen, and became the ruler of Lydia.

Suppose there's only one ring of Gyges in the world and you're walking up Fifth Avenue on a bright sunny morning, and you pass Tiffany's at 5th Avenue and 57th Street and in one of those little windows, you see a little black case with a nice gold ring and a sign under it says, “Ring of Gyges, moderately priced, inquire within.”

One, would you go in and inquire about the price of the ring? Two, if it was within your power to buy it, would you buy it? Three, if you bought it, how would you use it? Remembering that the ring of Gyges would enable you to do anything you wanted and have no fear of ever being caught or punished.

Adler on immigration reform

Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki begins his column in the latest issue of the Milwaukee Catholic Herald,

I remember the prophetic words of the great Dr. Mortimer Adler, well-known philosopher and educator, who remarked in a discussion symposium in the 1980s that unless we get our immigration policy under control, we will risk dividing the country and even severely damaging our economy and cultural way of life. He was not taking sides; he was merely stating his observation.

Does the end ever justify the means?

What in your view . . .

Is the single greatest impediment, towards mankind and individuals from achieving a really good life?

Vining on Adler

An unregistered student of Dr. Adler's, and later a Syntopicon indexer, Dorothy Vining at Musings at 87 reflected on his life, work, and religious conversion.

Old School pedagogically

Philosophy professor, blogger, and self-described "fan of Mortimer Adler’s Paideia Proposal" Mark Peterson writes on education in a recent column in the West Bend [Wisconsin] Daily News.

Learning and teaching are inevitable – if we try

Teacher and blogger Frank Bird grapples with, among other things, Mortimer Adler and the Paideia Principles.

The goal of philosophy

Postulates Of the Pitch, by John Helpern, The Wall Street Journal, review of 'Soccer and Philosophy', edited by Ted Richards (via Arts & Letters Daily)

On Rereading 'The Apology'

Last Things column by James V. Schall, S.J., at First Principles

Not So Natural Selection

Richard C. Lewontin reviews 'What Darwin Got Wrong', by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in The New York Review of Books

The Debt of Socrates

Christopher Buckley in The New York Times

What is equality?

I recently had a conversation with a friend in which he criticized capitalism because it was unequal. I responded with Jesus parable of the laborers in the vinyard in which people were hired at various times in the day to harvest grapes and then they were all paid the same at the end of the day. Were they treated equally? Yes and no. They had equality of outcome, but they were certainly not treated equally for labor performed, either by the hour or the quantity of crop harvested.
Political or economic equality can be equality of outcome, opportunity, laws, lack of legal barriers etc. The notion of equality does not tell us on what basis the equality is to be drawn. What basis we decide to administer equality can often have great impacts on other factors. Socialism, for example, tends to make everyone equally poor, except for the oligarchy that administers the socialistic system. Capitalism treats everyone equally in the sense of equal before the law, but it results in great inequality of wealth. Which is best? The notion of equality itself does not tell us.

Lessons not learned . . .

NEW YORK - The Dalai Lama on Thursday declared that he is still a Marxist in spirit who condemns capitalism as a system whose main goal is "how to make profit." Marxism has "the only economy system expressing concern of equal distribution (of wealth); that is moral ethics," the Tibetan Buddhist leader told a news conference at the start of a four-day New York visit.

WOW! At last, we know everything!!

THE STORY OF EVERYTHING

That is the subtitle of the new television series, "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.”

Here is the show’s promo; In two mind-blowing hours, Hawking reveals the wonders of the cosmos to a new generation. Delve into the mind of the world's most famous living scientist and reveal the splendor and majesty of the universe as never seen before. See how the universe began, how it creates stars, black holes and life--and how everything will end.

Last evening I watched the two hours of theoretical musings about hypotheses of the relatively little known universe and its mechanics, masquerading as unabashed reality.

Science Fiction at its best!

“I challenge every adult to step up and join the conversation,''

Secretary Arne Duncan
United States Secretary of Education
LBJ Education Building, Room 7W311
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202

Dear Secretary Duncan:

I reside in Chicago and I am a well known moral philosopher in the field education and I am the protégé of Dr. Mortimer J. Adler.
.
U.S. Attorney General Holder: "We want to listen to educators, parents, and experts in the field, and find out the best ideas for addressing this urgent problem. We're not interested in just scratching the surface or focusing on generalities, and as we delve into this problem we're not going to protect any sacred cows. We're here to learn firsthand what's happening on our streets so we can devise effective solutions."

As long as you treat violence, drug/alcohol addiction, vicious behavior, etceteras as the problem, instead as a symptom of a moral problem, you are not really addressing the crisis.

Whenever there is something bad or wrong in our communities, cities, states, it is because we (citizens & parents) let it get that way.

Most Americans have lost their moral compass and we are in lock-step with the cultural trajectory of ancient Rome.

When the word education is used today, vocation is meant. Only a true liberal education can save us and that is not even a guarantee.

Our schools are not turning out young people prepared for the high office and the duties of citizenship in a democratic republic. Our political institutions cannot thrive, they may not even survive, if we do not produce a greater number of thinking citizens, from whom some statesmen of the type we had in the eighteenth century might eventually emerge. We are, indeed, a nation at risk, and nothing but radical reform of our schools can save us from impending disaster. Whatever the price we must pay in money and effort to do this, the price we will pay for not doing it will be much greater.

Cordially,

Max Weismann,
President and co-founder with Mortimer Adler, Center for the Study of The Great Ideas and Chairman, The Great Books Academy (3,000+ students)

Cc: Eric Holder
Mayor Richard M. Daley

Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor

W.A. Pannapacker in The Chronicle Review, October 5, 2009 (via Arts & Letters Daily)

We are increasingly ignorant, but we do not know enough to be properly ashamed. If we are determined to get on in life, we believe it will not have anything to do with our ability to reference Machiavelli or Adam Smith at the office Christmas party. The rejection of the Great Books signifies a declining belief in the value of anything without a direct practical application, combined with the triumph of a passive entertainment—as anyone who teaches college students can probably affirm

.

--Terrence Berres

All Twitter no Tolkien

Diane Ravitch writes that Americans are no longer reading literature and are instead focused on trivial communication such as twitter. She asks some questions I would like to answer:

1) On a recent recommended reading list, why wasn't anything by Mark Twain listed?

Simple. One word. Racism. It just isn't popular any longer and very few people are willing to tolerate the racism in Twain's works.

2) Why "Lord of the Rings"? Must have been due to the movie.

Fantasy literature has always had a hard time getting any respect. Literature snobs won't read it and they assume that, along with science fiction, it is merely escapist. This is certainly true of much of the genre as it is equally true of fiction in general. Lord of the Rings is not of that type, though it certainly has its adventure elements. Here are what I regard as the outstanding elements of the Ring trilogy:

Philosophical: It continues the thread begun in Plato's republic with the parable of the Ring of Gaiges and continued in Wagner's Ring Cycle. In both of those explorations of the lust to power, the cautionary elements were emphasized. Tolkien asks a different question: What would it cost to destroy the lust for power in us? Instead of using the ring of power to kill the king and marry the queen (Gaiges) or to bring the entire cosmos into ruin (Wagner), Tolkien's characters destroy the ring of power at tremendous cost to themselves.

Philological: Tolkien was a professor of medieval literature and created his fantasy world as a showcase for several of his invented languages.

Poetic: Many fans of escapist fantasy literature have trouble with LotR because the plot moves so slowly due to a lot of epic poetry and history building. LotR is a good introduction to epic poetry and inspired me to continue on reading the Iliad, Odessy, Aeneid, L'Morte d Arthur etc.

Theological: Tolkien creates a number of angelic or semi-angelic characters including the wizard Gandalf. He essentially asks the question: if an angel were to come to earth, what would he be like? How does compassion look in the real world?

Political: The legend of the Istari- wizards was that the gods sent them to oppose evil but without overt shows of power. This explores the idea of how we can attempt to change the world in a non-coercive fashion.

Value system: Tolkien creates his elven race (nothing like the traditional elves - these are more like angelic norsemen) to showcase another set of questions: What would a race of immortals value? He shows us a value system that centered on preserving beauty, seeking knowledge and keeping courage alive.

I think Tolkien deserves his place in the literary pantheon right next to Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Twain and frankly, Asimov and Ellison. If you want literature that can change the way you think about the world, don't discount classic era science fiction and the best of the fantasy genre.

Otto A. Bird on The Two Cultures

A surprising, if not startling, omission in the original formulation of the Snow-Leavis controversy over the two cultures was the lack of any reference to philosophy. Yet certainly the most fundamental of all the issues on which they were divided was a philosophical one, namely that regarding our best and most fundamental knowledge. --Otto A. Bird (1914-2009), Cultures in Conflict: An Essay in the Philosophy of the Humanities (1976) p. 125

(Terrence Berres)

Reviews of Beam's 'A Great Idea at the Time'

Following up on Ambrose Mensch's post, A Great Idea at the Time, here are some of the reviews of Alex Beam's book, A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books.

A good read about the Great Books: Long before Oprah’s Book Club, there was..., by Mary Ruth Yoe, University of Chicago Magazine, November-December 2008

Heavy Reading, by James Campbell, The New York Times, November 14, 2008

The great dictators, by Matthew Price, The National, December 26, 2008

The Not-So-Great Books, by Daniel J. Flynn, First Principles, April 20, 2009

--Terrence Berres

We The People Stimulus Package

Please read Mortimer Adler's statement below and watch the video.

EVERY CITIZEN, BOTH YOUNG, AND OLD!
by Mortimer J. Adler

By "every citizen" I mean not only the persons who are of an age
to exercise the franchise that enables them to participate
actively in political life. I include also those individuals who
will become our future citizens--the young, who, when they come
of age, will take on the responsibilities that the high office
of citizenship puts on their shoulders.

Most Americans, I fear, do not know or appreciate the fact that
citizenship is the primary political office under a
constitutional government. In a republic, the citizens are the
ruling class. They are the permanent and principal rulers. All
other offices that are set up by the constitution are secondary.

The first and indispensable qualification for holding political
office in any of the branches of government is to be a citizen.
Officeholders, moreover, whether elected or selected, are
citizens in office for a period of time, but all citizens are
citizens for life. Officeholders, from the President down, are
transient and instrumental rulers, unlike citizens in general
who are permanent and principal rulers.

The distinction between the permanent status of citizenship and
the transient or temporary character of government officials is
obvious. But it may not be so obvious why I refer to citizens as
the principal and call government officials instrumental rulers.
To understand this point it is necessary to realize that the
government of the United States is not in Washington, not in the
White House, not in the Capitol, which houses the Congress, nor
in any or all the public office buildings in the District of
Columbia.

The government of the United States resides in us--we, the
people. What resides in Washington is the administration of our
government. We recognize this, at least verbally, when we say,
after a Presidential election, that we have changed one
administration for another. That change leaves the government of
the United States unchanged, because its principal rulers are
also its permanent rulers, whereas its instrumental rulers, its
administrative officials--are transient and temporary.

Administrative officials, from the President down, are the
instruments by which we, the people, govern ourselves. They
serve us in our capacity as self-governing citizens of the
Republic. Lincoln never tired of saying that he conceived his
role to be that of a servant of the people who elected him. The
word "servant" in this connection does not carry any invidious
connotations of inferiority or menial status. Rather, it
signifies the performance of an important function, one carrying
great responsibility, a responsibility officials are called upon
to discharge while they are serving a term in public office.

I am sorry to say that most Americans think of themselves as the
subjects of government and regard the administrators in public
office as their rulers, instead of thinking of themselves as the
ruling class and public officials as their servants--the
instrumentalities for carrying out their will.

It is of the utmost importance to persuade the citizens of the
United States, both young and old, that they have misconceived
their role in the political life of this country. If they can be
persuaded to overcome this misconception, and come to view
themselves in the right light, they will understand that their
high responsibility as citizens carries with it the obligation
to understand the ideas and ideals of our constitutional
government.

Irresponsible Professors and Lonely Students

Students, professors used to think, needed both guidance and those models of human greatness that could help them discover who they are and what to do.  One irony, of course, was that when professors offered such guidance, students didn’t particularly need or want it.  They often came to college with characters already formed, already habituated to the practice of moral virtue.

I'm not looking, honest!

The Economist, March 7, 2009, reports from the Physics and Philosophy front on proof of Hardy's paradox.

...two groups of physicists, working independently, have demonstrated that nature is indeed real when unobserved. When no one is peeking, however, it acts in a really odd way.

--Terrence Berres