Philosophers From The United States

"The great books ... afford us the best examples of man's efforts to seek the truth, both about the nature of things and about human conduct, by methods other than those of experimental science; and because these examples are presented in the context of equally striking examples of man's efforts to learn by experiment ... the great books provide us with the best materials for judging whether the experimental method is or is not the only acceptable method of inquiry into all things."

"Since we are confused about ends, we do not know how to employ means. Though our means of improving the material conditions of existence exceed those of any previous generation, we could not use them, in the great depression, to protect our fellow-citizens from starvation and despair. The means of improving the material conditions of existence are now diverted to the extermination of mankind on a greater scale than ever before."

"Civilization is not a standard of living. It is not a way of life. Civilization is the deliberate pursuit of a common ideal. Education is the deliberate attempt to form human character in terms of an ideal. The chaos in education with which we are familiar is an infallible sign of the disintegration of civilization; for it shows that ideals are no longer commonly held, clearly understood, or deliberately pursued."

"We are told ... statements that are not mathematical or logical formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true, but they only look like that. They cannot really be either necessary or certain."

"All this results in a colossal confusion of means and ends. Wealth and power become the ends of life. Men become merely means. Justice is the interest of the stronger. This, of course, splits the community in two. How can there be a community between exploited and exploiters, between those who work and do not own and those who own and do not work, between those who are weak and those who are strong? Moral and intellectual and artistic and spiritual development are not with us the aim of life; they receive the fag ends of our attention and our superfluous funds. We seldom attempt to justify education by its contribution to moral, intellectual, artistic, and spiritual growth."

"We do not seem to get very far by talking about democracy. We know that Germany is not one. She says so. We know that Russia is not one, though Stalin says she is one. We are not sure about some elements in the government of England and France. We are not altogether sure about this country. The reason is, of course, that we do not know what a democracy is or grasp the fundamental notions on which it rests. [...] Is democracy a good form of government? Is the United States a democracy? If we are to prepare to defend democracy we must be able to answer these questions. I repeat that our ability to answer them is much more important than the quantity or quality of aeroplanes, bombs, tanks, flame-throwers, and miscellaneous munitions that we can hurl at the enemy."

"It is doubtful, too, whether we can achieve free minds by concentrating our efforts on making our pupils economically independent. We want free minds which will seek the goods in their order. Those who seek primarily their private economic interests may become enslaved to them and try to enslave the rest of us as well."

"The degree now has little significance in terms of education. It is the recognition accorded a person who has passed through an eight-year elementary school, a four-year high school, and a four-year college. These institutions are regarded as fixed and immutable, to be eternally crowned by the bachelor’s degree. What goes on in them is not important. The degree does not stand for education; it stands for a certain number of years in educational institutions, and this is not the same thing."

"Now what I want to know is why I should have had to wait until age forty-three to get an education somewhat worse than that which any sophomore ought to have. The liberal arts are the arts of freedom. To be free a man must understand the tradition in which he lives. A great book is one which yields up through the liberal arts a clear and important understanding of our tradition. An education which consisted of the liberal arts as understood through great books and of great books understood through the liberal arts would be one and the only one which would enable us to comprehend the tradition in which we live. It must follow that if we want to educate our students for freedom, we must educate them in the liberal arts and in the great books. And this education we must give them, not by the age of forty-three, but by the time they are eighteen, or at the latest twenty."

"We know now that mechanical and technical progress is not identical with civilization. We must conclude, in fact, that our faith that technology will take the place of justice has been naive. Technology supplies the goods we want, for material goods are indubitably goods. Technology can give us bigger, brighter, faster, and cheaper automobiles. It cannot tell us who ought to have them, or how many, or where they should go. The notion that a just and equitable distribution of goods will be achieved by the advance of technology or that by its aid we shall put material goods in their proper relation to all others is reduced to absurdity by the coincidence of the zenith of technology and the nadir of moral and political life."

"The great problem of our time is moral, intellectual, and spiritual. With a superfluity of goods we are sinking into poverty. With a multitude of gadgets we are no happier than we were before. With a declining death rate we have yet to discover what to do with our lives. With a hatred of war we are now deeply engaged in the greatest war in history. With a love of liberty we see much of the world in chains."

"Many colleges of liberal arts and the researches of many scholars in the humanities and the social studies are important only to those whose livelihood depends upon them."

"My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves."

"A university is a community of scholars. It is not a kindergarten; it is not a club; it is not a reform school; it is not a political party; it is not an agency of propaganda. A university is a community of scholars.The greatest university is that in which the largest proportion of these scholars are most competent in their chosen fields.A college teaches, a university both teaches and learns."

"The political organization must be tested by its conformity to these ideals. Its basis is moral. Its end is the good for man. Only democracy has this basis. Only democracy has this end. If we do not believe in this basis or this end, we do not believe in democracy. These are the principles which we must defend if we are to defend democracy.Are we prepared to defend these principles? Of course not. For forty years and more our intellectual leaders have been telling us they are not true. In the whole realm of social thought there is nothing but opinion. Since there is nothing but opinion, everybody is entitled to his own opinion. There is no difference between good and bad; there is only the difference between expediency and inexpediency. We cannot even talk about good and bad states or good and bad men. There are no morals; there are only the folkways. the folkways. Man is no different from the other animals; human societies are no different from animal societies. The aim of animals and animal societies, if there is an aim, is subsistence. The aim of human beings and human societies, if there is one, is material comfort. Freedom is simply doing what you please. The only common principle that we are urged to have is that there are no principles at all."

"The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists. ... as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible."

"Well, it seems to me it might be better if the colleges had race horses. The jockeys could wear the school colors and they could ride the races, and the horses wouldn't have to pass the entrance examinations."

"The rise of experimental science has not made the Great Conversation irrelevant. ... Science itself is part of the Great Conversation."

"Adler struck me as far too nimble at winning arguments to be really convincing."

"The books to be read should not be limited to those written in English.... Instead it should be devoted to the great works of history, biography, philosophy, theology, natural science, social science, and mathematics, as well as the... tradition of Western literature -- in English translation... Its aim should not be a survey of Western civilization, but an effort to understand the basic ideas and issues in Western thought."

"In my first two years of reading the same books that I had read as a student with Erskine, but now reading them again in order to collaborate with Mark Van Doren to discuss them with our students, my eyes were opened to the fact that I had not understood them very well, if at all, on my first reading. In the next five or six years, that discovery was repeated again and again, as I learned more each time I reread the same books I had read before. Now at the end of my life, still rereading the great books that I started reading seventy years ago, I can summarize this whole process by repeating two insights mentioned before in this book: (1) the great books are the books that are inexhaustibly rereadable for both intellectual pleasure and profit: (2) understanding the ideas to be found in the great books develops slowly in the course of one’s whole life, bearing its best fruits in one’s mature years after fifty or sixty."

"Every seminar should involve at its conclusion the assignment of a short composition in which students would attempt to state how their understanding of the book discussed in the seminar was increased by their participation in the discussion."

"For the educational establishment... test scores are treated as indications of the extent to which the required ground covering has been done. ...as educationally significant. However, while they may be prognostic of a child's ability to get through school... they do not provide us with an appraisal of the child's progress in the long process of becoming a generally educated human being -- the advance made toward a more skillful, thoughtful, and cultivated mind."

"A report of the Carnegie Foundation recommended the abolition of the undergraduate bachelor of science degree in education leading to the state certification of teachers. Schools of education should become research institutions at the graduate level of the university and not places for the training of schoolteachers. Those planning to enter the profession of teaching should have four years of general, liberal education at the college level, and then three years of practice teaching under supervision... the best teacher is one who learns in the process of teaching."

"An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture."

"It is obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing with only two other arts, agriculture and medicine, an exceptionally important characteristic A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis, it is the patient himself who must get well, grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis, it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place."

"The argument for world government as the indispensable condition of world peace can be boiled down to a single proposition: if local civil government is necessary for local civil peace, then world civil government is necessary for world peace."

"Above all, money-making and other external indices of social success must become subordinate to the inner attainments of moral and intellectual virtue."

"To avoid this error, the error of assuming that that to be widely read and to be well read are the same thing, we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning. ... In the history of education, men have often distinguished between learning by instruction and learning by discovery. ... Discovery stands to instruction as learning without a teacher stands to learning through the help of one. In both cases the activity of learning goes on in the one who learns. It would be a mistake to suppose that discovery is active learning, and instruction passive. There is no inactive learning, just as there is no inactive reading. This is so true, in fact, that a better way to make the distinction clear is to call instruction “aided discovery.”"

"Too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few. There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding."

"[Television, radio, and magazines] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think."

"The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea."

"...an adequate reform of public education in our school system cannot be accomplished by anything like a quick fix. We suspect that anyone who thinks otherwise cannot fully understand the shape of an adequate reform or all the obstacles to be overcome in achieving it."

"Unlike many of my contemporaries, I never write books for my fellow professors to read. I have no interest in the academic audience at all. I'm interested in Joe Doakes. A general audience can read any book I write – and they do."

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you."

"Montaigne speaks of an “Abecedarian” ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it. The first is the ignorance of those who, not knowing their A-B-C’s, cannot read at all. The second is the ignorance of those who have misread many books. They are, as Alexander Pope rightly calls them, “bookful blockheads, ignorantly read.” There have always been literate ignoramuses, who have read too widely, and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all “sophomores.”"

"You can't be a philosopher and an activist. If you do, you get all mixed up."

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live."

"It is only by struggling with difficult books, books over one's head, that anyone learns to read."

"The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid."

"I believe in God who made of one blood all races that dwell on earth. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development."

"The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people."

"Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification."

"The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree."

"He was at once a scientist in his skillful use of history as a tool for comprehending the present, and a prophet in the application of his gift for analyzing the present as an indicator of the future. Because he lived simultaneously firmly entrenched within his time and decades ahead of it, the light of his wisdom, like that of his great love for humanity, is one that never diminishes."

"I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right."

"The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans."

"The difference of development, North and South, is explained as a sort of working out of cosmic social and economic law. ... In this sweeping mechanistic interpretation, there is no room for the real plot of the story, for the clear mistake and guilt of building a new slavery of the working class in the midst of a fateful experiment in democracy."

"The Negro voter ... had, then, but one clear economic ideal and that was his demand for land, his demand that the great plantations be subdivided and given to him as his right. This was a perfectly fair and natural demand and ought to have been an integral part of Emancipation. To emancipate four million laborers whose labor had been owned, and separate them from the land upon which they had worked for nearly two and a half centuries, was an operation such as no modern country had for a moment attempted or contemplated. The German and English and French serf, the Italian and Russian serf, were, on emancipation, given definite rights in the land. Only the American Negro slave was emancipated without such rights and in the end this spelled for him the continuation of slavery."

"President Johnson, forgetting his own pre-war declaration that the “great plantations must be seized, and divided into small farms,” declared that this land must be restored to its original owners and this would be done if owners received a presidential pardon. The pardoning power was pushed and the land all over the South rapidly restored. Negroes were dispossessed."