I’m sorry, but this is pretty much the Web equivalent of a print essay that begins “I was too lazy to hit the shift key or type in punctuation — fill it in for yourself.”

Thank you for your comment and your wit.

I use “degenerate age” as shorthand for what you call “the moral impotence and confusion of our time” in point #2. I quite agree that many of the great books were written in “degenerate” times and perhaps speak most forcefully to those living in such times. Whether or not any particular teaching of the great books represents a cure–or should be taken up merely as a cure–for these diseases is another question, which does not go undebated within the canon itself, as everyone here well knows. Yet another reason perhaps to read at least some of them.

Keep in mind a point that Richard Posner made: one reason why people with liberal arts educations don’t seem to be all that virtuous may be that they merely have gained a bigger smorgasbord of rationalizations for their vices. “The example of Alexander’s chastity has not made so many continent as that of his drunkenness has made intemperate.”(Pascal). So there is a case for teaching one approach—Aquinas, Plato, Confucius, or whatever–and teaching it well.

Keep in mind, too, that students need to learn orderly thinking, which may require courses with problem sets of some kind, whether in logic, geometry, economics, or chemistry. Or even law— law schools do a great job of introducing mushminds to verbal logical thinking in a single year.

And this approach is not equivalent with relativism in the sense that everyone agrees that Plato and Nietzsche and the like are far superior to mediocrities like Deneen. This sort of ‘promiscuous’ respect for greatness is precisely all that one needs, and if we had it, this conversation would not be taking place. The “problem” with our postmodern society is not the epic battles between devoted Lockeans and dedicated Rousseauians or Hobbesians or Nietzscheans or whatever. The “problem” is not even nihilism properly speaking but the prevalence of degenerate social theory, barren Enlightenment economics and natural science, and hypocritical Sunday school cant (or Kant).

Of course, there will inevitably be some students who will not approach the great books with the seriousness or intelligence required. Very well–at least they were exposed to great thinkers and still better that they run off misquoting Locke or Nietzsche than having been intoduced only to the nonsensical musings of some tenured moron.

I would entertain the possibility of choosing to teach only great books that reinforce a current regime. Thus Locke and Toqueville, etc. in America. The curious students will see clearly that they need to look further. Those who do not do so can carry on with an admirable if slightly complacent civic spirit. But in our degenerate age, I’m not sure such precautions would amount to much anyway.

I posted my own commentary on the same, though my remarks were not so learned as the ones left above. I thank you all.

http://washingtonrebel.typepad.com/washington_rebel/2010/05/no-book-on-the-great-books.html