The Real Bane of the Humanities: Critical Reading – Ricochet.com

I have a BA in Philosophy and MA in Theology. The more I read in my fields, the more I find that my training is outside the norm. In both programs that I was involved in, almost all of my professors would hammer any paper they got if it didnt adhere to the Principle of Charity. For them it was important that you assumed that the people you were studying (Locke, Plato, Sartre, Calvin, Frame, etc) were at least as smart as you, a lowly and ignorant student. If you found a supposed contradiction in their writings you had to do your best to find a way to reconcile the contradiction before attacking it. It was assumed that they were smart enough to see obvious problems and avoid them if possible. We also read the primary texts of each of these writers foremost, not commentaries.

This led to actual learning on my part. Looking so hard at a text of Rousseau (who I despise as a thinker), and trying to see what he was saying from his point of view made me understand what he was trying to say, and taught me a lot about the French Revolution, and the Romantic and Socialist thought which sprang from him. It also allowed me to be influenced and to argue better against those that agreed with him far more than I did. This goes for all the works that I read in my education.

It turns out that isnt how most students in humanities were and are being taught. Rather, they are following the path laid out by the Higher Critics of the Bible from the 18th century. They are taught to find a supposed contradiction and amplify it without any attempt to reconcile it. (1 Kings says that 26,357 people died here and 1 Chronicles says only 26,000! The Bible is false!) When the supposed contradiction is found, you amplify it to the point where you either dismiss the entire work, or to dismiss it as authoritative in any way that challenges yourself and your preconceptions.

This is the end game of Post-Modernism, which is an outgrowth of Existentialism, which is an outgrowth of Romantic thought, which is an outgrowth of Kantianism, which is an outgrowth of Rationalism, which is an outgrowth of Nominalism, so it goes back a ways. The hope was that this would demystify texts and foster the self-discovery of the reader, to lower the text and raise the reader. But what it really does is impoverish the reader.

So many people in my circles (and it is getting worse) will have read Plato (or more likely, a commentary on him), but will have no idea what he actually said. They get to the first hard passage, superficially compare that with an earlier passage, find a simple change in what was said and then reject the whole body of his work.

They are never taught Irony, Hyperbole, Rhetorical Nuance, or anything that leads one to be a good reader. As a result, they dont marinate in the good and the bad of Plato, and have learned nothing from him. A good reader of this type will be able to dismiss everyone that could teach them anything apart from the self and its preconceptions. As a result of this type of reading, we have very well read people that are incredibly dumb. (Dumb, not stupid or ignorant. The stupid and ignorant can still be taught, but dumb cuts them off from learning because they have the material but have rejected it so thoroughly that they can never be reached with its knowledge.)

These are our elites! They can intimidate with the long list of books and articles they have read, but they havent learned anything from that list. Well read imbeciles that shut down an argument by saying you sound like Hobbes, have you read him? No? well I have so you need to shut up. This is what Ben Sasse is talking about in his new book. They have looked at words, but they have never been taught how to read.

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The Real Bane of the Humanities: Critical Reading - Ricochet.com