Lost in Thought, Part 3
Dear Reader,
The Introduction to Lost in Thought possesses a number of engaging threads. I want to select two moments from it, from the same section, as they specifically pertain to our own concerns about reading.
The first moment opens that section:
“The praise of learning for its own sake as necessary for a flourishing life is often charged with displaying an aristocratic bias, as if aristocratic Aristotle’s endorsement was the kiss of moral death, as if a truth could not be tangled up with moral ugliness. But the accounts I alluded to of the destruction of leisure in the lives of modern workers, the diminishment of their humanity, ought to make us more alive to the value of leisure, not less.”
As I’ve taught Aristotle’s endorsement over the years, I recognize this potential critique. I’ll note, which Hitz does not, that this critique is most frequently offered by those who’ve never bothered to read Aristotle, let alone anyone else making a similar argument. And while I haven’t written about “The Intellectually Honest Read” just yet—it’s in the drafts—not having read Aristotle and yet critiquing him on a specific point counts precisely as the opposite of intellectual honesty. (Well, there’s one point you could critique him on, even unread, but the critique would remain a shallow one without actual familiarity of his discussion.)
“The love of learning is general among human beings and pursued in a variety of ways and degrees. Unlike the love of the outdoors, however, we do not always recognize it. We miss it in its lowlier forms, and misidentify it in its higher ones… But to limit learning to the professionals would be like considering sponsored mountain climbers to be the only true appreciators of the outdoors.”
I happen to appreciate analogies, as I’ve both studied and taught on them extensively, and I enjoy a good one. And this one does some serious work. (My ellipses cut off a fair bit of that work, but I’m not trying to summarize the book here or do a highlight reel.)
But the analogy aside, what does it mean to recognize the love of learning in its lowlier forms? And how might we misidentify the higher ones?
Taken more narrowly, replace “love of learning” with “reading.” In that context, these are questions asked most frequently by literacy researchers. They are not frequently asked otherwise.
That absence is not meaningless, though that conversation can wait for another day. For now, I’ll leave you to the questions above.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh