Intellectual Virtues Attack a Culture of Anti-intellectualism

Philip Dow's book, "Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development" is an excellent complement to J. P. Moreland's "Love Your God with All Your Mind." Where Moreland's is a book directed to the philosopher or the philosophically minded, Dow's book is the everyman's introduction to the intellectual virtues. Filled with amusing anecdotes and solid historical examples, Dow brings the potentially dense philosophical ideas to the masses, and the educator in particular.

But let me not carry on in this formal vein. Basically, Mr. Dow, as I better know him, was one of my high school teachers. I admired him from afar and when I got to have him as my U.S. history teacher, I drank in what he had to say. My views of U.S. history are still highly influenced by what he taught me (specifically the role of Protestantism in the nation's development!), but even more than that it was his ideas regarding intellectual virtues that stuck with me.

I entered my undergraduate days at Houghton College with an understanding that intellectual curiosity was not merely the characteristic of a freakish nerd (although, that description might be apt... after all, who's writing a review of a book on intellectual virtues for the fun of it?), but was a desirable trait and indeed one that ought to be honed further. Before Shirley Mullen, our beloved college president (and I'm serious when I say that she's well-loved!), told us to become lifelong learners, I had already heard and absorbed this message from Mr. Dow.

I focus on intellectual curiosity because this is what really stuck with me, but I recall very clearly the emphasis on intellectual honesty and carefulness because these were spoken of at length while we worked on our senior research projects. In "Virtuous Minds", Mr. Dow expanded on my understanding of these concepts with a connection between intellectual carefulness and glibly accepting gossip and pointing out that one's thinking habits can positively influence one's experience of life, not just the outcomes of particular scenarios.

Unfortunately, I still felt like there was something lacking with the book. There were only passing references to Postman, Moreland, and a few other thinkers whom I think have a lot of really good things to say on the topic of current anti-intellectualism and I would have liked to have seen a more in depth treatment of this topic.  I understand that this was not the primary purpose of the book, but any book that seeks to promote the intellectual virtues should at least somewhat address some of the theories regarding its lack in contemporary culture. The book fairly dripped with the ideas of Chesterton and Lewis (much to my delight) and I would have liked to have seen some of the ideas of these other authors more incorporated.

I began by comparing "Virtuous Minds" with Moreland's "Love Your God..." I read Moreland's book a few months ago and it blew my mind. It was everything I needed to hear. I devoured that book! You see, in the intervening years between college and now I felt like I had lost the intellectual community which had surrounded me since... well, since kindergarten! I suddenly felt adrift in a sea of anti-intellectualism. Moreland encouraged me not to give up on my individual intellectual pursuits of lifelong learning, but it was Mr. Dow's book that encouraged me not to give up on the general state of intellectual virtues in society.

What Mr. Dow's book did more than anything else though was to point out how the pursuit of the intellectual virtues results in loving God and loving my neighbour. Ironically, "Virtuous Minds" was more effective in showing me how these virtues result in loving God than Moreland's "Love Your God with All Your Mind"! "Virtuous Minds" showed me the connection between being fair-minded and being a good listener (and the value of that). It reminded me that how we treat other people's ideas is as important as how we treat other people, since their ideas are part of who they are. And the conclusion that the purpose is to become intellectually virtuous rather than merely doing intellectually virtuous things was very apropos.

So, whether you need a kick in the pants to jumpstart your pursuit of knowledge or a reminder on the importance of the intellectual virtues, I highly recommend both "Love Your God..." and "Virtuous Minds".

Not Your Usual Book Report. Narcissus and Goldmund

I recently read Hermann Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund.” Before he wrote “The Glass Bead Game,” for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, “Narcissus and Goldmund” was considered his literary triumph. There is good reason for it. Through the novel, Hesse explores Nietzschean thought and Jungian archetypes through a medium of entertainment without losing his audience along the way (evidence: I read this in two nights and it was very hard to put down).

The story begins in a cloister when a young boy comes to study at the school. Narcissus, one of the cloister’s gifted teachers, takes the boy, Goldmund, under his wing and begins to open his eyes to his true nature. Goldmund initially wants to become a monk, like his good friend Narcissus, but Narcissus makes him realize that he is entirely unsuited to a monk's ascetic life. Where Narcissus is a thinker, a man of ideas and the abstract, Goldmund is an artist, a man of the senses and passions.

Narcissus realizes that waking up this dormant nature within Goldmund and urging him to pursue his true self will most assuredly result in him leaving the cloister and possibly destroy their friendship, but this is a cost that must be accepted. As Narcissus himself states, “My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.” In this case, Narcissus serves Goldmund by revealing to Goldmund that he needs to consider another life trajectory. It is an interesting goal and likely one of the few selfless actions in the book. I resonate with both the goal and the action. I myself have made some important life decisions based on finding "the best soil" for my gifts and qualities and I admire the desire to use these to help another person become the very best person he/she can be. This is, in my view, a consequence of "loving my neighbour." Of course, I disagree with Narcissus in how this should be done and the reason for helping someone become "the best them," but our conclusions are similar!

As a result, Goldmund goes off into the world and pursues a hedonistic life. His driving force? Lust. Lust for women. Lust for freedom. Lust for life. Here it is appropriate to give my judgment on the book. I don't recommend it. The good parts of this book (interesting commentary on relationships, morality, purpose of life, etc.) did not need explicit sex or murder scenes. I did not need to know the details of Goldmund's hedonistic life for me to understand who he became. This book contained much that was not "noble, right, pure and lovely." As such, I cannot in good conscience recommend it. Sin was not presented as sin, but was seductively presented as justifiable and possibly even good.

In any case, the story continues and toward the end of the book, [SPOILER ALERT] Goldmund returns to the cloister. Narcissus does a bit of good ol’ psychoanalysis and explains that Goldmund’s hedonistic living was an escapist mechanism. He says, “So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.” Despite this succinct analysis, most of the book is spent pursuing and praising the hedonist's life. Goldmund does seem to gain some maturity in his last years (maybe? kinda sorta?), but it's not really clear what exactly he learns and what of his younger life he actually deems foolish. It's a disheartening ending because Narcissus' observation is entirely correct: Goldmund experienced all life had to offer, but he was left in the desert with a life of few worthy accomplishments (a few great art pieces, but no moving acts of unselfish love, no obvious character growth, ... nothing of eternal significance). Goldmund's hunger is not satiated with women or the vagrant's life.

One of the things about this book that greatly saddened me (an emotional response to a book is just a fact of life, so a purely intellectual book review is not a holistic picture) was the religious positions of these two men. Narcissus is essentially a Platonist. His religious life in the cloister has not affected him in the least except to provide him with the ideal climate in which he can pursue a life of the mind. His pursuit of truth and learning has not led him to the ultimate Truth. 

Goldmund, disappointingly, rejects a notion of god, or at least a loving god, and comes to a point of goddess worship. This goddess is an amalgam of his mother, the women he loved, and a general “mother earth” persona. Goldmund’s dream is to create a sculpture of this woman and apart from the fact that he would have done it in the art traditions of the Middle Ages, I cannot help but think it would have born many similarities to the traditional “Venus figurines” of the Paleolithic time period (see the Venus von Willendorf at right). His great epiphany is that joy and agony are not opposites as one might suspect and that the mother goddess is both a goddess of love and death. This conclusion leaves much to be desired. Although Goldmund embraces death, it is not because "to die is gain." Goldmund does not recognize that the relationship between joy and agony is because "we consider our sufferings joy" or "in our weakness He is made strong." In fact, Goldmund cannot even articulate why they might be related. With a broader spiritual understanding, I think he would have been able to find much of what he was searching for. Just as Narcissus' quest for truth should have led him to God, Goldmund's quest for love and freedom should have led him to the cross. After all, "it is for freedom that Christ has set us free" and "we love because He first loved us."

This book made me wish I were still studying philosophy though! Unfortunately, my books by Nietzsche are elsewhere and I'm too lazy to go check them out of the library, but echoes of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," "Beyond Good and Evil," and "On the Genealogy of Morality" were all over the place! I don't know much about Jungian thought, but I do know that the analysis of these two very different personalities and their interactions with each other and with others recalled the Myer's Briggs personality types (which are based on Jungian archetypes). I will spare you a detailed analysis on the philosophic and psychological statements made by the book because they would be 1) largely uninformed, 2) tedious (much citing and cross-referencing), and 3) likely completely counter to what the author was actually trying to say!

That's my take on Hesse's book. I will likely not read any more of his books, but I appreciated the opportunity to dust off some critical reading skills. Karen Kingsbury leaves a bit to be desired in meaty commentary, you understand...