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Sunday, April 06, 2003
As I see it in those around me, I realize that I, too, have been well trained in arguments critical of Western society and philosophy, without having been given a thorough grounding in that which I have sought to criticize. In the spirit of ameliorating what seems to me to be a not insignificant problem with my and my peers’ knowledge, I’m eager to lay some blame on my/our public school education. As a sophomore in high-school, I was offered a class (taught by the English Department, strangely) in Existentialism – a class misleadingly named “Modern Thought.” It has been about twelve or so years since I took this class, but I remember the first day opened with a critique of Plato. While Plato strikes me as being considerably less important to the enlightenment than Aristotle, I am and was bemused by the fact that I had not received even the most cursory of instruction in Plato or Aristotle (or any other in the Western canon) and yet here I was being taught refutations. Standing on the shoulders of giants is one thing, but what we were engaged in was something more akin to stomping on the shoulders of the giants upon which we stood. posted by Malaclypse the Tertiary at 2:17 PM · |
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