The Classical Mind Newsletter for April 5, 2024
Books Are Humanity's Best Friends, "I Felt a Funeral in my Brain", Irony, Composition 8, Learning to Read Poetry, Bad Literary Criticism
Housekeeping
The Emma episode will be out next week (for real this time!)
The following episode will be The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott.
In the chat, subscribers voted pretty overwhelmingly for Confessions by St. Augustine at the Listeners’ Choice. If anyone has any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace!
Guest of the show Dr. Anika Prather who joined us to discuss Frederick Douglass is organizing a conference called Redefining Classics: Celebrating Diversity in the Classical Tradition at Catholic University in Washington, DC. A few reasons you should consider attending: (1) the topic is awesome; (2) it’s free; (3)
is speaking at it; (4) I will be attending. Come hang out with us!
Books Are Humanity’s Best Friends
writes about the importance of books as teachers and friends at . In particular, he hones in on two Latin maxims: (1) Optimus magister bonus liber (“The best teacher, a good book is”) and (2) bonus liber amicus Optimus (“A good book is the best friend”). He then shares a quote from C.S. Lewis’ introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius in which he defends the reading of old, good books. There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
I was delighted to see this quote because picking up On the Incarnation while I was in college was a huge moment for me in my own religious journey and is in many ways responsible for me becoming an Anglo-Catholic Priest. But the reason I felt comfortable picking up Athanasius was because of the introduction by Lewis: I didn’t know who St. Athanasius was at the time, but I did know Lewis!
But the point is that these great books can and should be our teachers. In a formal, classroom setting, a great books approach should allow writers like Plato be in charge of the classroom (to this end, he provides a shout out to St. John’s College here in Annapolis, Maryland). But many people who follow the Classical Mind are beyond going to college or going back to a classroom. In this way, the reader may approach the author not just as a teacher, but also as a friend.
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