If you can read a text breezily, in a reclining position, with a cocktail in one hand, and come away with confident assurance that you have understood every single thing the author has said, then that text is probably not worth your time. It might be good as pure, time-filling entertainment, but you may as well watch daytime reruns of soap operas.

Such a text isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know, so it isn’t stretching your mind. To learn from a text, it has to have a certain level of difficulty and this means going well beyond your current level of understanding. It can’t be completely incomprehensible, of course, but I don’t think that many of my students are laboring under the false expectation that they should be forcing their eyes to run over paragraphs of Linear A.

How should one approach such texts, then, so that the difficult and challenging is not, at least, tortuous?

I have one simple tip, but it requires patience and the willingness to get through fewer pages (it’s tough for those achievement-oriented checklist types and worse for procrastinators reading last minute for a deadline). Read one sentence at a time, even one clause at a time, if the sentences are complex. When you hit the period, pause. Think about it. Make sure that you have actually understood at least the most obvious implications of what has been said. Then, move to the next sentence. Pause. Think about it. Now here comes the crucial bit: Do you understand why this thought follows from the one before it? If you do not grasp the logical progression from the thought in sentence A to the thought in sentence B, don’t keep going. Stop. Read the two sentences together again. You may even have to go back a paragraph or two—or ten.

Naturally, this will be slow-going, but it gets faster in time. The more you practice this kind of deliberate reading, the more you will begin to understand the deep structure of what the authors are saying. Human beings across centuries have very few truly new ideas, and the connections between the ideas flow along largely predictable lines. When you master the flow from A to B to C in one author, you will much more readily grasp the flow from A to B to C in another. You’ll even be much quicker in recognizing the flow from A to B to D in a third author who disagrees with the first two. You’ll be able to spot the critical juncture of their disagreement.

When I first explain this way of reading to freshmen college students, they often roll their eyes, sigh, and make clear that what I’m suggesting sounds like a total drag. Really, it’s a much more enjoyable experience than the alternative.

I surmise that most of them read like this: Read a sentence. Kinda get the gist, or at least that certain subjects were mentioned. Read another sentence. More words on that subject. Great. Read another sentence. Think about pizza. Half-realize that their eyes have passed over three intervening sentences. Skip. Read another sentence. Kinda get that sentence because it reminds them of a funny clip from The Office (they haven’t seen the full episode, only the clip on TikTok). Read another sentence. Totally meaningless. Wonder when this whole ordeal will be over so they can order that pizza. Read another sentence. More meaningless philosobabble. Put the book down so they can order the pizza anyway. Think about picking the book up again twenty minutes later, experiencing a shudder of revulsion for the whole previous experience, a vague sense that they are being judged by someone for being stupid, immediately followed by a series of defensive slogans belittling the usefulness of philosophy.

Such an exercise is much worse than wasted time. After a few such experiences, many students will fall into misology—a distaste for thinking—which Socrates gravely warns against in the Phaedo.

Since the student moved on from the very first sentence with only a vague impression of the subject matter, it was inevitable that the following sentences would devolve into an incomprehensible mess. When we are faced with a stream of incomprehensible nonsense, it becomes increasingly difficult, with every passing second, to keep our interest up (don’t just blame technology for our short attention spans). When our interest is broken, and we become distracted by numerous other things that we do understand and care about, then the game is up. There’s even less chance at that point that we will understand the flow of thought from the following sentences since they assume that the reader has read and understood what came before them. Hence, each following sentence will just get worse and worse. Continuing to move our eyes across the page at that point is simply an exercise in self-masochism.

I would much rather have a student who came into the next class and said, “Professor, I’m sorry, but I simply could not finish the whole reading assignment. I became stuck on the very first sentence. If I understand him correctly—and I’m still not sure that I do—I think Aristotle is suggesting that…and I became very puzzled by why he would think that, let alone begin there. I spent an hour wrestling with the grammar of this long first sentence before giving up. I had to move on to my math homework. Here are my notes.”

That student gets an A for the day and is exempt from the quiz.

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I will give directly contradictory advice.

The post How to Read Difficult Texts, Part 1 appeared first on The Miskatonian.

The Socratic method seeks to question conventional wisdom to transcend it and thus arrive at a true understanding. Denying one hypothesis does not necessarily mean its counter-hypothesis is true. In this sense, the Socratic method can lead us to the conclusion that an idea is not true, and in that case, it would make us wiser, but it is, in any case, a negative wisdom whose main advantage is opening us to new possibilities. The author also points out that at a more advanced stage, we can even see the limitations of reason itself, which always leads to an epistemological break. In a way, Socrates seeks to transcend the mind and reason, listening more to an inner voice and thus reaching a being that goes beyond the mind.

In the article, he mentions that for both Plato and Socrates, the mind has pre-existed our birth. However, Socrates is more focused on reorganizing the knowledge already acquired, as if it were a disorganized jigsaw puzzle. To get there, the Socratic method violently shakes the foundations and questions to the point of dissolution of the causal sequences and looks for more logical patterns. This new pattern, however, will later be questioned again. What is thus sought in philosophy for Goldman is an “ideal architecture” that can encompass all of time and existence. Thus, he proposes that the Socratic method, in a pragmatic sense, always leads inexorably to further questioning in the future: what it ends up bestowing is patience and humility (something more akin to moral character) rather than a foundational answer that could imbue future generations with meaning.

This is where the author makes his strongest argument: the skepticism inherent in the Socratic method may be in danger of turning into nihilism since its excessive openness to new horizons would destroy standards and disorient and alienate its disciples from the immediate mundane reality around them. Goldman mentions how, in verses 537 and 538 of the Republic, Plato warns of the possible rebellious reaction of many young people towards their parents once introduced to the dialectical method and how they may decrease both their respect and attention towards their progenitors and confuse them about what constitutes the true essence of justice.

A group of ill-prepared young dialecticians may come to question the foundational and moral bases of a society in a vicious and immature way: this explains why Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth and attacking traditional religious values, which, in my opinion, although not intentionally, may have been caused as a side-effect by the very nature of his method of knowledge.

Inquiry, for Goldman, inevitably leads a society to transformation, which is naturally positive and necessary for its survival. However, he later points out that continuity, a stability that allows it to structure itself, is also necessary. Both inquiring and solid continuity are two necessary parts that must be organically linked and in balance for the proper functioning of a society. On the other hand, Socrates had a strong fixation with inquiring in an inordinate way that ended up being intoxicating, which caused him to end up in court and later pay for it with his life. Goldman thinks that Socrates’ mistake was to ignore, through methodological excess, the human need for tradition, stability, and a past. In this sense, the idea is that Socratic education failed to generate a basic loyalty in its disciples to the values necessary for a democratic society and instead overemphasized criticism.

Young people, Goldman points out, must first be educated in the basics and values of our culture before they are introduced to questioning it. Failure to do so jeopardizes the continuity of our society. While these values are relative to our culture, they are also essential and necessary to be taught for its continuity. However, we must not succumb to the temptation to give them a divine and immovable authority.

Inevitably, these values will change, but educating young people in direct criticism could be very dangerous and irresponsible for educators. This does not mean, however, that we should not give compelling reasons for following our standards and be open to discussion to avoid indoctrination.

Goldman points out that, for a full understanding of the knowledge being acquired synthetically, young people need experience: this experience can be questioned later. However, the level of experience required is one that young people generally do not reach until they reach a particular age. The Socratic method, rather than generating new values, dissolves old ones. However, what “old value” could a teenager have? And even if it were the case, a teenager obviously wouldn’t have the inner solidity to withstand the shaking of his foundation (again, if any).

On the other hand, there is an inexorability to the Socratic method insofar as it is largely simple thinking, something that naturally cannot be forbidden but can be analyzed. Thinking is a dialogue of the mind with itself; the Socratic method externalizes that dialogue, and at the same time, it must not neglect the fact that one is in dialogue with outsiders, that one is engaging in a social process. Thinking, from this perspective, acquires a social dimension. An education focused on ideas rather than technical skills must be careful not to fall into ideologization or be absorbed by the political contingencies of the moment and not to rely too much on thinking itself understood as pure cold analytic reason.

For the Socratic method to be used effectively by teachers, it requires a great deal of openness on the part of the students, as well as a playful nature and an ability to listen and understand in a global and unbiased way. This isn’t easy to find in a society and even more so in a classroom with many students.

However, stimulating thinking can coexist with the cultural preconceptions of each member simply by promoting an informal internal dialogue in the learner indirectly through the presentation of a stable value system, which would paradoxically stimulate informal dialogue with their peers.

This way, the Socratic method’s objective could occur spontaneously in the subject’s daily life. Still, if a school happened to establish this method as the axis of its education, the school itself would lose importance since the objective is already achieved outside of it. In this way, a good school for Goldman is not one whose axis is tolerance towards new ideas but one with strong individuals with already divergent ideas and methods among them who engage in constant discussion: this is how real critical thinking would be generated.

An atmosphere of constant discussion based on strong previous beliefs shows students the importance of critical thinking beyond the classroom climate: critical thinking becomes a component of everyday life and has a transcendent utility. This idea of heterogeneity is difficult to achieve since most schools seek a homogeneous horizontalization of the environment, with the peaceful integration of ideas as a value axis.

Although the article was published in 1984, it is still relevant today. The issue of critical questioning is usually very much left aside in school education and, in many cases, in the universities themselves. The influence of postmodernism (which, through the deconstructive mood, has a certain Socratic element) has sought the dissolution of structures as an end and, in turn, a glorification of negative freedom and the desacralization of the predominant structural values. The excessive Socratization of our mental processes has enabled the homogenizing of the contents of the dialogue through a skeptical axis, which, paradoxically, nullifies the vitality of the dialogue itself.

The lack of external structure weakens the argumentative foundations, making the dialogical processes flabby, vague, or simply redundant. I think Goldman’s idea is correct regarding the fact that to annul tradition is, in some way, to annul the individual as an active subject within the world. Perhaps this last point can be related to the fact that Socrates couldn’t deal with his own economic needs and, sometimes, his friends had to support him.

The irony in all this is that Goldman presents us with a skeptical view regarding skepticism itself, which, seen as a double negation operation, could lead to the exact opposite: a re-sacralization and revaluation of our traditional values to avoid our alienation, an aggressively deconstructive process fueled by globalization.

The dissolution of structures is not immune to itself. The abandonment of one ship leads to drift but inexorably enables boarding a different one. I think the current cultural zeitgeist will have to acquire a certain self-awareness as it will serve as a foundation for creating a more solid social order.

References:
Educational Leadership. Goldman, Louis, 1984
The Republic. Plato, 370BC

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Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom:
and with all thy getting get understanding.
—Proverbs 4:7

Ancient cultures had a special wisdom literature, such as Proverbs or Ecclesiastes in the Bible, a literature which gives direct, sage counsel. To a great extent, however, all of ancient and medieval literature counts as wisdom literature. The authors frequently understood themselves to be passing on wisdom to their readers, whether they wrote poetry or philosophical dialogues, and readers sought out literature as a principal means of becoming wise. Certainly, the joy of a story beautifully told or the delight in syllables ingeniously intertwined played a role as well, but these things were secondary to the aims of masters like Pindar or Plato. Contemporary education has lost this pursuit of wisdom through reading, and when schools read someone like Homer at all, he frequently becomes mere history or fiction.

Wisdom involves two elements: (i) gaining insight into the way of things, that is, the objective structure of reality or what the Greeks would call the Logos, and (ii) learning to shape our lives in conformity with this objective order.

Our ancestors understood that we inhabit a universe with real patterns and laws that all work together to form a whole, an order which could be discovered by the observant but never invented. In our own culture, we have limited this discoverable order to the purely mechanical operations of physical science, but our ancestors understood that life and morality, beauty and spirit occupy the same universe as rocks, rivers, and sky, and that all alike are subject to a pattern. In his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis describes the way that ancient cultures the world over all noticed this way of things and sought to inculcate it through their literature. Borrowing a term from Chinese philosophy, Lewis calls this way of things the Tao, usually translated simply as “the Way.”

We can see an example of this expressed in the fourth commandment: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” Because it was created by God, the universe works in such a way that when children honor their parents, it goes well with them. This pattern in the fabric of the world is so obvious that nearly all cultures have recognized it. Our own culture may scoff, but we can no more change this pattern than we can change the law of gravity.

Many parents in the world of classical education are anxious that their children pull all the facts from the literature they read. We may call this “reading for knowledge” rather than “reading for wisdom,” and we should recognize right away that reading for knowledge is not a bad thing. We dutifully have our children read Caesar and part of the use of this is that they learn certain facts of history: how the Roman army, the Senate, and the government of the provinces functioned, for example. They read all this in Latin, and we are right to drill the knowledge of vocabulary, case, mood, and tense. Facts like these, along with names and dates, are the kind of thing one can put on flash cards—and you had better have those flash cards. Classical education spends a great deal of time and energy on reading for knowledge like this because we hope that our children will accumulate a central stock of shared facts, and without this stock they will not have the keys to unlock that great treasury of wisdom which is the Western canon.

If we teach our children only how to read for knowledge, however, we will justly receive the complaint that the work is boring and there is no point. (They’ll complain anyway, but we can do something about the justice of it.) This means that as our students read, we must walk with them through the text, helping them to see the world beyond it, identifying moments of insight into the laws of virtue, the patterns of good and bad relationships, the structures of temptation, or the ways that cities and peoples come to ruin. We can find this wisdom in any text of the Western canon, even when we read fiction or poetry—even (perhaps most of all) when we read faery tales.

We may contrast reading for wisdom with everything that is taught in many progressive schools. There, the objective of most discussions is to achieve something called “critical thinking” about what the students have just read (when they read at all). By telling his students to think critically about a piece of writing, the typical teacher in this kind of institution means that they should identify any bits of evidence in the text—real or imagined—for historical oppression along the axes of gender, race, or class, although this list now extends to an ever-growing set of grievance categories.

If the teacher has a slightly more philosophical bent, the instruction to think critically will focus on the “deconstruction” of the students’ worldview, especially where he finds elements of that worldview at all traditional, and most especially if the tradition is Christianity.¹ (Of course, the teacher never thinks about deconstructing his own social context that made deconstructionism so fashionable.) Students must read the text simply hunting for points where the text either reflects or challenges the worldview of the students—bonus points if it’s the worldview of your neighbors because then you’ll be able to add a sneer or a snort. If the point in the text reflects, the students are invited to critique the author. If it challenges, the students are invited to a smug admiration of so forward-looking a thinker.

What students are never taught to ask is whether anything they read is wise. As we read for wisdom, there may well be something like the deconstruction which the progressives so admire, but the point is never deconstruction for deconstruction’s sake. Virgil may have a profound insight into the real nature of things, into what it means, for instance, to have a call placed upon one’s life and to labor long without seeing the fruit of that call. This insight, because it is true, because it reflects something about the way of things, breaks into our petty self-contentment and exposes to us a bigger, deadlier, though more beautiful world, a world which was there all along, although we needed a Virgil to teach us how to see this side of it.

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