Intrinsic Value of Knowledge

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Intrinsic Value of Knowledge

“Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

In a recent issue of the Telegraph appeared an article by Anthony O’Hear responding to an article by education minister Rammell. Mr. Rammell had said it is “not necessarily a bad thing” that there have been sharp falls in the number of students applying to study history and the classics at university.

I think it safe to say that had there been no Renaissance there would have been no Western civilization as we know it. Had there been no Western civilization you and I would live in an entirely different world. One, I suspect, far less appealing than this one.

Renaissance means rebirth; Renaissance was the rebirth of the Greek and Roman intellectual attitude. It was the recapturing of classical learning that was lost to the West during the period often referred to as the Dark Ages.

“It would be no exaggeration to say that European culture from the 14th century onwards has been defined by the way each age and each artistic movement has gone to the wells of ancient Greece and Rome, has drunk deep and has arisen refreshed and invigorated - every age, that is, until our own.”

“We are depriving our children of knowledge of all of this in our futile efforts to be modern and focused on the instrumental. We are forging a new dark age, in which the decline of the study of history is also to be welcomed.”

“Mr. Rammell would apparently have us rejoice in the fact that we have no sense of the past; but a person with no sense of the past is a person who is a stranger both to his or her own roots and to the human condition more generally. For human beings are not creatures of nature; we are inheritors of the history that has made us what we are. Not to know our history is not to know ourselves, and that is the condition not of human beings, but of animals.”

“And the history of Rome is the source of the history of Europe, and the cradle both of Christianity and of the notion of the rule of law.”

“Is it any wonder that, with no sense of our past or identity - as, in other moods, politicians increasingly complain - we are a culture obsessed with celebrity, football, and reality television? Most of our population knows nothing else, and they have no yardstick from either history or culture with which to judge. As long ago as the 1920s, the great (classicist) poet T S Eliot stared at what he saw as the collapse of European culture: “These fragments I have shored against my ruin.” Most of us have no knowledge now even of the fragments. We, or our children, will have only a desolate sense of loss, but we won’t know what it is we have lost. Welcome to Rammell’s world.”

• Anthony O’Hear is professor of philosophy at Buckingham University. His book Plato’s Children (2006) is published by Gibson Square Books

telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main … do1701.xml

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History is quite possibly the most important subject. It serves as an ethics class, it demands quite a bit of reading, and it is every citizen’s guide to why the hell we ought not to keep driving forward with an imperialist mindset. I am sure this lack of interest in History is directly related to how we have a certain cough president who is more or less able to do whatever they want.

It isn’t just a lack of interest in history, its a lack in any sort of intellectual challenge that my generation is plagued with. We are completely uninterested in any sort of reflection on life, how and why it works, and how it used to work. I expect European and American thought to continue to degrade during the next few generations. The colapse of the Western World will not be because of terrorists, but because of its own citizens and their complete abhorrance of anything that even borders on intelligent query and thought. As Loius XV said, "Apres moi le deluge.”

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I am in agreement with this. You see in the ancient greek world and in the Renaissance a very deep wide critical speculation into what the world is and into what and who we are. What does it mean to be a human being? Is the world made up of some atomic structure? Is there something divine moving things? We’ve seemed to have lapsed in this very narrow insturmental knowledge gathering bent upon some economic end. I would like to hear others views on the subject because I lack quite a bit of understanding on the matter. If anybody has speculated on this widely and studied it. I would love to hear your perspective on the matter.

I would also like to add that these intellectual acitivites were always done in the minority groups. The majority of the athenians were very superstitious and always had their eye on the majority of these intellectuals. Being as brute as they were they despised them to a very large extent. You see this with the Sophists, you see this with Socrates, and with Aristotle. During the Renaissance much superstition was still around. You must remember this was still the time of witch hunts and burnings etc… Is this the argument that the intellectuals in the minority groups have lost touch with this intellectual speculation? I’m a bit confused as to what you are trying to get at.

Were not these activities done at even a lower rate during the Classical ages? Were not these activities still fairly low during the Renaissance? How low have the participants of these inquiries and studies dropped to? Are we sure that we have not fallen into despair because of the everyday sightings of these type of individuals that lack any care or understanding of these important studies? Have they not always been that way? Why believe it would be any different now?

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Vivaldi…
As we both know there have been occasions in history when such bottle-necks have been broken. Witness the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. This quote might reinforce your enthusiasm when necessary.

“All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Coming to Terms with Vietnam,” by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.

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Spirit

I am inclined to agree with your diagnosis but not your pessimism. When I feel despondent I remember this quote that I also posted to Vivaldi…

“All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one’s own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead.”
“Coming to Terms with Vietnam,” by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.

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There may be chance for redemption, and I suppose our cultures could change radically enough to espouse intellectual effort and discovery. It is just unlikely that such a shift will occur. I think ever since the 60’s, which was really an explosion of ideas and social progress, that we have become, as a society afraid of exploration.

To think and to truly learn you must think outside the box, and there is very little room for, and even less interest in, that today. The West has lost its motivation and its courage for a good mental workout, and it will take alot to regain that drive. Perhaps regaining it in the near future is impossible.

We are really tied down by dogma and the cliques we try to fit into even in early childhood. I think this is imposed on us by society from a very early age and it in turn discourages thinking and education. Our culture is destroying itself by negating effective learning. By providing all the preformatted social groups, it makes self dsicovery useless, why think for yourself when you only need to mold to a preexisting cut out? Why learn when all you need to get by is a structurally sound image?

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Society does not seem to value these very important subjects. History and Philosophy does not work well for this strictly material based country. Make no doubt about it, the problem is there is not a great deal of money in history and philosophy. People are not terribly concerned for the knowledge in itself but the economic end that follows. Has this problem escalated? I’m not sure. The cost of education is enormous. Individuals look at these issues evaluate their priorities and come to the conclusion that the debt from the schooling and the lack of economic possibilities will end in a negative outcome. They will not be able to achieve certain material goals that they want or may be accustomed to. It is funny however because these are the two subjects I plan to double-major in. It is to bad there isnt as much respect for these great subjects as there are for the more scientific studies. I will leave you with these quotes.

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.
~Aristotle

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
~Henry Ward Beecher