Read Online Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Alain de Botton
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comparing the use of natural imagery in the works of the Roman poets Horace and Petronius. The professor is pointing out that while Horace identifies nature with lawlessness and decay, Petronius, in many ways the more pessimistic of the two poets, reveres it for precisely the opposite qualities. Perhaps because the air ventilation system has broken down and the windows have jammed shut, the atmosphere is a little sluggish. Few students seem to be following the argument with the intent the professor might have hoped for when he was awarded his PhD in Oxford twenty years ago (âPatterns of Meta-narrative in Euripidesâ
Ion
â).
( illustration credit 4.2 )
The application of the universityâs academics to their tasks is intense and moving. And yet it is hard to see how the content of their courses and the direction of their examination questions bear any significant relationship to Arnoldâs and Millâs ideals. Whatever rhetoric may be rehearsed in its prospectuses, the modern university appears to have precious little interest in teaching its students any emotional or ethical life skills, much less how to love their neighbours and leave the world happier than they found it.
The prerequisites for a BA in philosophy, for example, are limited to a familiarity with the central topics ofmetaphysics (substance, individuation, universals) and the completion of a thesis on concepts of intentionality in Quine, Frege or Putnam. An equivalent degree in Englishliterature will be awarded to those who can successfully tackle
The Waste Land
on allegorical and anagogic levels and trace the influence ofSenecaâs dramatic theories on the development of Jacobean theatre.
Graduation speeches stereotypically identify liberal education with the acquisition of wisdom and self-knowledge, but these goals have little bearing on the day-to-day methods of departmental instruction and examination. To judge by what they do rather than what they airily declaim, universities are in the business of turning out a majority of tightly focused professionals (lawyers, physicians, engineers) and a minority of culturally well-informed but ethically confused arts graduates aptly panicked about how they might remuneratively occupy the rest of their lives.
We have implicitly charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live. And we have left the second of these two aims recklessly vague and unattended.
3.
Who cares? Why should we be worrying about the shortcomings of university education in a book ostensibly concerned with religion?
The reasons start to become clear when we consider the relationship between the decline in the teaching of scripture and the rise in the teaching of culture. When religious belief began to fracture in Europe in the early nineteenth century, anguished questions were raised about how, in the absence of a Christian framework, people would manage to find meaning, understand themselves, behave in a moral fashion, forgive their fellow humans and confront their own mortality. And in answer, it was proposed by an influential faction that cultural works might henceforth be consulted in place of the biblical texts. Culture could replace scripture.
The hope was that culture might be no less effective than religion (which was understood to mean Christianity) in its ability to guide, humanize and console. Histories, paintings, philosophical ideas and fictional narratives could all be mined to yield lessons not far removed in their ethical tenor and emotional impact from those taught by theBible. One would be able to have meaning unburdened by superstition. The maxims ofMarcus Aurelius, the poetry of Boccaccio, the operas of Wagner and the paintings of Turner could be secular societyâs new sacraments.
How to live was not on the curriculum. Graduation ceremony, Oxford University. ( illustration credit 4.3 )
On the basis
Ion
â).
( illustration credit 4.2 )
The application of the universityâs academics to their tasks is intense and moving. And yet it is hard to see how the content of their courses and the direction of their examination questions bear any significant relationship to Arnoldâs and Millâs ideals. Whatever rhetoric may be rehearsed in its prospectuses, the modern university appears to have precious little interest in teaching its students any emotional or ethical life skills, much less how to love their neighbours and leave the world happier than they found it.
The prerequisites for a BA in philosophy, for example, are limited to a familiarity with the central topics ofmetaphysics (substance, individuation, universals) and the completion of a thesis on concepts of intentionality in Quine, Frege or Putnam. An equivalent degree in Englishliterature will be awarded to those who can successfully tackle
The Waste Land
on allegorical and anagogic levels and trace the influence ofSenecaâs dramatic theories on the development of Jacobean theatre.
Graduation speeches stereotypically identify liberal education with the acquisition of wisdom and self-knowledge, but these goals have little bearing on the day-to-day methods of departmental instruction and examination. To judge by what they do rather than what they airily declaim, universities are in the business of turning out a majority of tightly focused professionals (lawyers, physicians, engineers) and a minority of culturally well-informed but ethically confused arts graduates aptly panicked about how they might remuneratively occupy the rest of their lives.
We have implicitly charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live. And we have left the second of these two aims recklessly vague and unattended.
3.
Who cares? Why should we be worrying about the shortcomings of university education in a book ostensibly concerned with religion?
The reasons start to become clear when we consider the relationship between the decline in the teaching of scripture and the rise in the teaching of culture. When religious belief began to fracture in Europe in the early nineteenth century, anguished questions were raised about how, in the absence of a Christian framework, people would manage to find meaning, understand themselves, behave in a moral fashion, forgive their fellow humans and confront their own mortality. And in answer, it was proposed by an influential faction that cultural works might henceforth be consulted in place of the biblical texts. Culture could replace scripture.
The hope was that culture might be no less effective than religion (which was understood to mean Christianity) in its ability to guide, humanize and console. Histories, paintings, philosophical ideas and fictional narratives could all be mined to yield lessons not far removed in their ethical tenor and emotional impact from those taught by theBible. One would be able to have meaning unburdened by superstition. The maxims ofMarcus Aurelius, the poetry of Boccaccio, the operas of Wagner and the paintings of Turner could be secular societyâs new sacraments.
How to live was not on the curriculum. Graduation ceremony, Oxford University. ( illustration credit 4.3 )
On the basis
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