Why read? / Mark Edmundson.
New York : Bloomsbury, 2004
146 pp. ISBN 1-58234-425-6

I started reading a library copy of this wonderful book a few months back.  But, due to the incessant pain brought on by constantly slapping my hand before I could write or highlight in it, I ordered myself a copy.  As life is life, or mine is my life anyway, it took me a few months to get back to it.  I finally did, and I am so glad.

The book is short and are there are no chapters per se, but lots of short sections.  It is a great book to read if you only have short periods in which to do so.  It would also be excellent to read in one sitting, although I see no reason to rush it.  Edmundson says quite a lot in most of the sections and it is good to ruminate on what he says for a bit before pushing too far forward.

Just a few short years ago I would have utterly dismissed this book and its premise.  Now, although I may not agree with every word, primarily because I am lacking exposure to many of the authors he discusses, I do agree in the main.  This, by the way, is not some sort of intellectual agreement with an idea, like one might agree that privatizing social security is a good idea.  No, this is a full-blooded, it will affect how I live my life and get by for the better in the world, agreement.

Edmundson is looking at the value of a liberal arts education.  Most particularly, he is looking at the value of literature to change lives, to provide an answer as to how one should live their life, and as a source of truth.  The book is addressed to teachers of literature and the humanities, and "to students and potential students of literature" (3).  I would say it best addresses the student, but then that is also the point of view from which I am approaching it.

"The moral of this book is that [William Carlos] Williams has it right.   Poetry—literature in general—is the major cultural source of vital options for those who find that their lives fall short of their highest hopes.   Literature is, I believe, our best goad toward new beginnings, our best chance for what we might call secular rebirth" (2-3).

I particularly enjoyed it as there is a lot of overlap with the work I have done with Dr. Richard Stivers.   Edmundson even cites several of Stivers’ sources, such as, J.H. van den Berg, Kierkegaard, Milan Kundera, Don DeLillo, and others.   His views of consumer culture, technology, the power of language used to its fullest, the consumerist turn of the university, and others, have quite a bit of overlap with Stivers.   I find it a bit more explicitly hopeful than Stivers though.   I hope to discuss this book with Dr. Stivers in our book discussion group after we finish Mimesis and its related readings.

Edmundson adapts Richard Rorty’s Final Vocabulary into the concept of the Final Narrative, which "involves the ultimate set of terms that we use to confer value on experience" (25).

"All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives.   These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes.   These are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives" (25-26 quoting Rorty).

These narratives are, in fact, not supposed to be final, although most people never question or change the narratives they grew up with.

Rorty calls people capable of adopting new languages "ironists," because they inflect even their most fervent commitment with doubt.   It’s possible, they know, that what today they hold most intimately true will be replaced tomorrow by other, better ways of seeing and saying things.   They comprehend what Rorty calls the contingency of their own state.
Appreciating the contingency is very close to appreciating one’s own mortality.   That is, Rorty’s ironists are people who know that they exist in time because it is time and the changes it brings that can make their former terminologies and their former selves obsolete (26). 

Edmundson’s "provisional thesis statement" is that:

the function of a liberal arts education is to use major works of art and intellect to influence one’s Final Narrative, one’s outermost circle of commitments.   A liberal education uses books to rejuvenate, reaffirm, replenish, revise, overwhelm, replace, in some cases (alas) even help to begin to generate the web of words that we’re defined by.   But this narrative isn’t a thing of mere words.   The narrative brings with it commitments and hopes.   A language, Wittgenstein thought, is a way of life.   A new language, whether we learn it from a historian, a poet, a painter, or a composer of music, is potentially a new way to live (31-32).

He takes on theory, interpretation, critical thinking, and other "hot topics" of the recent past in the liberal arts, and although they have their use, he finds them sorely lacking unless they are used as a guide to how one is to live.   I have to give a hearty "Amen, brother!" to that.

On theory:

But experience has shown me that there are more viable and more varied options for students in literature itself, and that contemporary theory, though not without its appeals, tends to be implausibly extreme in its vision of experience and, accordingly, untenable as a guide to life.   Can you live it?   Alas, it’s generally the case that no one can live out the latest version of theoretical apostasy and that, just as depressing, no one, even the theory’s most devoted advocates, is even mildly inclined to try (42).

On critical thinking:

But what good is this power of critical thought if you do not yourself believe something and are not open to having those beliefs modified?   What’s called critical thought generally takes place from no set position at all.   There is no committed vantage, however transient.   Rather, one attacks from any spot that one likes, so everything is susceptible to denunciation (43-44).
…
When one thinks critically in behalf of creating a Final Narrative, that is something else again.   Then you are sifting visions for their application to life.   A great deal is at stake.   But most of what passes for critical thinking takes place in a void.
In general, critical thinking is the art of using terms one does not believe in (Foucault’s, Marx’s) to debunk worldviews that one does not wish to be challenged by.
What happens when you teach critical thinking unattached to some form of ethics, or some process of character creation (44)?

I’ll let you read the book for his answer to this.

On criticism:

…, virtually every critic or school of criticism that matters has worked to reduce literary experience, vast and varied as it is, into a set of simple terms.   They’ve turned contingent literature into delimiting philosophy (or, one might say, "metaphysics"), which says that there is one mode of happiness, one kind of good, one form of ideal life for everyone (49).
…
We will not have real humanistic education in America until professors, and their students, can give up the narcissistic illusion that through something called theory, or criticism, they can stand above Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante (50).

On interpretation:

The test of an interpretation is not whether it is right or perfect, but whether it leads us to a worldview that is potentially better than what we currently hold.  The gold standard is not epistemological perfection.  The gold standard is the standard of use.

On truth:

What I am asking when I ask of a major work (for only major works will sustain this question) whether it is true is quite simply this: Can you live it?   Can you put it into action?  Can you speak—or adapt—the language of this work, use it to talk to both yourself and others so as to live better?   Is this work desirable as a source of belief?  Or at the very least, can it influence your existing beliefs in consequential ways?  Can it make a difference (58)?

On use:

The test of the reading that leaves the provinces of the author’s vision is use.  What can we do with this work?  What aspects of our lives does it illuminate?  What action does it enjoin? …  The ultimate test of a book, or of an interpretation, is the difference it would make in the conduct of life (73).

On the canon(s):

I think that canonical works, the ones you read as part of a major—the books of which there may be many or few, depending on the teachers’ views at a given time—ought to be the testing and transforming books that have influenced people in exciting ways over a long period (122).

The test of a book lies in its power to map or transform a life. … Works of art matter to the degree that they can help people do this.  Books should be called major and become canonical when over time they provide existing individuals with live options that will help them change for the better.  A democratic humanism can have no other standard for greatness (129).

On "what happens now and in the future if our most intelligent students never learn to strive to overcome what they are," or as I might say, today’s American:

What you’re likely to get are more and more two-dimensional men and women.  These will be people who live for easy pleasure, for comfort and prosperity and the satisfactions of cool, who think of money first, then second, and third; who hug the status quo; who believe in God as a sort of insurance policy (cover your bets); people who are never surprised.  They will be people so pleased with themselves (when they’re not in despair at the general pointlessness of their lives) that they cannot imagine that humanity could do better.  They’ll think it their highest duty to have themselves cloned as often as possible.  They’ll claim to be happy and they’ll live a long time (139).

This book means a lot to me because I was one of those people who for many years had a final Final Narrative.  The words that I used to construct my world, while many, were reasonably fixed in their allowed usage.  My early experiences, along with many years in the military, had led me to a mostly instrumental rationality.  I had also assiduosly ignored literature with a very vocal, yet indistinct, purpose.  In an ironic twist of fate, it was actually an education in analytic philosophy that finally saved me.  How is that possible, you ask?  Quite simple really. 

Reflecting on my first "real" job on a nuclear missile site in Western Germany at the height of the Cold War, along with learning more about the pretty much unspeakable horrors committed by men upon other men during the 20th century (and all others preceding it), was starting to show me the limits of instrumental rationality.  Now add on top of that a good education in analytic philosophy and what passes for critical thinking in today’s academy and one rather quickly and precipitously falls off the cliff edge of instrumental rationality and, dare I say it, instrumental reality. 

None of what I was learning, or what I saw around me over the years, had anything to do with the ultimate, and essential, question of how one ought to live their life.  In fact, since the middle ages, philosophy, in a Western sense, had completely abandoned it as a legitimate question.  There is work going on in this arena now by people like Martha Nussbaum, Robert Nozick, and others.  In fact, this work has been going on all over the world since before man began recording his thoughts.  One will simply not be exposed to much of it in most analytic or Anglo-American philosophy departments though.  There, intense navel-gazing of a kind that has no impact on the real world of everyday experience, and grand theorizing of the kind Edmundson criticizes, such that, "no one, even the theory’s most devoted advocates, is even mildly inclined to try" (42) to live by it, is spawned, encouraged, and rewarded. 

I received, although I should say "took," a great education.  And then, in a most educated act of defiance, I rejected most of it as useless to the conduct and experience of life.  I still enjoy some areas of analytic philosophy, and it can be immensely fun to "us[e] terms one does not believe in (Foucault’s, Marx’s) to debunk worldviews" (44) that I do not wish to bother with.  Of course, I may believe the terms and I may even prefer the challenge of another view, but when one has been trained as well as I in this sort of "critical thinking" it is so easy to deconstruct and undermine any position on any any topic that it quickly becomes boring,  It is just another form of cheap and easy entertainment.  One that fades as rapidly as the latest show trial from America’s consciousness.  I refer to this sort of philosophy or critical thinking as "mental masturbation."  It can be extremely enjoyable, but ultimately it is not very satisfying.

I shouldn’t say that it was analytic philosophy, by itself, that saved me.   It certainly did not do so on its own, but it was a major goad.  By seeing such a waste of some of the best minds the world has ever known studiously avoiding the most important question one can ask oneself or another, I was convinced that there had to be another way to the "truth" (with a small ‘t’).  [That there is no capital 'T' "Truth" is one commitment that I came by very dearly.   It was one belief I did not want challenged, and that I resisted for quite a while even when the truth of the matter was abundantly clear to me.  This is one of the very few inversions of my earlier Final Narrative that actually provides me comfort.] 

It was, in fact, exactly what Mark Edmundson describes that saved me.  It was "a liberal arts education [using] major works of art and intellect to influence [my] Final Narrative, [my] outermost circle of commitments.  [My] liberal education use[d] books to rejuvenate, reaffirm, replenish, revise, overwhelm, replace, in some cases (alas) even help to begin to generate the web of words that [I] defined [myself] by. …  Th[is] narrative [brought] with it commitments and hopes" (31-32).  …  I learned a new language from  historians, poets, painters, composers of music, and from writers of great literature—a langauge, or should I say languages, which showed me a new way to live. 

Austen, Zola, Flaubert, Defoe, Dickens, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Boccacio, Dante, Homer, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Socrates, and so many others have provided me so many other ways of viewing the world and so many possibilities.  Other aspects of a broad, liberal education have coalesced into more coherence thanks to writers such as these.  If in fact I have been saved, which is an entirely different question, then it is the kind of education and use of that education that I have put it to which Edmundson is recommending that has done so.

My primary criticism of this book is that it has no bibliographical references or index.  The book is short enough that an index is not critical, but would be useful.  But, considering the number of references made to other authors, often with no mention of the work a citation is taken from, the lack of a bibliography or proper references in place is inexcusable.

I highly, and wholeheartedly, recommend this short but insightful book.  Why read, indeed!