Craig Carter defends the lecture, the “paradigmatic act of the university professor in the (originally) Western (but now Global) university in the modern age”:
[W]hat kind of event is the lecture? I say it is a moral event first because it is a kind of profession of faith, which is why we are called “professors.” Max Weber, good positivist that he was, would be horrified by this flaunting of the fact/value distinction. But the fact/value distinction is a product of a stunted modern epistemology detached from its metaphysical life source and left to die slowly from its inability to sustain itself in thin air.
To lecture is to take a stand of some kind. It is to present a thesis, propose an interpretation, or make an argument. It is to choose to leave some things out and to put other things in. It takes place in a set period of time and must prioritize ruthlessly. The most important thing in a lecture is to tell the truth and no lecture that does so will ever be boring.
To take a stand is a moral act. A person lectures, not a disembodied ghost or a mechanical voice coming over a speaker that sounds like a robot. A lecture is given in a concrete, specific language and from a certain perspective, whether that is Marxist or Buddhist, Freudian or Augustinian, Christian or Positivist. To lecture is to be forced out on a high wire in front of an audience where it is impossible to be neutral with regard to the truth. Qualify all you want, nuance all you like: your audience expects (and has a right to expect) you to take a position and defend it. This is a moral act. To be insincere here is to be exposed to the world as a hack, a sophist and an intellectual prostitute.
December 10th, 2010 | 9:55 am
Okay, okay. I’ll eat my flippin’ vegetables already. Gee whiz…
December 10th, 2010 | 10:22 am
[...] arguing that the lecture is a moral event, a personal act, and a tribute to metaphysical truth. HT Today, the lecture is out of favor in politically-correct circles. Like dead white males, high [...]
December 10th, 2010 | 11:46 am
It is unfortunate that the lecture has fallen into disfavor and been replaced by the idea that students must be entertained with videos and slides and encouraged to ‘participate.’ In other words, learning is only possible by encouraging those who don’t know what they are talking about to ‘share’ their thoughts with us. Another triumph of a lightweight education establishment….
December 10th, 2010 | 1:42 pm
I’m new to First Things, and though I very much admire the quality of the thought and the writing, I can’t help notcing that so much of boils down to a defense of everything that went out with the Divine Right of Kings, written in a tone that makes me wonder whether the author has, in fact, left the house since the Reign of Terror In a spirit of loving parody, I submit:
Hurrah for the Perruque!
My wiife and I enjoy rituals. Repetition of simple tasks, we’ve found, makes life as thrilling as a minuet. Each morning at seven-thirty, we begin breakfast by cracking the shells of our soft-boiled eggs. Every evening at eight, we polish the toby jugs. And, of course, every hour, at exactly three minutes and forty-five seconds past the hour, we count the tiles on the bathroom floors. But none of these compares in importance to the moment — at eight-fifteen every morning — reserved for the donning of the wig.
“Isn’t Himself forgetting something?” my wife will begin by asking archly as I push myself away from the table.
“Impossible!” I’ll cry, feigning indignation. Then, with a took of tender reproach, she’ll glide into the bedroom and return carrying an oval velvet-covered box. “I should not want you to go abroad bareheaded, like a common jackanapes,” she’ll scold gently, and with that, she’ll produce the wig — auburn ringlets with the lightest dusting of powder — and set it snugly on my head.
My wig has made me something of a celebrity at the office, where I’m know as the Roi-Soleil. (Some of the more waggish interns, I’m told, have shortened it to RoSo. They’re a regular League of Augsburg, let me tell you..) This suggests they know one of society’s dirtiest secrets, appreciate one of its least convenient truths: that the wig makes the man.
The age of the wig — which spanned, almost exactly, the years between the beheading of Charles I by one set of ruffians and that of Louis XVI by another — was the age of order. Everyone knew his place; no one resented his betters. Wealth was respected, though not worshipped, and its acquisition was an orderly process involving the collection of rents, the founding of a colony, or in a pinch, the seizure of a galleon. Vaulting ambition of the sort that drives ponzi schemers and subprime mortgage brokers was as shameful as unbridled venery, and was understood to entail similar consequences. In the age of the wig, recalcitrant debtors did not file bankruptcy; they went to jail. Unwary fornicators were not honored with quilts or candelight vigils; they were locked away in attacks as their minds and noses rotted away.
For these shining achievements, skeptics have long denied the wig its rightful credit. That is because skeptics have never worn wigs themselves. I invite them — and you, the reader — to try. Go on, do it. Feel the weight of the thing as the curls brush your cheeks and settle about your shoulders. This is gravitas. This is also the moment where metaphor becomes reality, for once you’ve set your wig on your head, you must keep it on or risk losing your dignity. For that reason, you will feel disinclined to make any sudden movements. You will not run but walk. In time, you’ll learn to mince. If you must shake your hed, you will do so slowly like a magistrate, not frantically like a terrier. If you are the sort who feels the call of Terpsichore when in his cups, you will confine yourself to the stately rhythyms of the saraband. Under no circumstances will you jerk and fling yourself about to the anarchic meter of the reel, or jig or Charleston, or whatever it is young people do on Spring Break.
In short, you will comport yourself like a man of quality.
And, sure enough, substance will follow style. Wilde famously quipped of wishing to live up to his blue china — so you, in time, will live up to your wig. You will come to abhor public exuberance. Saloons, concerts, sporting events, shopping malls, poetry readings, city streets teeming with humanity — visiting any of these could result in your wig’s being knocked from your your head like a glass of claret from a tabletop. They will become your enemies. You will learn to loathe them like the Jacobins. You will learn to love all that is orderly, predictable and moderated — in short, wig-friendly. And then, finally, you’ll be fit to write for First Things.
December 10th, 2010 | 5:09 pm
Mooga,
Wow. What a total waste of time. Yours and mine….
December 10th, 2010 | 5:14 pm
It’s “flouting of the fact/value distinction,” not “flaunting.” (He lectured, professorially.)
December 10th, 2010 | 5:19 pm
Gosh, Publius, does that mean you won’t read the sequel, “Bravo for Knee Breeches and Dress Swords”?
December 10th, 2010 | 8:17 pm
Mooga:
What is it about lectures that lands them in the same category as ceremonial dress? I’m actually very fond of ceremonial garb (especially of the religious variety: it’s pretty cool that Orthodox priests wear cassocks and pectoral crosses in the street and vestments at Liturgy — the robes of judges and academics are pretty snazzy as well), but it seems to express a very different thing than a public lecture. I’m not sure what makes them comparable.
December 10th, 2010 | 8:57 pm
Irene:
Don’t take my little rant too seriously. I didn’t mean it as a critique of this particular article — more as a gentle dig at a trend that informs most of the writing around here, namely, the exaltation of the past at the expense of the present. Yes, often the writers give good reasons for mourning this or that tradition, but at other times, it sounds like a knee-jerk nostalgia. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) So I picked a defunct custom and wrote a gag social history around it.
I’m iffy on ceremonial dress myself. I’m all thumbs with an iron, so having to keep a ruffled garment tidy scares me silly. Most of the great men of fashion had personal valets. But I am fond of certain aspects of eighteenth-century culture. Hopefully, that came through in my rant, which I meant as an homage to Swift’s “Modest Proposal.”
Here’s a fun fact about perruques: they were absolutely filthy – or they became that way after many wearings, after which nobody seemed very eager to clean them. There are stories about spiders and insects nesting in them. Possibly, those were urban legends, but the fact that some people believed them suggests they weren’t altogether outside the realm of possibility.
Fun fact about orthodox priest-wear. When I was living in Moscow, back in Yeltsin’s day, I would very often see priests walking through the Metro carrying a can marked “Na remont khrama,” or “For the restoration of the catheral.” The Cathedral of Christ the Savior — a gaudy, gold-domed eyesore Mussolini would have been proud to claim — was, in fact, being restored, so I donated. When I did, some locals warned me that many of the priests were actually scam artists. Ah, well. Twenty thousand rubles is a small price to pay for wisdom.
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