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What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It's what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:01PM
One problem with attempting to make moral arguments on the hardcore conservative/religious foundation is that most of those people subscribe to what is known as Divine Command Theory. A little philosophical investigation will show that DCT is empty, i.e., it reduces to moral nihilism, but *most people who think DCT grounds morals aren't even capable of doing the logical legwork to get to this point. (For the record, the reason DCT is empty is that is reduces morality to "whatever God says" or, in some of the slightly more sophisticated versions, "whatever is consistent with God's nature," which does not help *at all...*).
It's impossible to find common moral ground with people who (think they) have marching orders, and think these are the same thing as actual morals. Add that to the fact that most of them don't even really know their own God's supposed commands, and add to THAT the fact that the one source they have for their God's commands contradicts itself constantly, and we have a recipe for disaster. There is no common ground with DCT believers, and there never will be.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...