Comparing Advices

How Should We Hope? Advice #4

            A few months ago I introduced ideas from Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. (See Story and Meaning posts for March 3, 10, and 24, 2016.)  Today I recall some of that material in order to compare Lear’s advice about hope with advices from Simon Critchley and Adrienne Martin.

            Lear says that people may hope for good futures even in cases of cultural devastation.  Superficially, this stands in stark contrast to Critchley’s advice to “abandon (almost) all hope”; i.e. to limit our hopes, particularly our hopes for political or social goods, to what is realistic.  Lear encourages us to hope despite the worst things imaginable, while Critchley warns against unreasonable hopes, especially if those unrealistic hopes determine policy choices.

            On closer examination, though, Critchley and Lear’s advices may complement each other.

            Chief Plenty Coups believed the Crow people faced an oncoming storm, a storm that would level all the “trees of the forest” (i.e. various native peoples).  The coming of Europeans to the Great Plains would end the traditional Crow way of life.  The very concepts the Crow used to describe a good life would be robbed of their thick cultural meanings.  The Crow people would have to live on a reservation, adapt to white schools, and obey laws established by the invaders.  Courage, a quintessential virtue for a Crow warrior, would no longer be expressed in battle, by planting a coup-stick, or by raiding hostile tribes.  Courage might have to be “thinned” down into a willingness to face an uncertain future.  In spite of all this, Plenty Coups held out the hope that the Crow could weather the storm and still be Crow. 

            What might Critchley say about this?  Obviously, I don’t know what he would say, but it seems he might approve of much of Lear’s thinking while defending his own demand for realism.

            Of first importance, Critchley might say, Plenty Coups (and the Crow elders who interpreted and validated Plenty Coups’ visions) offered a realistic hope.  Suppose Plenty Coups had offered his people a different hope, hope for victory over the invading Europeans.  Certainly many Native American leaders preached such hope at various points in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  They may have known that the whites outnumbered their people, and they may have realized that the whites’ factories and inventions gave the invaders more powerful weapons.  Nevertheless, they offered hope for victory.  Critchley might point out that such hopes led to disaster.

            To further his case, Critchley might adopt the language of Adrienne Martin’s “incorporation thesis” to describe this bad hope.  Native American leaders who preached hope of victory probably acknowledged that the odds were against them.  We can easily imagine such chiefs admitting that their chances of defeating the whites were small.  However, on the “incorporation thesis,” so long as the desired good is possible, we may then consider that the desired good is so practically important that we license ourselves to incorporate that good into our lives.  Critchley could argue that Martin’s incorporation thesis, applied to Native American leaders in the nineteenth century, would have done little to prevent disastrous policies based on unrealistic hope.

            Aside: Martin could defend her theory.  When we license ourselves to hope (e.g. a patient hopes that the experimental drug will cure the disease), we do not deceive ourselves about the probability of success.  Martin explicitly says it is wise to make a “back-up plan” in case the hoped for event does not occur.  How the notion of back-up plan might apply to Native American leaders in Plenty Coups’ situation is unclear.

            Critchley might conclude that he has no objection to “radical” hope so long as one’s policy decisions are based on realism rather than hope.  It is permissible, even admirable, that Plenty Coups preached a message of hope to his people—but only because that hope was grounded on the firm recognition that the “storm” could not be avoided.  In the late 1800s Native American chiefs could do nothing to stop the cultural devastation of their peoples.  Plenty Coups was nearly alone among Native American leaders in that his radical hope was also realistic.  In contrast, the “transformational” hope that the 2008 Obama campaign would help produce a post-racial American was both unrealistic and harmful.

            Jonathan Lear might agree with Critchley in this: Plenty Coups’ radical hope was not unrealistic.  But he might also object that Plenty Coups did base policy recommendations on his hope.  Plenty Coups urged his people to learn farming.  He sought out schools for the reservation and encouraged Crow children to attend them.  He pushed his people to obey laws established by whites.  He did all this in hope that the Crow would still be Crow.  He fought hard, by legal and legislative means, to keep traditional Crow lands in Crow hands.  Lear would argue that radical hope helped the people of the Chickadee to weather the storm better than other tribes.

            Stepping back from what Critchley, Martin, or Lear might say (and they would undoubtedly have much more to say), it seems that there is no necessary conflict between them.  (1) We ought to be realistic.  Probably the experimental drug will not work.  The European invasion of the 18^th and 19^th centuries could not be stopped. (2) In spite of dismal prospects, we may still hope for a good future after the storm.  We may not know what that good future will look like, but (as Lear puts it) the goodness of the world is almost infinite, far greater than what finite beings like us can assay.  Therefore, we may hope.  (3) As Martin puts it, we “incorporate” hope into our lives in many ways; hope is a “syndrome.” 

            As I wrote in March, it is possible that the 21^st century will bring cultural devastation to many people, perhaps even to the world’s leading military power.  We fear climate change run amok, we fear ever-more-deadly terrorists, we fear major power confrontations, we fear super germs invented in labs, we fear descent into authoritarianism and the loss of liberty, and the list goes on.  Our liberal, scientific, technological culture could suffer disaster.  Critchley would say we should, with a clear-eyed gaze on all these possibilities, work realistically to minimize them. Martin would remind us that in regard to all these fears, good outcomes are both possible and very important; therefore we may hope against them.  Lear would say that we should continue to hope even if the worst happens. 

           

Story and Meaning at 10,000

Ten Thousand Visits

     I began this blog in March 2012.  The automatic counter provided by the blogspot software tells me there have been 10012 visits to the site.  Number 10,000 was probably someone from Russia.  (The software also records country of origin.)  There's been a surge of visits from Russia in the last two weeks.
     Ten thousand visits in 52 months is not a lot.  Story and Meaning doesn't rack up readers like sport blogs or pet videos.  Nevertheless, I'm grateful to all of you for checking in.
     If you're curious--of the 10,000 visits, more than 7000 have been from the U.S.  Russia and the Ukraine have both had more than 700, with more than a thousand from other countries (dozens of them).
     I will continue to post new material, either philosophy essays or new fiction.  Responses via email or the comment button are always welcome.

Adrienne Martin and Hope

How Should We Hope? Advice #3

            Adrienne Martin’s 2014 book, How We Hope: A Moral Psychology, provides a third advice for hope, which may be paraphrased thus: License yourself to incorporate an important possible good into your life.  I’ll try to explain.

            First, Martin describes what she calls the “orthodox” definition of hope among modern philosophers.  On the orthodox view, hope consists in the combination of two things: desire for some outcome plus a probability judgment that the outcome is possible (neither certain nor impossible).  Second, Martin argues—persuasively, I think—that the orthodox doctrine of hope cannot be correct.

            She makes her case by appealing to examples of what is often called “hoping against hope”; that is, cases of hope where the desired outcome is very improbable.  Martin asks us to imagine Alan and Bess, two terminal cancer patients.  (Martin herself spent time volunteering on a cancer ward.)  The doctors offer Alan and Bess an experimental drug, telling them there is only a one in ten thousand chance the drug will cure them.  Both patients accept the drug.  Alan admits that a cure is possible, but that possibility plays no role in his daily life.  Alan hopes weakly.  (Perhaps he participates in the trial only to benefit science or future patients.)  In contrast, Bess allows herself to hope strongly.  She knows that probably the drug won’t help her, but the mere possibility that it will becomes a significant part of her life.  She thinks about her future and makes plans based on her hope.  She also makes “back-up plans” in case the drug doesn’t work; i.e. she writes a will and gives instructions for end-of-life treatment.  On the whole, though, her life is deeply affected by her hope.

            Now: given the orthodox definition of hope, how should we think about the difference between Alan and Bess?  On the orthodox view, hope just is desire + probability judgment.  So how can we understand Bess’s greater hope when compared to Alan?  Are we to assume that Bess has a stronger desire for life than Alan?  That hardly seems right.  Alternatively, should we say that Bess has somehow “cheated” by convincing herself that the experimental drug has a greater chance of success?  It is certainly possible that a person can let her desire for a certain outcome influence her judgment about the likelihood of that outcome, but does this happen in every case?  Martin points out that a person’s subjective confidence in a desired outcome can vary significantly even in the course of a few hours.  If the orthodox definition of hope were correct, that would mean a person’s hope for the desired outcome varies with his feelings about probability.

            Martin’s conclusion: the orthodox view of hope cannot satisfactorily account for cases of hoping against hope.  Something else is going on when we hope.  So she proposes an alternative analysis of hope, which she called the “incorporation” thesis.

            The incorporation view starts with desire, though Martin rightly points out that “desire” needs to be interpreted very broadly to account for hope.  Our attitude toward the thing we hope for is expressed in feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and actions.  Following Margaret Walker, Martin says hope is a “syndrome” rather than simply desire.

            More importantly, the incorporation thesis holds that in hope we make two judgments.  The first judgment is the probability judgment identified by the orthodox definition.  To hope for a thing, one must judge that it is possible, neither certain nor impossible.  The second judgment is a practical judgment by which one decides whether the desired outcome is important to one’s life.  The fact that a desired outcome is important to a person gives her reason to hope for that thing.

            On the incorporation thesis, we do not have to say that Alan desires life less than Bess, nor must we say that Bess is somehow deceiving herself about the drug’s chances of success.  Bess has made a correct probability judgment: there is a tiny chance that the drug will help her.  And she has made a permissible practical judgment: gaining help from the drug is a very important part of her conception of her life going forward.  On the basis of these two judgments, Martin says, a person may “license” herself to hope for an outcome.

            A “license” is not permission to ignore evidence.  Bess continues to believe, based on the best evidence she has (the doctors’ testimony) that the drug has a very small chance of curing her.  Therefore Bess makes back-up plans, in case the drug doesn’t work.  But she licenses herself to imagine a cure, to picture it, to feel encouraged, even to make plans for life after the cure.  In other words, she licenses herself to inhabit a syndrome of hope.  As a syndrome, hope affects her life in many different but overlapping ways: perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and actions.

            Martin points out that hope is often thought to have peculiarly sustaining qualities.  Hope supports us through hard times.  How is this to be explained, if hope = desire + probability judgment?  As we saw with Simon Critchley’s advice, on the orthodox view of hope, what we ought to do is temper our hopes to fit the evidence.  Don’t get your hopes up, because unreasonable hopes will get crushed.  On the orthodox view, hope’s power to sustain us in hard times may be real, but it is bought at too high a price, the price of unreasonable belief.

            I think Martin is clearly right, Critchley wrong.  (About hope.  I make no comment on Critchley’s political views.)  Bess need not deceive herself about the drug’s likely efficacy.  As she undergoes the drug regimen she may experience lots of hard times.  By licensing herself to hope, she may also experience the sustaining power of hope.

            (A side note: a medical researcher friend tells me there is empirical evidence that hopefulness in real world patients like Bess—who after all, is merely an illustration—actually increases the chances of cure.  I suspect he is right.  Hope may be demonstrably effective.  But this is a complicated matter, and Martin’s argument stands without it.)

            On the incorporation view, if some desired outcome is possible, and if I judge that it is important to my life, I may license myself to hope for it.  Hope is a syndrome: I imagine it, I think about it, I encourage myself with it, I perceive the world in the light of it, and I act in accord with it.

           

           

Snyder and Hope

How Should We Hope? Advice #2

            Immanuel Kant thought the central questions of human life revolved around knowledge (“What can I know?”), morality (“What ought I to do?”), and happiness (“For what may I hope?”).  I want to explore five responses to Kant’s question about hope, all from contemporary thinkers.  A central question in this series of essays rises when we compare and contrast the various advices.  To what degree can these disparate voices be understood as complementing each other?  To what degree are they contradictory?

The second advice comes from C.R. Snyder and his research associates.  Snyder, who died in 2006, was a leading proponent of “positive” psychology.  Positive psychology is a broad movement in late 20^th century psychology that moves the focus of psychology from mental illness (fixing what is wrong) to the achievement of satisfactory life (pursuing and enjoying what is right or healthy).  Snyder invented “hope theory” and “hope therapy,” but many other psychologists on his research team at the University of Kansas contributed to the development of the theory.

The heart of Snyder’s theory is simple.  The core definition: Hope is the sum of perceived capabilities to produce routes to desired goals, along with the perceived motivation to use those routes.

Much of human life is teleological; that is, we pursue goals.  Snyder offers a simple diagram:

Protagonist (A) --> Goal (B). 

But we often encounter obstacles that keep us from reaching our goals.  This gives us a more complicated diagram. 

Protagonist (A) --> [Block] Goal (B). 

Two things are needed to reach life goals when obstacles get in the way, Snyder thought.  A person needs to be able to think up “pathways” around the obstacle that may enable her to reach the goal, and she needs to have “agentic motivation” to invent these pathways and put them into practice.


                                             (Pathway)
                                 ***************>
   (Motivation)    *

Protagonist (A) -->      [Block]   Goal (B). 

            Snyder’s advice for hope, then, is straightforward.  Ask yourself two questions: (1) Are you able to think of pathways to your goals? (2) Are you motivated to use the pathways to achieve your goals?  If your answer to both questions is yes, then you have hope.  On this theory, hope is entirely cognitive.  It consists in the two affirmations just mentioned.

            On the basis of this core theory, Snyder and his fellow researchers made several important claims, all of which they say are supported by empirical evidence.  (1) Hope can be measured by simple, yet effective “hope scales.”  The research team invented short (typically, 20 question) instruments that enabled them to evaluate individuals in different populations (children, adults, working people, etc.).  (2) People who score higher on hope scales fairly reliably report higher levels of positive affect.  Even though the theory defines hope as cognitive only, the higher the hope score, the better the patient feels. (3) Higher hope scores correlate with positive life outcomes, such as better relationships, success in school, and employment success. (4) Therapeutic interventions can fairly reliably increase hope scores, and with higher hope scores such interventions lead to positive life outcomes in relationships, education, and employment.

            Snyder went so far as to propose that hope theory explains one of the conundrums of modern clinical psychology.  Psychology is not a theoretically unified discipline.  Freudians, Jungians, behaviorists, rational-emotive therapists, and so on; the list of contemporary schools of psychology is long.  The various theories contradict each other; it’s not possible to affirm the central beliefs of each theory.  And yet, there is empirical evidence that clinical therapy based on each of these theories works.  Practitioners of each therapeutic modality can point to good evidence that their therapy improves the lives of patients.  Snyder proposed that theoretical differences matter less than the fact that the patient has entered therapy (of whatever sort).  By entering therapy, the patient has taken a step on a pathway that she thinks may lead to her goal.  In practice, clinical therapy, of whatever sort, increases a patient’s hope as defined by hope theory.

            Hope therapy aims to be intensely practical.  Snyder’s followers urge that therapists adopt or invent therapeutic interventions that help patients believe that they can invent pathways to their goals and that they are motivated to use those pathways.  By improving patients’ hope, therapists can reliably improve their lives.

            Let’s take a step back from Snyder’s theory for a moment.  It’s obvious, but needs to be said: the goals that clients aim at are things like gaining employment, winning a promotion, starting or improving a relationship, creating a work of art, or graduating from college.  The goals are all mundane, this-worldly goals.  Hope theory has little to say to someone whose goal is a better life in his next incarnation or someone who seeks God’s favor at the last judgment.  Transcendent goals are simply off the radar.  The hope theorist/therapist may be completely agnostic about such goals, except as desire for such goals limits or abets pursuit of mundane goals.

Further, in some cases the therapist may have to challenge a client to see that his goals are not realistic.  Hopes for levitation powers are going to be frustrated.  Winning the Nobel Prize or earning a billion dollars are so wildly improbable that aiming for them practically ensures frustration.  The therapist can help the client adopt realistic goals: recognition by one’s peers or earning enough to retire comfortably.

Hope theory aims at the mundane, and it pushes for reasonableness.  Its claims are fairly modest.  Therapy based on the hope theory model can fairly reliably help people achieve more of their goals and feel happier.

From a philosophical point of view, hope theory fits well into the analysis of hope we saw in Simon Critchley; i.e. that hope = desire + probability judgment.  Critchley’s advice says that we ought to abandon (almost) all hope; we ought to hope only for likely things.  So long as we obey that rule, Critchley would have no objection to Snyder’s theory, which merely gives practical advice about how to hope.

Next week I will complicate the matter by introducing a philosopher who disagrees with Critchley.

Not my normal post

Why I Quit the Republican Party

            I have been a lifelong Republican.  Today, June 23, 2016, after more than forty years, I changed my registration to “Independent.”  In good conscience I cannot be a member of a political party whose leaders have made common cause with Donald Trump.

            No political party is perfect.  I have never supported every idea endorsed in Republican Party platforms.  On the other hand, I’ve never been tempted to join the Democrats; on the whole Republican ideas make more sense.  Over the years, I have voted for Republicans, Independents, Democrats, and assorted minor party candidates.  I am not a policy purist quitting the Republican Party in protest over some minor detail.

            Donald Trump is not a minor detail.  Republican leaders in Congress, city governments and statehouses need to reckon carefully.  The election of 2016 presents their party with a moment of truth.  What does the Republican Party stand for?

            Trump is wrong on trade.  His protectionist ideas would greatly damage the U.S. economy.  He wants to return to policies of the 1920s that helped make the Great Depression.

            Trump is wrong—disastrously, mind-bogglingly wrong—on immigration.  Deport 11 million people?  This bizarre notion, if actually enacted, would provoke massive public resistance.  Force Mexico to pay for a “wall” on our border?  How?  By military threats?  Given the worldwide economic chaos resulting from Trump’s protectionism, economic threats would be idle.

            Trump is wrong on international law.  He openly said he would order U.S. military persons to “go after” the wives and families of suspected terrorists.  Such orders would violate international law, laws ratified by the U.S. in accordance with our Constitution.  Such orders would be completely immoral.

            Trump is wrong about “making America strong.”  Has he never seen the Statue of Liberty?  We have often failed to live up to our beliefs, but America is a country that welcomes strangers.  Excluding a whole class of people because of their religion and “profiling” people because of their religion—two ideas explicitly and repeatedly endorsed by Trump—are antithetical to American values.

            Most important (for me at least), Trump is wrong about Jesus.  Trump thinks that he can fool Christian Americans that he is a follower of Jesus, though Trump said he cannot remember ever repenting of sin.  Never repent—despite failed marriages, multiple bankruptcies, countless lawsuits, and a history of bragging (on radio!) about his marital infidelities.

            Don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t oppose Trump because he is not a Christian.  I have cheerfully voted for Muslims, Jews, atheists, and candidates whose religion I don’t know.  My objection is that Trump tries to sell himself as a Christian with apparently no recognition of the first theme in Jesus’ preaching: repentance.

            As far as I can tell, Donald Trump believes in nothing except Donald Trump.  According to him, he has the world’s greatest memory, one of the world’s best brains, a more than adequate penis, and an easy answer for every one of the nation’s problems.  What he obviously does not have is humility. 

The leaders of the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Hatfield should be ashamed—not that Trump has won the party’s nomination; Trump won the nomination, given the nature of the process.  What is shameful is their willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with Trump in the hope of temporary electoral success.  There are greater principles at stake here.  Republican leaders must repudiate Trumpism; if the price is electoral defeat, so be it. 

Donald Trump is now the titular head of the Republican Party.  Therefore I cannot be a Republican.  I hope to someday return to the fold, but not until the party has repaired this disaster.

           

Hope Advice

How Should We Hope? Advice #1

            Immanuel Kant thought the central questions of human life revolved around knowledge (“What can I know?”), morality (“What ought I to do?”), and happiness (“For what may I hope?”).  I want to explore five responses to Kant’s question about hope, all from contemporary thinkers.  A central question in this series of essays rises when we compare and contrast the various advices.  To what degree can these disparate voices be understood as complementing each other?  To what degree are they contradictory?

            The first advice is illustrated by Simon Critchley, philosophy professor at the New School for Social Research.  He wrote a New York Times opinion piece (April 19, 2014) entitled, “Abandon (Nearly) all Hope.”  The first paragraph:

With Easter upon us, powerful narratives of rebirth and resurrection are in the air and on the breeze. However, winter’s stubborn reluctance to leave to make way for the pleasing and hopeful season leads me to think not of cherry blossoms and Easter Bunnies but of Prometheus, Nietzsche, Barack Obama and the very roots of hope. Is hope always such a wonderful thing? Is it not rather a form of moral cowardice that allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering?

            Critchley reflects on Obama’s rise to prominence in 2004 and 2008, in particular on the theme of “audacious hope.”  Obama is not unusual among politicians, he says, who regularly urge voters to envision bright futures if they will only vote the right way.  He quotes Obama that audacious hope is “the best of the American spirit” and “the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary.”  But Critchley disagrees:

The problem here is with the way in which this audacious Promethean theological idea of hope has migrated into our national psyche to such an extent that it blinds us to the reality of the world that we inhabit and causes a sort of sentimental complacency that actually prevents us from seeing things aright and protesting against this administration’s moral and political lapses and those of other administrations.

            For Critchley the problem is not Barack Obama. The president merely illustrates a wrong idea.  Audacious hope is fundamentally unrealistic.  Critchley reminds us of the Melian story, reported in Thucydides.  The Athenian navy blockaded Melos, so that the Melian ally, Sparta, cannot help them.  Under truce, the Athenians demand Melos’s surrender.  The Melians had to choose between negotiated defeat and a siege with the desperate hope that the Spartans would save them.  The Melians chose hope, and when the Athenians triumphed, they slaughtered the men and made slaves of the women and children.  Audacious hope can lead to disaster.

            Courage is better than hope, Critchley says, courage to face life in a difficult world without consoling mythology.  Critchley approvingly quotes Nietzsche: “Hope is the evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment.”

            Critchley doesn’t oppose all hope.  There are reasonable hopes, he says, the fuzzy vague hopes offered by philosophers like Richard Rorty.  But we will be much better off if we abandon “audacious” hopes.

            Let’s take a step back from Critchley’s essay.  His view is actually representative of a great many modern philosophers, not just Nietzsche.  The underlying analysis of hope says that hope is a combination of two things: a desire and an epistemic judgment.  To hope for a thing means to desire that thing while believing that it is possible.

(A)  We don’t call it hope if someone expects an outcome without desiring it.  Rather, we say that someone fears an outcome that she doesn’t want.

(B)  We don’t call it hope if someone expects something that is certain, even if she desires it.  We may hope that the check is coming, but we don’t hope for it to come when the check is in our hand.

(C)  We don’t call it hope if someone desires something impossible.  We might wish that our team had won last year’s pennant, but we cannot hope that they won it, since we know they didn’t.

So: hope = desire + probability judgment (where p<1 and p>0).

Adrienne Martin call this the “orthodox” view of hope among modern philosophers, finding it held by Hume and Hobbes and illustrated by recent authors such as J.P. Day and R.S. Downie.  Given this analysis of hope, it is easy to see why most modern philosophers have little to say about it.  It’s pretty obvious that if you hope for something that isn’t likely to happen, the odds are good that your hope will be disappointed.  So the “orthodox” advice is straightforward: don’t get your hopes up, lest you have them crushed. 

Now it may be merely quaint when people invest their hopes in sports teams.  Mariner fans suffer as a result of their misplaced hopes, but nothing greater hangs on it.  Critchley’s point is that when it comes to more important questions—politics and social policy—misplaced hopes are dangerous.  The Melians’ hope condemned their men to death and their wives and children to slavery.  Critchley pushes us to ask how our policy hopes might contribute to our disasters.  He urges us to build social and political policy on realism, not hope.  We have to ask what is likely to happen, not what we would like to happen.

In future essays I will compare and contrast Critchley’s advice with others.  It seems undeniable that there is wisdom in what he says.  We may at least say this: it is possible to act foolishly while acting under the aegis of hope.  If hope is a virtue, we need to understand it well.

           

A Talk for Librarians

Wisdom and Librarians

I am invited to speak to an association of Christian librarians.  I am honored, but what should I say?  What should a philosopher say to librarians?  Consider a passage of scripture that ought to evoke thoughtful reflection among philosophers and librarians.

Proverbs 2:1-8 NIV:

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.  For the LORD gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.  He holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.

            We imagine the school of wisdom in ancient Israel.  Boys and young men, probably from the prominent families of Jerusalem and Judah, learn proverbs from their elders.  Solomon himself, we are told, invented proverbs and encouraged wise men to collect them.  Almost certainly, the wise sayings preserved in the Bible were a small part of the collective wisdom of the elders.

            Let us imagine a youth in this school.  Call him Joseph, a fitting name from Israel’s sacred history.  Joseph memorizes hundreds of proverbs and is quick-witted enough to quote just the right maxim for this or that situation.  Joseph has a bit of poetry in his soul; he has invented some sayings of his own.  Some day, perhaps, Joseph will sit as one of the wise men of Jerusalem, adding his little bit to the collective store of wisdom.

            Ancient Jerusalem’s school of wisdom had no card catalog, no Internet access, not even a building labeled “library.”  (The great library of Alexandria was seven hundred years in the future.)  But I think you notice parallels between our imagined Joseph and 21^st century students.  By necessity, education pulls students into the intellectual world of their elders.  There is a body of knowledge or insight or understanding or wisdom already collected in the maxims of the wise.  The student starts by learning some of it.  If she is talented and persistent, she may add to it.  She will become part of a living intellectual tradition.

            But notice another feature of the Jerusalem school.  According to the text, the elders promise that if the student genuinely applies himself to learning, wisdom will protect him.  The Lord will give “victory” to the upright student and will “guard the course” of the just.  Apparently, the wise men of Israel saw a deep connection between learning and morality.  In particular, if we read the rest of chapter 2, wisdom will guard the student against the temptations of wicked plotters (vv. 12-15) and the adulteress (vv. 16-19).

            Need I point out that that the seduction of the quick buck, earned at the expense of one’s neighbor or community, and the appeal of sexual thrills found outside of a marriage covenant are still current temptations?  Three thousand years separate us from the Jerusalem school of wisdom, but human beings still struggle to rightly handle money and sex.

            Wisdom, it is said, will guard the young student against such temptations.  Really?  Educators are forced to ask fundamental questions about their disciplines.  According to the biblical vision, real understanding, real insight has to touch the “heart.”  An education that promotes skills or techniques without commitment to truth is just sophistry; we read Socrates’ battle against it in Gorgias.  An education that consists only in facts and theories is just positivism; we read Ransom’s battle against it in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.

            Does it surprise you that I step from scripture into books, either ancient or modern?  Of all people Christian librarians should not be surprised.

            A living intellectual tradition is one where ideas fight.  This is a major theme in Alasdair MacIntyre’s books.  The Bible itself contains not just Proverbs but also Ecclesiastes and Job; there is tension in the tradition.  In Gorgias, Socrates argues against sophism, but Callicles argues back, and Plato put both in his book.  It is entirely right for our libraries to hold texts by 20^th century positivists, such as A.J. Ayer, as well as C.S. Lewis.  Your shelves of economic theory need to include Marxists as well as capitalists.  Julian of Norwich and Marquis de Sade.

            It is permissible, in fact, sometimes necessary, to take sides in intellectual fights.  Socrates is right; Callicles wrong.  Plato included both, not to make them equivalent, but to show the stakes in the debate and push readers to think.

            This is where teachers of philosophy and librarians come in.  We invite students into a living intellectual tradition.  If we are Christians, we invite them into a tradition that has to touch their heart.  Education is not just about theories or skills.  It is about being.

            When the student comes into her first philosophy class, she may feel overwhelmed.  When she enters the library, she feels lost. (Parenthetically, I say “library” intentionally.  With the Internet, by the end of the 21^st century, the world’s libraries will number exactly one.)  Philosophy teachers and librarians are curators of wisdom.  We are guides into the treasures of the tradition.

            Obstacles abound.  At a beginning level, some students have absorbed the prejudice “philosophy bakes no bread” and have concluded it is useless.  Others have discovered Wikipedia, both a wonderful resource and a terrible temptation.  At a slightly more sophisticated level, some students enter with ideological blinders of one sort or another; at least they believe something, but they insist their education confirm what they already know.  And there are a few students who have imbibed enough philosophical skepticism to refrain from believing anything.

            A good curator must love the treasures of her museum.  Philosophy teachers and librarians must love the intellectual traditions of which we are stewards.  We’ve got to know our stuff—not in the way of the Renaissance man who was supposedly expert in everything, but in the way of the curator who knows where the experts are.  We should be enthusiastic about learning.  Sometimes, at least, we need to remind ourselves of the big picture, the tradition of wisdom stretching back to Jerusalem and other ancient places.

            We must also love the particular student who comes to us.  I confess this is hard.  I’d much rather focus on my lecture; I have so many fine things to say about MacIntyre, or Iris Murdoch, or Aquinas, or a surprising little logic proof I wrote…  By “love” I mean, “pay attention.”  On one hand we hold the intellectual tradition and all its wonders; on the other we have this particular student standing at my door or at your desk.  Paying attention may not take long, if the student only wants to know how to access a particular resource.  But if we pay attention, we will discover students who are open to more, students who are actually seeking wisdom.

            I encourage you, then, as librarians, to see yourselves as curators of wisdom, a wisdom that changes the heart.  Be well, and do good work.