Waiting

I'm patiently waiting until my life calms down somewhat to where I think I can adequately reflect on the things that have taken place this past year. I am no longer a full-time teacher, in the traditional sense of the word. I now work a second shift job that has played havoc with my family life and we still haven't adjusted to that completely. This job presents me with excellent material for contemplation of the human condition, the importance of worldviews, and the task of education, but precious little time to reflect of it and blog about it. Nevertheless, I will eventually get around to doing this. Sometime...

A Risky Video

I was skeptical about this one at first, but I ended up laughing a lot. Enjoy.

Ask Doug

Canon Wired has a video with Roy Atwood, president of New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, ID. Check it out.

http://www.canonwired.com/ask-doug/k-12-classical/

What's good for the Goose...

In a recent history book I'm reading on the global history of the concept of the City, Joel Kotkin complains that Christianity had an "antiurban perspective." (37) He argues that Jesus himself was a homeless nomad and had no use for the urban centers of society. He states that the principal concern of Christians was "faith in a single, transcendent god." (36) Fair enough. I think Kotkin is missing the bigger picture by ignoring the fact that up until 315 AD, Christianity was a persecuted religion throughout the Roman empire and had to hide to exist. I think antiurban is hardly the term I would use to describe Christianity after Constantine.

The problem for me is that a few pages later, when discussing Islam's development, Kotkin praises Islam for being an "profoundly urban faith." (44) Kotkin asserts that the "need to gather the community of believers was a critical aspect of Islam....Islam virtually demanded cities to serve as 'the places where men pray together.'" (44) Just two pages later, however, Kotkin argues that Islam fosters "a sophisticated urban culture" while managing to not worship the city for its own sake. The city becomes a vehicle for "the integration of the daily lives of men with a transcendent God." (46)

So somehow, Christianity's emphasis, as Kotkin sees it, on a transcendent deity is antiurban while Islam fosters "a sophisticated urban culture" by having an emphasis on "the integration of the daily lives of men with a transcendent God." (46)

Go figure...

*Quotes are from Joel Kotkin, The City: A Global History (New York: Random House, 2005).

FCS Welcome message from Dr. Grant

Study Guides

I am working on a new project while I am unemployed. I have been writing study guides for books I teach for years now for my students, but have never really had the opportunity to revise them at all. While I am trying to find a job, I am doing some revision of those guides and thinking of ways to earn a little money with them. I finished the Iliad yesterday and am almost done with the Odyssey as well.

They are pretty straightforward guides. They have author, date, and context introductions as well as a summary of the book, themes, and literary notes for things to watch for and understand while reading. Each have several multiple choice comprehension quizzes periodically throughout the book which have answer keys, but the most important thing is that I have included no answers to anything but the quizzes. I did this intentionally. Daily reading is accompanied by either review and recitation worksheets which are pretty straightforward or specific worldview discussion sessions which are a little more complicated. In either case, the ideal is that Mom and Dad, or the teacher/tutor are reading this book along with their kids and they can talk through the answers together. On the review and recitation pages, there isn't much to dig for. On the discussion sessions, I wanted to allow for honest discussion in a group or even amongst members of a family. So I didn't provide answers for questions like, What is pride? I think the family/classroom discussion is far more valuable than any answer I could provide would ever be.

If you are interested in one of the guides I've got ready, let me know and I'll send you a sample. I haven't worked out a price yet for the whole guide, but it'd be under $10.

Aristeia

Aristeia is a Greek word meaning excellence. When used in the Iliad, it refers to the best fighting a hero may accomplish. An excellent example of this is in book 21 when Achilleus almost single-handedly routs the entire Trojan army and succeeds in killing Hektor, the hero of the Trojans.

Pride in the Iliad

This theme of the Iliad is mentioned in the proem (the first several lines of the poem) and describes the most basic outline of the plot of the story. While the main theme of the work is widely recognized as “the wrath of Achilleus” it is obvious with the most cursory read-through that this wrath stems from Achilleus’ sense of pride. Pride is the most basic problem in Greek literature. Taken from the Greek term hubris which means an exaggerated self-pride or self-confidence, our conception of pride is very fitting. Pride is thinking too highly of oneself and acting like everyone else should think as highly of you as you do.
Both Achilleus and Agamemnon are guilty of pride (or hubris) in the Iliad. The argument that erupts between them over the war bride Briseis is a perfect example of this. Agamemnon feels that since he is the great king of the war fleet, he should have the best prizes. When Chriseis is taken from him to appease Chryse and Apollo, he demands that he get Achilleus’ war bride in return for his loss. This is an amazing amount of pride on Agamemnon’s part, but Achilleus’ response is no less prideful.
Achilleus responds to Agamemnon’s demand by retreating from the battle, sulking at his own ships, and begging his goddess mother to make Agamemnon pay for his rash behavior and dishonoring of her son. He insists that for the dishonor he has been shown he will no longer fight with the Achaians.
As Christians we know that pride is one of the greatest sins we can fall into. It was the very sin that cast Lucifer, that angel of light, from the presence of God in heaven and doomed him to spend eternity in hell. Therefore as we see pride writ large upon the characters of Homer’s Iliad, we must consider the worldview implications of such thinking. Homer, like most Greek writers, often condemned hubris, but also recognized that a certain amount was necessary for survival. In the Christian life, our greatest strength often becomes our most challenging weakness as well. Are you a gifted athlete? That can be a source of pride for you as well then. Do you do well in classes without much labor? That can also turn into a pride issue. Unlike the Greek heroes in the Iliad, we have the opportunity to lay our pride before God and recognize our own weakness. The Greeks, in some ways, felt their gods were simply stronger, immortal, people. There was no majesty involved. No holiness before which they could humble themselves. This represents one of the chief reasons so many Greek heroes get in trouble with the gods. They too often act like gods and take glory away from the gods themselves.

Some quotes from Abolition of Man

For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. (27)

ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. (28-29)

Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. (29, Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1104B)

The heart never takes the place of the head, but it can, and should, obey it.

In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism ... about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. (35)

Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values: about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. (43)

I will not insist on the point that Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way), for I think it is here being used in a fairly definite sense, to mean an unreflective or spontaneous impulse widely felt by the members of a given species. (46-47)

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. (55)

if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all. (55)

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. (81)

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead. (83-84)

Herodotus and Homer

Having taught Herodotus several times, I can tell you that students either love him or hate him. Most come in on the latter, primarily because it is so long and full of material that really doesn't seem relevant. If he is writing about the Persian Wars, they reason, why does it take him until book 5 (of 9) to get to the Battle of Marathon? Why does he have to go off on so many rabbit trails (the mark of a great teacher, IMHO)? I think the answers to these questions lie in his reliance upon the Homeric tradition, in part, and his understanding of the task of history.

I have written elsewhere of Herodotus' understanding of the nature of history, and I don't think reflection has made much difference in my mind yet. Specifically that Herodotus is not just concerned with events in-and-of-themselves, but with the causes of events. This is why after making his opening statement he immediately goes into a discussion of mythological abductions and explains that they were really just part of a long-standing war between East and West, of which the Persian Wars is but the most recent episode.

In terms of his reliance upon the Homeric tradition, this is why Herodotus is so long-winded about such seemingly trivial things as the history of Egypt. In Homer, especially the Iliad, when two warriors come together, they must often have a interview, of sorts, to determine who they are and what their history is. In that culture, Olympian curses have been meted out for less than justly slaying an enemy in a war that your great, great grandfather had made a pact with a hundred years ago. Such is the case for Glaucus and Diomedes (Il. vi.119-236). Upon coming together in battle in book six of the Iliad, Glaucus and Diomedes are smart enough to ask each other's parentage and history before they fight. When it is determined that their grandparents had been friends, they decide not to fight each other (though they turn a blind eye to the killing of their friends). They even exchange gifts to seal the deal.

This exchanging of ancestry is what Herodotus picks up on in his Histories. As he is going through the history of Persia, for example, he comes to the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses. Realizing that his hearers (readers) have little or no knowledge of Egypt, he proceeds to share the history of that great nation before allowing Cambyses to summarily dispense with it. This is simply Homeric in its literary style. Two warriors (this time on the national level) come together to fight. They share their ancestry (but, of course, Herodotus's audience knows their own history) and then proceed to fight.

Knowing this may not make Herodotus any easier to wade through, but it should give comfort that he wasn't just a rambling storyteller (as Thucydides accused). He did it on purpose.