E. Christian Kopff
[Anaximander] accepted some of Thales’s basic presuppositions, subjected those ideas to critical analysis, and then added his own contribution. Finally, he taught all this to someone else. This is how tradition works. The first step is handing down the deposit. Then comes the critical evaluation of what was learned. Both steps are necessary for a truly humane assimilation of the past. Then, but only then, some gifted spirit may achieve a creative response that continues and renews the tradition.
This seems almost obvious. Of course this is how education should work, right? It’s how the school system seemed to function, if only partially, when I went through it. Mathematics is an unbroken tradition that can’t very easily be deviated from. We didn’t necessarily read the classics, or not all of them, but the general flow of literature classes was to read some piece, usually older than us, analyze it, write about it, etc etc. Is that not the same? Does it only deviate from Kopff’s idea of tradition in terms of its content? Certainly the literature teachers would argue that the books we read are part of at least an “American” tradition.
Even about science, there is an idea that it is a species of tag-team wrestling, where the participant needs to be in touch with only the previous generation to play. Creative people want to do science, not waste their time studying past mistakes.
I wonder if this is not a limitation of the pure breadth of knowledge of humanity. When the tradition was not yet a tradition, the deposit to be passed down was much smaller, its ideas could be easily criticized and added to in numerous ways. Like a family tree branching infinitely down, though, how can one possibly receive the entire deposit in one lifetime now? Certainly learning ought to be a lifelong endeavor, but in terms of preparing a child, and then a young adult, for the rest of their life, there must be a canon of education from which certain things must be abridged or entirely omitted if it is to be covered in the limited time one has in the school system. So it becomes a matter of deciding what pieces of the canon are most critical. Is older necessarily better? Kopff tells the story of Werner Heisenberg gaining critical mathematical insight from reading Plato. But surely we can’t just disregard all works of the modern age in the same way the modern age would like to disregard all works of antiquity…
Creativity is possible only as the final stage in a long, rigorous absorption of the teachings and discoveries of the past.
The last thing we need for the future of our country or of our young people is one more lunatic smashing goldfish bowls in order to free the goldfish.
This is a reference to a G.K. Chesterton piece in which a mad scientist has done the same.
Much of the conservative revival of our day is devoted to salvaging the Roosevelt regime by modifying some of its more irresponsible financial traits. This is the “temperate conservatism” condemned by T.S. Eliot, clinging to what exists in defiance of morality and common sense. The conservatism I favor is concerned with first principles. These first principles are not spun out of thin air but rather discovered in history.
Authoritative sources today promise us not the creative acquisition of the past, but simple innovation.
I hope he goes into detail on “simple innovation” and its pitfalls.
Innovation and constant change are the distinctive traits of modern life.
“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation.” - Karl Marx, 1848
One of the old Greeks knew something of this, too. Was it Socrates who warned against curiosity for its own sake? I can’t remember.
… everyone knows at least one tradition through personal experience: the tradition of one’s native language. Traditions we value, whether science or Christianity, are best experienced in the tongues that helped form them.
The mental infrastructure of our English society is founded on the vocabulary and syntax of Greek and Latin. Serious discourse in English, on law, medicine, and politics, in particular, depends heavily on words borrowed from Greek and Latin, and for that reason alone the study of the classical languages is important. [It] allows us to hear our ancestors talking and thinking. We can … think again the thoughts that excited or outraged them.
Obviously English vocabulary is heavily influenced by Greek and Latin, a process which began with the establishment of French as the language of the aristocracy in England following William’s campaign – English likely would have developed much differently had the Normans not been victorious. Even so, the major languages of classical western civilization would be the same Greek and Latin, and the study of those languages would in theory remain important, just perhaps more difficult. But is the main claim here true? Are works best experienced in their original languages?
When it comes to literature, certainly there are some literary techniques that can only be fully appreciated when reading or hearing the original language – wordplay, rhyme, alliteration. I recall an example from Greek, where word order is not so important and is often used creatively – the verb for to split was placed between the objects being split, for example. It would read strangely if rendered directly to English.
But in terms of serious discourse, I don’t know. I am someone who has studied a second language enough to be conversational, but I would absolutely not consider myself fluent; there is a lot of active translation still going on in my head when speaking or reading. The meanings of words are not ingrained into my soul the way English words are. I think a lot of that understanding comes from cultural immersion – is that possible with Greek and Latin? Even if one makes a study of the languages, are they truly experiencing the classical works in their purest form, or are they forming a personal, mental translation into words they truly understand – not just “know”? Having never experienced otherwise, it doesn’t seem possible.
True creativity is always the acquisition of the old in order to fashion beautiful and meaningful things for the present.