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Video Description
A great book is not decoration — it is a second chance to grow up. This lecture from Academy of Ideas makes the case for serious reading in a screen-soaked age. Drawing on Matthew Arnold and Mark Edmondson, it shows how the classics offer escape from drudgery, models for self-formation, and an education no institution can hand you. The great books hold a mirror to the soul, unveiling parts of yourself you did not know were there. And the self-taught reader, Edmondson notes, becomes much harder to manipulate.
Full Video Transcript
Books are the best of things well used, abused among the worst. What is the right use? They are for nothing but to inspire.
Of the many pastimes that occupy us, reading books is not one that ranks high on the list for many people.
We live in a culture that prefers the glow of the screen to black ink on paper.
And while part of the reason for this lies in the engrossing nature of modern technology, another reason is the ignorance many have regarding the benefits of reading.
For books, especially the great ones, are not simply a form of entertainment.
They are the source of what the poet Matthew Arnold called
the best that has been known and thought in the world,
and therefore are one of the greatest tools at our disposal to inspire us to live more fully.
For all who feel trapped in an endless repetition of drudgery,
reading the great books is an effective means of escape.
Or as the author Mark Edmondson wrote,
We all get socialized once by our parents and teachers, ministers and priests.
Reading great books is about getting a second chance.
It’s not about being born again, but about growing up a second time.
This time around as your own educator and guide, Virgil to yourself.
Many people lament over a lack of good role models,
and blame their problems on never having been taught how to deal with life’s difficulties.
But the great books can help mitigate such deficiencies.
Biographies offer us access to role models who exceed anyone we are likely to meet in real life.
The great works of fiction depict the human condition and ways to navigate it in a way unsurpassed by any other medium.
While non-fiction books provide us with access to the ideas and world views of some of the greatest minds in history.
Especially when life grows stale, it is to the great books we should turn to discover new ways of existing in the world.
Or as Edmondson further explains,
Books should be called major and become canonical, when over time they provide existing individuals with live options that will help them change for the better.
But along with providing us with ways to improve our life, the great books can also aid us in a process of self-discovery.
The importance of self-knowledge in a life well lived has long been known, but it is notoriously difficult to attain.
For along with our powers of self-deception, we often lack the words to describe and express the subtle and more profound contents of our mind.
The great works of fiction can help remedy this situation, as the authors of these works are some of the most astute observers of human nature.
Through their characters, they depict depths of the human soul few are able to disclose, and thus, their words can be used to unravel the mysteries of our own mind.
We need to learn not simply to read books, wrote Edmondson, but to allow ourselves to be read by them.
Or as the 20th century French author Marcel Proust explained,
It would be inaccurate to say that of those who would read my book as my readers,
for it seemed to me that they would not be my readers but readers of their own selves.
Until recently, reading the great books of history for the purpose of self-improvement
was the spirit which informed the humanities in universities across the West.
But today an increasing number of humanities professors have abandoned this spirit.
Rather than reviving the ideas of the great books and offering them to students as potentially better ways to live,
many professors engage in what Soren Kierkegaard called a tragic misuse of scholarship.
They teach their students to historicize and criticize the great books,
and explain them away as irrelevant relics of the past.
The great books are interesting, many modern professors believe,
only insofar as they serve as examples of the so-called backwards social and political climate of the times in which they were produced.
We will not have a real humanistic education, wrote Edmondson,
until professors and their students can give up the narcissistic illusion
that through something called theory or criticism they can stand above Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante.
This critical historical stance is breeding what the philosopher James Edwards called normal nihilists, that is,
students who are masters in critical thinking for its own sake, specialists in tearing down all ideas and claims to beauty, truth, and knowledge.
It is easy to be brilliant, wrote Goethe, when you don’t believe in anything.
Critical thinking is valuable when used to evaluate possible interpretations of events or phenomena before settling on any specific belief.
But critical thinking for its own sake can lead one down a dangerous path.
For if you only know how to destroy, but not how to build up your own convictions,
then you will be left with no standards, ideals, and values to judge your actions and guide you towards higher possibilities.
In such a situation, life will become a nullity, a meaningless void between two eternities of darkness,
lived in slavish devotion to pleasure, or the single-minded pursuit of money or power.
Or as Edmondson put it,
Fortunately, we can engage in our own personal study of the great works of history without
subjecting ourselves to the corrupting influence of the modern university.
And if we decide to be one of the few to make reading great books a priority, what we are
likely to discover is that as we become more fixated on the wisdom contained in them, the
pull of technology and the white noise of the culture around us will lose its grip on
our mind.
However, as Edmondson explains, people who have taught themselves how to live, what to
be, what to do, from reading great works, will not be overly susceptible to the culture
industry’s latest wares.
They’ll be able to sample them or turn completely away.
They’ll have better things on their minds.
Source: Academy of Ideas