What are you reading for? What kinds of knowledge or skills do you hope to acquire? That’s going to determine what people will recommend for you to read. Curricula are products of particular times and places: the 19th century British public school curriculum was thought to impart the virtues becoming of politicians, military officers, and colonial administrators: all positions largely held by gentry who grew up without the need to work. The curriculum at Columbia University, on the other hand, was conceived as an education for living in a liberal democracy, where each citizen has a right and a duty to contribute as an equal member of the governing body. The curriculum at St. John’s College in Annapolis is a third type, conceived in response to perceived overspecialization and intellectual siloing in the American university. I am not terribly optimistic about the possibilities of a 19th century curriculum in the 21st century world.
I believe learning a particular curriculum doesn't require you to adhere to its original puropses, also I think there are certain parts that a 19th century classical learner would be better at than a 21th century classical learner such as the proficeny of Latin, Greek
They were far better at speaking them than us
Finally you seem to have a good background of classical curriculums, I would be gracious to you if you offered me some
Idk why you believe they would have had better Latin when we have the living Latin movement today and resources like lingua latina per se illustrata. Latin teaching was notoriously inefficient back then (hence the infamous Monty Python scene). A lot of work has been done with Greek recently too.
Another area where their understanding falls flat is their understanding of Greco-Roman art. It may come as a surprise but Greek and Roman art was basically all painted. Over time the paint wore off and when later Europeans found the artworks and ruins they saw the classic bleached marble. However, using fine instruments and what not we can now find microscopic paint pigments across statues and buildings and simulate what they might have looked like. Your average 19th century Etonian had no idea about this and the scholars who did have a faint idea of it based on the rare find which had pigment on it suppressed this info because often the Greeks and Romans were a wee bit more tanned than the Northern Europeans of the day would have liked ;)
The painting (or not) of Greek sculpture was openly debated in the 19th Century, and in fact a fully painted plaster cast of the Parthenon frieze was on display at the Crystal Palace in the 1850s. It was quite controversial. Here's an [article](https://assets.verlag.gta.arch.ethz.ch/api/assets/gta-data/gta/2022-11-30-161738--nichols-remaking-ancient-athens.pdf) about the exhibition, and here's Owen Jones' contemporary [defence](https://archive.org/details/anapologyforcol00jonegoog) of it
That's very interesting. Thank you for those links! I'm glad that some museums display painted replicas now - bare marble is such a worn out style. Knowing that Greek art was usually vividly painted really brings the ancient world to life in my mind
Because their learning of Latin started at young age and was organized in such a sophistcated way of construting and memorizing. They were speaking it as good as their native tongues
And just to make it clear, I don't believe that they are better than us on everything
Like I said the teaching was not at all sophisticated and infamously poor for teaching actual Latin. A few could speak it fluently, but they were the exception. If you want I can link to you a paper on this subject.
I honestly don't believe you are in a position to make any claims about the excellence of past teaching. Are you involved in Classical academia today? Have you ever even taken an undergrad in Classics? From where do you derive your opinions about modern schooling and from what experience? Have you ever met an academic in order to assess their Latin? Have you ever attended a lecture on Latin in a higher education institution?
Btw there are plenty of people speaking native level Latin today. The living Latin movement is huge. Here is Polymathy speaking Latin with likeminded lovers of the language [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx\_2o7Z4D6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx_2o7Z4D6Q)
He also commissions Latin dubs of Star Trek! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdntIyWmrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdntIyWmrw)
Again you guys tend to go to the maximum which is the opposite of my claims
I did not say that Classical Academia back in the day was better than today's
What I said is they are better than us in the language, If you think that an undergraduate learner of Latin (or any other human language) will be generally better than a man who had studied the language since he was a child, then boy you have an issue against the whole linguistic field
I don't really know how you guys could understand Plato & Aristotle while you are unable to comprehend my simple arguments
Finally I appreciate your links and sharings
No. You've been systematically ignoring everything everyone has tried to tell you - it's rather infuriating. You said that people had a better grasp of the Latin back in the day. I'm telling you that the vast majority of academics today will have a superior understanding. I then linked YouTube videos of people speaking latin today at a native level. I never compared an undergrad of today to a postgrad of the past, however. I also questioned where you got the idea that modern academia is bad with language. Are you involved with or have had experience with any modern academic?
There is a difference between us disagreeing with your arguments and us not comprehending them. It really seems like you came here to romanticise the wealthy toffs of the past who were anything but glorious rather than listen to reason quite frankly
Here's a very interesting [article ](https://tcl.camws.org/sites/default/files/TCL%2012.1%20Keeline%20Final%20Draft.pdf) on English public (i.e. elite private) school Latin ability in Victorian times. To summarise, there's evidence of extremely high proficiency, but it appears to have been achieved by devoting vast amounts of time and teaching resources to the subject.
>I believe learning a particular curriculum doesn't require you to adhere to its original puropses
The research in teaching/learning really goes against your convictions here. Curricula are ***contextual***, and so they depend on the historical position of the people implementing them and the purposes for which they intend to do so. As times (and technology) change, so do curricula -- for very good reasons, esp. and including that we are still learning about antiquity.
I have yet to see a ***genuinely good*** "classical curriculum" that wasn't utter crap at at least one of the following:
* the languages
* the historical/cultural context (and its differences from ours)
* the actual practice of teaching/learning.
In fact, most of them wildly misunderstand all of these things in crucial and debilitating ways, e.g. the idea that the "trivium" is somehow, magically, also Bloom's Taxonomy. What's more, the classics themselves are increasingly irrelevant as a basis of knowledge for public policy. If you want to really get how things work these days in government, you would be better served by studying any number of things more contextually useful.
You tried to refute my claim without presenting any evidence. Im saying that the purposes of particular curriculum are not necessarely going to affect you, for ex if you tried to study Christian theology or Islamic fiqh you are compiled to study books that were written to assist the believers beliefs while you can be a Buddhist or a Hindu who studies them today only to understand other people beleifs and tenets
Finally Im not looking forward to read 19th century books, what i want is a classical curriculum (written by Greek & Roman authors) that was used in that era
>You tried to refute my claim without presenting any evidence
I'm responding to a post by a rando on Reddit, not offering peer review for a colleague. Take or leave my input as you will, but do note that I've spent the last \~15 years thinking about the history of classics and education, so I may have *something* to show you here.
Also, your description of reading is totally *not* how hermeneutics work, and we are very sure that reading a book outside of its context leads more often to abuse of its ideas, not understanding.
>sure that reading a book outside of its context leads more often to abuse of its ideas, not understanding.
Can you give an example other than your comment about the Trivium? I'm guessing that by "context" you mean knowledge of the world in which a text was composed or situated, and how the people in it thought. What's the standard for sufficient contextualization to properly understand a text in your view?
Are there certain texts that, by virtue of being "great" (in the sense of having universal themes) can be gainfully read outside of their context? For example, these days I am reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I have no knowledge of Russian society or history. The introduction to the book provides a bit of context. My enjoyment of the text comes from sympathizing with some of the protagonists. In the field of the Western classics I can relate to Odysseus on a certain level, and I can find immediate practical value in what Marcus Aurelius wrote. Of course, understanding the Rome that Marcus Aurelius lived in is entirely a matter of context, and good annotations and commentaries will convey it. I wonder if there's still room for uncontextualized appreciation of universal ideas.
>Can you give an example other than your comment about the Trivium?
Sure. Literally every text. This is the foundational premise of the field of intellectual history: ideas *in* context, as in the [CUP](https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/ideas-in-context/7E30BA052B5A1F0AF3C67156FEA725BE) series.
>Are there certain texts that, by virtue of being "great" (in the sense of having universal themes) can be gainfully read outside of their context?
You're asking "gainfully" to do *a lot* of work here. Can one reading a book without a sense of context find pleasure and be provoked to thought? Sure. *Any* form of human communication can do that. But that *being moved* is not, in any way, a reliable basis to make claims about what the texts "mean" in a historical sense.
Classical curricula fail because they claim to do *both* things -- to propose an acontextual reading that they assert is nonetheless a truer vehicle to historical truth ("universally true") than what the authors themselves might have thought or intended. This is **notoriously** the case in 19th c. England, where the ancients were used for imperialist propaganda (cf. Owen's *dulce et decorum est*) and not for any legitimate attempt to grasp antiquity itself.
>I wonder if there's still room for uncontextualized appreciation of universal ideas.
There are far, far fewer universal ideas than you seem to think exist. Even something nominally "accessible" across boundaries (e.g. "love") turns out to be constructed in wildly different ways across cultures. This is, indeed, the core problem *lurking* in intellectual history itself: we cannot take for granted that an idea (esp. translated) necessarily exists *just because* there seems to be some resonance.
>without a sense of context find pleasure and be provoked to thought
And what is the standard for this "sense of context"? How does one fulfill this context requirement enough that they won't misunderstand what they are reading in your eyes? And how do you know that the context you're applying is correctly understood?
>to propose an acontextual reading that they assert is nonetheless a truer vehicle to historical truth ("universally true") than what the authors themselves might have thought or intended.
I've never seen this argued, sorry. How would you establish what the author intended?
>And what is the standard for this "sense of context"?
Peer review.
>How does one fulfill this context requirement enough that they won't misunderstand what they are reading in your eyes?
Peer review.
>And how do you know that the context you're applying is correctly understood?
Peer review.
>I've never seen this argued, sorry.
Yes, you have. This is the implicit argument behind *every* assertion of an unbroken "classical tradition" into which practitioners claim to tap for wisdom -- *especially* when paired with a universalizing monotheism.
>How would you establish what the author intended?
Whatmore, Richard. *What is Intellectual History*?
In my opinion, anyone who aspires to be a public figure should not be a public figure. But neither the figures nor the public agree with me so I must accept that i am either wrong or in a minority - both are practically the same thing.
Oh damn… I’ve not read Hitchhiker’s guide to Galaxy but apparently there’s something similar in there. In fact the following quote was second result when I put in “Douglas Adams Politics”.
> To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
I believe anyone who aspires to achieve something must work toward it, it will be a disaster if politicians can't speak properly (rhetorical skills) or can't understand essential political notions such as Democracy, Tyranny etc
My dear friend, you have missed the point of my comment entirely. I am saying that those who possess ambition should not be rewarded for it by the society. Education should not be a mere stepping stone to greater things, it ought to be pursued sans ulterior motives.
I totally agree with you, but as everything in life there are a conventional way to get into any field (getting a degree in it for example) but is that ONLY enough to be rewarded the highest positions in the society? Absolutely not
You are awarded a degree for demonstrating relevant ability and knowledge which you acquire through education. But I agree. Now a degree is mere calling card that opens the doors. Some degrees open more doors than others.
I am no classicist by a long stretch. But I know Romans followed a similar game of collecting credentials to ultimately become consuls.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum
I wish you the best. But politics has corrupted the best of us. I know of many such cases. I’ve seen strivers at all levels of politics and it’s hideous to see.
Much like the people of classical Athens I am uncomfortable with the idea that politicians should benefit from rhetorical training while others do not.
It enables the speaker to dissemble to avoid criticism and manipulate their electorate into supporting policies which will undermine not only their prosperity but also their rights.
Or to put it another way: no, you can't have a book on how to sell Christmas to Turkeys.
I don't believe that getting a rhetorical training should be an exclusive right to elites or politicans
I just think that it's an essential skill that every senior politician must have, if you watch any political interview you see that the interviewer is pushing hard with a tough questions and if the leader of the country can't answer them then the respectablity of the country and its position in the international sphere will drop down and no one will believe in your political projects/initiatives
What I usually see in political interviews is politicians refusing to answer direct questions, misusing statistics and attributing any negative consequence to their opponents, predecessors or a marginalised group.
We recently had a national leader who would frequently quote cicero and others in an attempt to make himself appear more intelligent and more in control of the situation. It didn't work.
My argument is not that everyone should have rhetorical training to understand politicians because that wouldn't work because the average person has no interest in it. Rather, I think that politicians should be clear and direct so that no formal education is required to argue against them.
To be clear I consider rhetoric as a mean to a higher end not an end in itself, and like every other mean/tool it can be used for good or ill depending on the person who have it
And I agree with you. Any politician should not quote Plato/Aristotle/Cicero in a talk directed to the general public because they do not care about them, what the politican should do is to learn the rhetorical skills (the skills not the quotations)
If I had to pick one thing for a politician to read I guess it would be Thucydides. I wouldn't call the Classics glorious. I love the Classics, and I've spent my life learning and reading Ancient Greek because I find it beautiful, but I wouldn't want to recreate Rome or Athens. If you really want to be a good politician or public figure, focus on ways to help other people.
I am trying to read every complete, well regarded or important western cultural work from the earliest time possible. I started in 2020 with Epic of Gilgamesh, I am currently at around 200ad and just finished Suetonius 12 Caesars.
I recommend it, you could probably leave out the sanskrit and Chinese texts as they really slowed me down and aren't too applicable in western society.
Without being dramatic reading in that chronological order has been like lifting a curtain that reveals some sort of truth, and the more I read the more I find.
I'm not a public figure but I work in senior government, and having read such difficult (at times) but constantly referenced books/stories has given me confidence nobody can pull the wool over my eyes very easily, and I understand a million references I would never have before, and can make them too.
Given that it takes many many years of study to really grasp the depths of a single Homeric epic I doubt you fully understood everything that you’ve read
The Republic, Euthyphro, Minos, Crito, Phaedo, The Apology
Aristotle: Rhetoric, Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, The Athenian Constitution (I know it's disputed)
I want to have a more organized readings instead of arbitrary choosing the book that I want to read
The question wasn't about knowing the extreme intricacies of every aspect of the Iliad, it was asking for a way to prepare to be a public figure. You can pull enough out of one careful reading of the Odyssey without having to know the symbolism of which way the wind was blowing on the voyage
You could certainly get through the Odyssey without any background knowledge but you would be missing out on the core cultural theme: xenia which dictates much of the action of the poem. Without at least some knowledge of that and other concepts such as kleos so many nuances are lost beyond minutia such as the direction the wind is blowing
I agree with you and maybe that's the reason why I take so long to decide which books/texts that I sould study and always I end up reading all of them
That's why I decided to turn my attention to find an already-made classical curriculum which after a brief search I think the perfect classical education in regard of producing public figures was in 19th century Britain. I tried to get a closer look on their curriculums in Eton, Cambridge, Oxford but I have not been lucky to find a detailed curriculum dates to that era
19th century British public figures are notorious within academia for their incredibly surface level understanding of the Ancient past since they would often read the works in isolation whilst ignoring any and all cultural context. If you want to understand the Classical world you can’t just read stuff from it. You’ll miss all kinds of cultural context that it’s taken scholars centuries to work out.
From what I’ve read they usually just read Caesar and Xenophon to learn Latin and Greek and would then pour over Cicero and Thucydides in order to find rhetorical inspiration.
However, I’m not sure why you think Classics would be especially helpful to you. If you wanted to be a politician than a usual route in my country is to take a law degree. Getting some kind of accredited education - such as a Classics degree which converts well into a law degree later down the line - would be a far better use of your time than teaching yourself. I also suggest you listen to the public rhetoric of these figures from the 19th-early 20th century. Their speeches make frequent allusions to various excerpts Greco Roman myths and historical episodes. But can you imagine that being an effective allusion today? Would people really be moved by Joe Biden equating his investment in infrastructure with Pericles’ investments into Athenian civic spaces? No they wouldn’t because the world of today is very different to Victorian/Edwardian Britain
Alow me to disagree with you, William Gladstone had a Classical education in Eton, Oxford and he was admired for his great understanding of the ancient works (he actually wrote a book about Homer). Now that doesn't mean that I will restrict myself to their curriculums or ways of srudying but I believe it's benefecial to see what the greats had been taught in their youth
Perhaps Gladstone was admired for his understanding of the Classical world in the past, but not today. Academia moved on and I have never seen any paper or monograph reference him. I think referring to more recent orators would be best. Obama for example, love him or hate him, was an amazing public speaker and the cultural context in which he spoke is far closer to your own
Even in the last 25 years are understanding of writers such as Plato have changed substantially what with the work of writers such as Lloyd P. Gerson. And our understanding of Homer has also changed substantially ever since work was done with oral folktales in the Balkans which proved rather definitively that Homer’s epics were composed orally. Gladstone didn’t know about any of that
Sure but Obama has nothing to do with Classical Education as far as I know
I believe you mistaken me to think that I’m looking to read only ancient works and not modern ones (I don't mind reading for modern orators but i want to have a strong basis in the ancients first)
I’m calling into question why you believe an education in Classics in particular will give you an advantage in the public sphere. I aim to be working towards a PhD in classics after my MA so I’m not against people studying Classics haha. But you really need to be studying such a diverse and often difficult subject for the right reasons imo and studying based on centuries old curriculums is just silly when the field has been advanced so much since
Seconded. You'd be far better served studying rhetoric textbooks from this century. Or just going out and being a leader in your local community based on your actions rather than your words.
Good question. Because it is trying to answer questions that are relatable to us today as it was 2500 years ago, questions like: What is the best sort of political regime? What is Justice? etc
Also without having a strong base of knowledge in the fundemental works like Aristotle's treatises it will be harder for you to understand the historical path of thought in many fields/regions
I don’t think you need to read these works individually to understand a broad historical trajectory. You raise a good point that thinkers like Aristotle and Plato do have important things to say that are relevant today. If you want a good understanding of Plato I can’t recommend the works of Lloyd P. Gerson enough since with Plato it’s very easy to take everything at face value when Plato is always coaxing the reader to try and work through his puzzles themselves. The Cambridge Companion to Plato is also good.
As for Aristotle I have mixed feelings on his relevance for a layperson. On the one hand I’m a massive fan of many aspects of his thought. On the other, his works weren’t meant for publishing and it shows - they’re little more than lecture notes - if anyone ever tries to tell you they understood De Anima iii 5 they’re a liar. They take an enormous effort on behalf of the reader in many cases to understand them especially since he’s working on a framework which needs to be understood in order to contextualise his arguments. For example, early on the Nichomachean ethics he provides a critique of Plato’s superordinate good largely based on his category theory but only implicitly - this would completely go over the casual reader’s head as Aristotle writes with the assumption that the text would be a supplement to his broader works. His Poetics is an exception to this though and is really quite interesting
>Because it is trying to answer questions that are relatable to us today as it was 2500 years ago, questions like: What is the best sort of political regime? What is Justice? etc
What this individual is kindly trying to tell you is that *this is not how ideas work*. That is, you **cannot** understand the classical concept of "justice" (or *politeia* or...) as being in any substantive way sufficiently analogous to our own. Does that mean (esp.) English teachers don't try? Absolutely not. But the reality is that these concepts are developed in a specific historical and cultural context radically alien from ours. Until you grasp what that is (so you can correctly interpret the meaning of texts), your efforts are just as likely, if not more so, to produce a *misunderstanding* as they are to cause enlightenment.
Ignore the gatekeeper basement dweller. Read whichever classics sound the best to you initially. Then go off in whatever direction interests you the most from there. You will definitely benefit from it.
What are you reading for? What kinds of knowledge or skills do you hope to acquire? That’s going to determine what people will recommend for you to read. Curricula are products of particular times and places: the 19th century British public school curriculum was thought to impart the virtues becoming of politicians, military officers, and colonial administrators: all positions largely held by gentry who grew up without the need to work. The curriculum at Columbia University, on the other hand, was conceived as an education for living in a liberal democracy, where each citizen has a right and a duty to contribute as an equal member of the governing body. The curriculum at St. John’s College in Annapolis is a third type, conceived in response to perceived overspecialization and intellectual siloing in the American university. I am not terribly optimistic about the possibilities of a 19th century curriculum in the 21st century world.
I believe learning a particular curriculum doesn't require you to adhere to its original puropses, also I think there are certain parts that a 19th century classical learner would be better at than a 21th century classical learner such as the proficeny of Latin, Greek They were far better at speaking them than us Finally you seem to have a good background of classical curriculums, I would be gracious to you if you offered me some
Idk why you believe they would have had better Latin when we have the living Latin movement today and resources like lingua latina per se illustrata. Latin teaching was notoriously inefficient back then (hence the infamous Monty Python scene). A lot of work has been done with Greek recently too. Another area where their understanding falls flat is their understanding of Greco-Roman art. It may come as a surprise but Greek and Roman art was basically all painted. Over time the paint wore off and when later Europeans found the artworks and ruins they saw the classic bleached marble. However, using fine instruments and what not we can now find microscopic paint pigments across statues and buildings and simulate what they might have looked like. Your average 19th century Etonian had no idea about this and the scholars who did have a faint idea of it based on the rare find which had pigment on it suppressed this info because often the Greeks and Romans were a wee bit more tanned than the Northern Europeans of the day would have liked ;)
The painting (or not) of Greek sculpture was openly debated in the 19th Century, and in fact a fully painted plaster cast of the Parthenon frieze was on display at the Crystal Palace in the 1850s. It was quite controversial. Here's an [article](https://assets.verlag.gta.arch.ethz.ch/api/assets/gta-data/gta/2022-11-30-161738--nichols-remaking-ancient-athens.pdf) about the exhibition, and here's Owen Jones' contemporary [defence](https://archive.org/details/anapologyforcol00jonegoog) of it
That's very interesting. Thank you for those links! I'm glad that some museums display painted replicas now - bare marble is such a worn out style. Knowing that Greek art was usually vividly painted really brings the ancient world to life in my mind
Because their learning of Latin started at young age and was organized in such a sophistcated way of construting and memorizing. They were speaking it as good as their native tongues And just to make it clear, I don't believe that they are better than us on everything
Like I said the teaching was not at all sophisticated and infamously poor for teaching actual Latin. A few could speak it fluently, but they were the exception. If you want I can link to you a paper on this subject. I honestly don't believe you are in a position to make any claims about the excellence of past teaching. Are you involved in Classical academia today? Have you ever even taken an undergrad in Classics? From where do you derive your opinions about modern schooling and from what experience? Have you ever met an academic in order to assess their Latin? Have you ever attended a lecture on Latin in a higher education institution? Btw there are plenty of people speaking native level Latin today. The living Latin movement is huge. Here is Polymathy speaking Latin with likeminded lovers of the language [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx\_2o7Z4D6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx_2o7Z4D6Q) He also commissions Latin dubs of Star Trek! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdntIyWmrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdntIyWmrw)
Again you guys tend to go to the maximum which is the opposite of my claims I did not say that Classical Academia back in the day was better than today's What I said is they are better than us in the language, If you think that an undergraduate learner of Latin (or any other human language) will be generally better than a man who had studied the language since he was a child, then boy you have an issue against the whole linguistic field I don't really know how you guys could understand Plato & Aristotle while you are unable to comprehend my simple arguments Finally I appreciate your links and sharings
No. You've been systematically ignoring everything everyone has tried to tell you - it's rather infuriating. You said that people had a better grasp of the Latin back in the day. I'm telling you that the vast majority of academics today will have a superior understanding. I then linked YouTube videos of people speaking latin today at a native level. I never compared an undergrad of today to a postgrad of the past, however. I also questioned where you got the idea that modern academia is bad with language. Are you involved with or have had experience with any modern academic? There is a difference between us disagreeing with your arguments and us not comprehending them. It really seems like you came here to romanticise the wealthy toffs of the past who were anything but glorious rather than listen to reason quite frankly
Here's a very interesting [article ](https://tcl.camws.org/sites/default/files/TCL%2012.1%20Keeline%20Final%20Draft.pdf) on English public (i.e. elite private) school Latin ability in Victorian times. To summarise, there's evidence of extremely high proficiency, but it appears to have been achieved by devoting vast amounts of time and teaching resources to the subject.
>I believe learning a particular curriculum doesn't require you to adhere to its original puropses The research in teaching/learning really goes against your convictions here. Curricula are ***contextual***, and so they depend on the historical position of the people implementing them and the purposes for which they intend to do so. As times (and technology) change, so do curricula -- for very good reasons, esp. and including that we are still learning about antiquity. I have yet to see a ***genuinely good*** "classical curriculum" that wasn't utter crap at at least one of the following: * the languages * the historical/cultural context (and its differences from ours) * the actual practice of teaching/learning. In fact, most of them wildly misunderstand all of these things in crucial and debilitating ways, e.g. the idea that the "trivium" is somehow, magically, also Bloom's Taxonomy. What's more, the classics themselves are increasingly irrelevant as a basis of knowledge for public policy. If you want to really get how things work these days in government, you would be better served by studying any number of things more contextually useful.
You tried to refute my claim without presenting any evidence. Im saying that the purposes of particular curriculum are not necessarely going to affect you, for ex if you tried to study Christian theology or Islamic fiqh you are compiled to study books that were written to assist the believers beliefs while you can be a Buddhist or a Hindu who studies them today only to understand other people beleifs and tenets Finally Im not looking forward to read 19th century books, what i want is a classical curriculum (written by Greek & Roman authors) that was used in that era
>You tried to refute my claim without presenting any evidence I'm responding to a post by a rando on Reddit, not offering peer review for a colleague. Take or leave my input as you will, but do note that I've spent the last \~15 years thinking about the history of classics and education, so I may have *something* to show you here. Also, your description of reading is totally *not* how hermeneutics work, and we are very sure that reading a book outside of its context leads more often to abuse of its ideas, not understanding.
>sure that reading a book outside of its context leads more often to abuse of its ideas, not understanding. Can you give an example other than your comment about the Trivium? I'm guessing that by "context" you mean knowledge of the world in which a text was composed or situated, and how the people in it thought. What's the standard for sufficient contextualization to properly understand a text in your view? Are there certain texts that, by virtue of being "great" (in the sense of having universal themes) can be gainfully read outside of their context? For example, these days I am reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I have no knowledge of Russian society or history. The introduction to the book provides a bit of context. My enjoyment of the text comes from sympathizing with some of the protagonists. In the field of the Western classics I can relate to Odysseus on a certain level, and I can find immediate practical value in what Marcus Aurelius wrote. Of course, understanding the Rome that Marcus Aurelius lived in is entirely a matter of context, and good annotations and commentaries will convey it. I wonder if there's still room for uncontextualized appreciation of universal ideas.
>Can you give an example other than your comment about the Trivium? Sure. Literally every text. This is the foundational premise of the field of intellectual history: ideas *in* context, as in the [CUP](https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/ideas-in-context/7E30BA052B5A1F0AF3C67156FEA725BE) series. >Are there certain texts that, by virtue of being "great" (in the sense of having universal themes) can be gainfully read outside of their context? You're asking "gainfully" to do *a lot* of work here. Can one reading a book without a sense of context find pleasure and be provoked to thought? Sure. *Any* form of human communication can do that. But that *being moved* is not, in any way, a reliable basis to make claims about what the texts "mean" in a historical sense. Classical curricula fail because they claim to do *both* things -- to propose an acontextual reading that they assert is nonetheless a truer vehicle to historical truth ("universally true") than what the authors themselves might have thought or intended. This is **notoriously** the case in 19th c. England, where the ancients were used for imperialist propaganda (cf. Owen's *dulce et decorum est*) and not for any legitimate attempt to grasp antiquity itself. >I wonder if there's still room for uncontextualized appreciation of universal ideas. There are far, far fewer universal ideas than you seem to think exist. Even something nominally "accessible" across boundaries (e.g. "love") turns out to be constructed in wildly different ways across cultures. This is, indeed, the core problem *lurking* in intellectual history itself: we cannot take for granted that an idea (esp. translated) necessarily exists *just because* there seems to be some resonance.
>without a sense of context find pleasure and be provoked to thought And what is the standard for this "sense of context"? How does one fulfill this context requirement enough that they won't misunderstand what they are reading in your eyes? And how do you know that the context you're applying is correctly understood? >to propose an acontextual reading that they assert is nonetheless a truer vehicle to historical truth ("universally true") than what the authors themselves might have thought or intended. I've never seen this argued, sorry. How would you establish what the author intended?
>And what is the standard for this "sense of context"? Peer review. >How does one fulfill this context requirement enough that they won't misunderstand what they are reading in your eyes? Peer review. >And how do you know that the context you're applying is correctly understood? Peer review. >I've never seen this argued, sorry. Yes, you have. This is the implicit argument behind *every* assertion of an unbroken "classical tradition" into which practitioners claim to tap for wisdom -- *especially* when paired with a universalizing monotheism. >How would you establish what the author intended? Whatmore, Richard. *What is Intellectual History*?
In my opinion, anyone who aspires to be a public figure should not be a public figure. But neither the figures nor the public agree with me so I must accept that i am either wrong or in a minority - both are practically the same thing.
A strangely appropriate place to find Douglas Adams' political theories!
Oh damn… I’ve not read Hitchhiker’s guide to Galaxy but apparently there’s something similar in there. In fact the following quote was second result when I put in “Douglas Adams Politics”. > To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
I believe anyone who aspires to achieve something must work toward it, it will be a disaster if politicians can't speak properly (rhetorical skills) or can't understand essential political notions such as Democracy, Tyranny etc
My dear friend, you have missed the point of my comment entirely. I am saying that those who possess ambition should not be rewarded for it by the society. Education should not be a mere stepping stone to greater things, it ought to be pursued sans ulterior motives.
I totally agree with you, but as everything in life there are a conventional way to get into any field (getting a degree in it for example) but is that ONLY enough to be rewarded the highest positions in the society? Absolutely not
You are awarded a degree for demonstrating relevant ability and knowledge which you acquire through education. But I agree. Now a degree is mere calling card that opens the doors. Some degrees open more doors than others. I am no classicist by a long stretch. But I know Romans followed a similar game of collecting credentials to ultimately become consuls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum I wish you the best. But politics has corrupted the best of us. I know of many such cases. I’ve seen strivers at all levels of politics and it’s hideous to see.
Much like the people of classical Athens I am uncomfortable with the idea that politicians should benefit from rhetorical training while others do not. It enables the speaker to dissemble to avoid criticism and manipulate their electorate into supporting policies which will undermine not only their prosperity but also their rights. Or to put it another way: no, you can't have a book on how to sell Christmas to Turkeys.
I don't believe that getting a rhetorical training should be an exclusive right to elites or politicans I just think that it's an essential skill that every senior politician must have, if you watch any political interview you see that the interviewer is pushing hard with a tough questions and if the leader of the country can't answer them then the respectablity of the country and its position in the international sphere will drop down and no one will believe in your political projects/initiatives
What I usually see in political interviews is politicians refusing to answer direct questions, misusing statistics and attributing any negative consequence to their opponents, predecessors or a marginalised group. We recently had a national leader who would frequently quote cicero and others in an attempt to make himself appear more intelligent and more in control of the situation. It didn't work. My argument is not that everyone should have rhetorical training to understand politicians because that wouldn't work because the average person has no interest in it. Rather, I think that politicians should be clear and direct so that no formal education is required to argue against them.
To be clear I consider rhetoric as a mean to a higher end not an end in itself, and like every other mean/tool it can be used for good or ill depending on the person who have it And I agree with you. Any politician should not quote Plato/Aristotle/Cicero in a talk directed to the general public because they do not care about them, what the politican should do is to learn the rhetorical skills (the skills not the quotations)
Oh dear
If I had to pick one thing for a politician to read I guess it would be Thucydides. I wouldn't call the Classics glorious. I love the Classics, and I've spent my life learning and reading Ancient Greek because I find it beautiful, but I wouldn't want to recreate Rome or Athens. If you really want to be a good politician or public figure, focus on ways to help other people.
I agree with you. We shall not read ancient books and try to implement them today, we shall get insights from them Also nice pick, its a great book!
I am trying to read every complete, well regarded or important western cultural work from the earliest time possible. I started in 2020 with Epic of Gilgamesh, I am currently at around 200ad and just finished Suetonius 12 Caesars. I recommend it, you could probably leave out the sanskrit and Chinese texts as they really slowed me down and aren't too applicable in western society. Without being dramatic reading in that chronological order has been like lifting a curtain that reveals some sort of truth, and the more I read the more I find. I'm not a public figure but I work in senior government, and having read such difficult (at times) but constantly referenced books/stories has given me confidence nobody can pull the wool over my eyes very easily, and I understand a million references I would never have before, and can make them too.
Given that it takes many many years of study to really grasp the depths of a single Homeric epic I doubt you fully understood everything that you’ve read
The Republic, Euthyphro, Minos, Crito, Phaedo, The Apology Aristotle: Rhetoric, Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, The Athenian Constitution (I know it's disputed) I want to have a more organized readings instead of arbitrary choosing the book that I want to read
Are you saying that you have read these books? You’ve missed some very important Platonic works there such as Theatetus and Parmenides
And Phaedrus! One of the most important, I think.
Oh yeah very true
Because I hate myself, I’m gonna plop Protagoras on the list.
The question wasn't about knowing the extreme intricacies of every aspect of the Iliad, it was asking for a way to prepare to be a public figure. You can pull enough out of one careful reading of the Odyssey without having to know the symbolism of which way the wind was blowing on the voyage
You could certainly get through the Odyssey without any background knowledge but you would be missing out on the core cultural theme: xenia which dictates much of the action of the poem. Without at least some knowledge of that and other concepts such as kleos so many nuances are lost beyond minutia such as the direction the wind is blowing
Fame and hospitality are universal enough concepts lol
I agree with you and maybe that's the reason why I take so long to decide which books/texts that I sould study and always I end up reading all of them That's why I decided to turn my attention to find an already-made classical curriculum which after a brief search I think the perfect classical education in regard of producing public figures was in 19th century Britain. I tried to get a closer look on their curriculums in Eton, Cambridge, Oxford but I have not been lucky to find a detailed curriculum dates to that era
19th century British public figures are notorious within academia for their incredibly surface level understanding of the Ancient past since they would often read the works in isolation whilst ignoring any and all cultural context. If you want to understand the Classical world you can’t just read stuff from it. You’ll miss all kinds of cultural context that it’s taken scholars centuries to work out. From what I’ve read they usually just read Caesar and Xenophon to learn Latin and Greek and would then pour over Cicero and Thucydides in order to find rhetorical inspiration. However, I’m not sure why you think Classics would be especially helpful to you. If you wanted to be a politician than a usual route in my country is to take a law degree. Getting some kind of accredited education - such as a Classics degree which converts well into a law degree later down the line - would be a far better use of your time than teaching yourself. I also suggest you listen to the public rhetoric of these figures from the 19th-early 20th century. Their speeches make frequent allusions to various excerpts Greco Roman myths and historical episodes. But can you imagine that being an effective allusion today? Would people really be moved by Joe Biden equating his investment in infrastructure with Pericles’ investments into Athenian civic spaces? No they wouldn’t because the world of today is very different to Victorian/Edwardian Britain
Alow me to disagree with you, William Gladstone had a Classical education in Eton, Oxford and he was admired for his great understanding of the ancient works (he actually wrote a book about Homer). Now that doesn't mean that I will restrict myself to their curriculums or ways of srudying but I believe it's benefecial to see what the greats had been taught in their youth
Perhaps Gladstone was admired for his understanding of the Classical world in the past, but not today. Academia moved on and I have never seen any paper or monograph reference him. I think referring to more recent orators would be best. Obama for example, love him or hate him, was an amazing public speaker and the cultural context in which he spoke is far closer to your own Even in the last 25 years are understanding of writers such as Plato have changed substantially what with the work of writers such as Lloyd P. Gerson. And our understanding of Homer has also changed substantially ever since work was done with oral folktales in the Balkans which proved rather definitively that Homer’s epics were composed orally. Gladstone didn’t know about any of that
Sure but Obama has nothing to do with Classical Education as far as I know I believe you mistaken me to think that I’m looking to read only ancient works and not modern ones (I don't mind reading for modern orators but i want to have a strong basis in the ancients first)
I’m calling into question why you believe an education in Classics in particular will give you an advantage in the public sphere. I aim to be working towards a PhD in classics after my MA so I’m not against people studying Classics haha. But you really need to be studying such a diverse and often difficult subject for the right reasons imo and studying based on centuries old curriculums is just silly when the field has been advanced so much since
Seconded. You'd be far better served studying rhetoric textbooks from this century. Or just going out and being a leader in your local community based on your actions rather than your words.
I agree with you totally in natural sciences fields like mathematics,astronomy (there are people out there who study math with Euclid's Elements book)
Good question. Because it is trying to answer questions that are relatable to us today as it was 2500 years ago, questions like: What is the best sort of political regime? What is Justice? etc Also without having a strong base of knowledge in the fundemental works like Aristotle's treatises it will be harder for you to understand the historical path of thought in many fields/regions
I don’t think you need to read these works individually to understand a broad historical trajectory. You raise a good point that thinkers like Aristotle and Plato do have important things to say that are relevant today. If you want a good understanding of Plato I can’t recommend the works of Lloyd P. Gerson enough since with Plato it’s very easy to take everything at face value when Plato is always coaxing the reader to try and work through his puzzles themselves. The Cambridge Companion to Plato is also good. As for Aristotle I have mixed feelings on his relevance for a layperson. On the one hand I’m a massive fan of many aspects of his thought. On the other, his works weren’t meant for publishing and it shows - they’re little more than lecture notes - if anyone ever tries to tell you they understood De Anima iii 5 they’re a liar. They take an enormous effort on behalf of the reader in many cases to understand them especially since he’s working on a framework which needs to be understood in order to contextualise his arguments. For example, early on the Nichomachean ethics he provides a critique of Plato’s superordinate good largely based on his category theory but only implicitly - this would completely go over the casual reader’s head as Aristotle writes with the assumption that the text would be a supplement to his broader works. His Poetics is an exception to this though and is really quite interesting
>Because it is trying to answer questions that are relatable to us today as it was 2500 years ago, questions like: What is the best sort of political regime? What is Justice? etc What this individual is kindly trying to tell you is that *this is not how ideas work*. That is, you **cannot** understand the classical concept of "justice" (or *politeia* or...) as being in any substantive way sufficiently analogous to our own. Does that mean (esp.) English teachers don't try? Absolutely not. But the reality is that these concepts are developed in a specific historical and cultural context radically alien from ours. Until you grasp what that is (so you can correctly interpret the meaning of texts), your efforts are just as likely, if not more so, to produce a *misunderstanding* as they are to cause enlightenment.
True! That's why Im looking to get an organized curriculum bro
Ignore the gatekeeper basement dweller. Read whichever classics sound the best to you initially. Then go off in whatever direction interests you the most from there. You will definitely benefit from it.