My willingness to match my wits against someone obviously superior to me in training and talent began one evening when Mr. Gregerson suggested with calm certainty (not a hint of doubt) that the college professor has the noblest profession. Mr. Gregerson said this for the clear reason that a professor can single-mindedly pursue truth. I am the son of a doctor, and in that moment filial piety awoke in me with a feeble gurgle. That is to say, I was shocked, but I also lacked any serious rebuttal. Having had a couple of months to think on it, please allow my riposte: Philosophy professors read Plato’s Phaedo and recall that “the aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death.” My father goes to work, and he greets death with a handshake. Some days, his fundamental beliefs are burned in the crucible of experience, and he is rocked to the core of his being by unanswerable questions. My father’s colleague is Dr. Joseph Mamlin, nominated for the Nobel peace prize for his work battling the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa: a scholar, and an activist. Once as I accompanied him on rounds, he sent a dying man out the doorway of an impoverished health clinic. He turned to me wearily and said, “A case could be made for going into philosophy instead of medicine.” But then he turned back around, and he continued to practice medicine. Of course, this goes both ways. An example is the celebrated religion professor who visits prisons but then returns to teaching and incorporates his experience into his scholarship. I do not advocate the superiority of professions, but instead I wish to emphasize the dual necessity of belief and action in the pursuit of truth. While education is a crucial component of its mission, it is merely a component. The full purpose of Wabash is, as the College professes, to transform students into men who think critically, act responsibly, lead effectively, and live humanely. A prerequisite for activism is a rigorous belief. Liberal arts should develop this. Before any visceral reaction to condemn moral preaching as the domain of the church, I do not encourage the school to instill particular ideologies in students. But the school should encourage a degree of close mindedness such that the student believes something. A truly open mind is an impediment to education. Whittaker Chambers wrote, “Clearly, if the mind was open… truth would become simply a question of which opening you preferred.” Students must have some filter to separate truth from nonsense. This filter is a system of rigorous belief. By rigorous I distinguish it from the common sort of belief, by which most people live. Unthinking, the masses are the playthings of pedagogy, batted between the platitudes of their parents and pop culture. The school should ensure that we have a raison d’être of profound philosophical and existential merit. Professors must challenge students to overcome intellectual cowardice and develop a rigorous belief. They must inspire contempt for the unexamined life, enthusiasm to follow a philosophy to its logical conclusion, and the tenacity to examine dogma. Books, art, and discussion provide the path for this first journey. But the student has just begun. Having learned to think critically, the student will not have fulfilled more than a quarter of his mission to also act responsibly, lead effectively, and live humanely. Yes, we must engage the life of the mind, but we must also engage life itself. This is activism. The student, armed with rigorous belief wrought in the forge of pure idea, must interact with a corrupt world. On the pedestal of theory, many ideas have shone with the brilliance of Divine Light. But when an idea is made incarnate, then it must interact with such human concerns as compassion, pride, hope, and despair. Truth and virtue are intertwined with the sanctity of the human being, however fallen or twisted we might be. Like the doctor who tests Tillich in the face of a people’s pandemic, or the professor who discovers the essence of Calvin in a criminal, one must challenge the student of the liberal arts to seek the pristine truth of his thoughts in the sharp and verdant filth of humanity. Allow action to become the distillery of intellectualism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his monumental address “The American Scholar”, separates the thinker from the man thinking. In the address, he wrote: Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty…The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Activism benefits a community, but it is essential for the human development of the individual. Without it, “he is not yet man.” The College is right to advocate activism, not only for its positive externalities, but for the intrinsic philosophical rigor that it demands of the activist. In activism, the student tests his fundamental beliefs in the crucible of human experience. He truly learns to think critically, act responsibly, lead effectively, and live humanely. |
