FROM ANCIENT WHITE MALES-(revitalizing classical studies critical to combatting liberal revisionism)

WASHINGTON TIMES.COM ^ | MAY 19, 2005 | SUZANNE FIELDS

[CHARLITE]

This is a wonderful article, in my opinion.

[Borges]

Terry Eagleton surmised that the decline of the Classics in English speaking countries started with the advent of WW1. Philology was largely associated with Germany so the patriotically inclined English took the focus off of them in favor of their own literature.

[2banana]

"Such was the understanding of the ancient Greeks and of the Renaissance humanists," he continues, "but not, I fear of many teachers of the humanities today, who deny the possibility of knowing anything with confidence, of the reality of such concepts as truth and virtue, who seek only gain and pleasure in the modern guise of political power and self-gratification as the ends of education."

Very, very TRUE!

[Little Pig]

This is why I will be buying the complete Great Books of the Western World.

[Jaysun]

Wonderful article and wonderful lecture by Mr. Kagan.

http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/kagan/lecture.html

[kalee]

Dead white male bump

[Borges]

Good info here:

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html

[Little Pig]

I've seen that, thanks. There are actually a bunch of sites about this set, along with at least 3 separate newsgroups running the "Great Conversation" and the concurrent 10-year reading assignments. I can't wait to get my set, so I can start reading. Fortunately, I read faster than most people, so I hope to be able to plow through the series in a couple of years.

[Conservatrix]

Philosopher's Song (Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl)

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the turning of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed...
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, with half a pint of shandy was
particularly ill,
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day,
Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.

[Conservatrix]

The reason why the dregs of society are being lauded today for such achievements as crucixes in urine, jungle-beat incantations about raping women and killing police officers, unryhmed, nonsensical poetry, and idiotic movies full of sex is precisely because THE GREAT WHITE MALE is now evil. What else have you got? The not great white or non-white anything else.

But give me Bach, Tennyson, Vivaldi, Milton, Caravaggio, Beethoven, Donne, Rembrandt, Herbert, Josquin, DaVinci, Dickens, and the rest of the noble host of the great white men of Western Civilization anyday over the scum we call achievement today.
PLEASE!!!!!

[Borges]

unryhmed, nonsensical poetry

'Paradise Lost' doesn't rhyme. Neither did most modernist poetry like Eliot and Pound who were called non-sensical.

[CasearianDaoist]

It is interesting to note that current usage of the term "Philogy" is applied to any language or language group, including those that do not have a written form or tradition.

Much of the analytic side of Philology has been supplanted by Linguistics, a field that purports to exclude the larger human context of lanuguage in order to approach it as a "scinece."

Not having gone to public schools and having the benefit of a rigorous formal education with a strong dose of the "Cannon" of the Western world - and not just the Classics - I marvel at how truly ignorant and ill educated our "academics and "intellectuals" actually are.

When I was a boy, the fellows working at the water treatment plant had a better understanding of their civilization, and were in some way "better educated" than these imposters

And it is not merely about literacy: These folks are deficient in basic and general knowledge of Mathematics, Music or the Visual Arts.

[Conservatrix]

Yes but Milton, like Shakespeare (whom I grossly ommitted from my preliminary list) wrote in iambic pentameter, or blank verse. It was structured and ordered.

I am not a fan of T.S . Eliot, eeeeee cumings or the rest of the decontructionists... form and structure help create beauty, chaos is ugliness..

[Borges]

T.S. Eliot was a Modernist (as opposed to a Post Modernist) and wouldn't have made hide nor hair of Deconstruction. :-) His work is highly structural and basically fetishes order.

[Borges]

To be honest my experiences in Undergrad and Graduate education in English were very satisfactory. The Professors were quite knowledgeable in their fields and beyond.

[Ciexyz]

"Dead white male" bump.

[CasearianDaoist]

How old are you? When was the last time you were on a campus? Do you have to deal with any of these sort in daily life?

[Borges]

I went to school in the '90s. And I count a few of them amongst my freinds. Remember this is good old fashioned 'English'...not Woman's Studies or Queer theory Studies. Perhaps people involved with those other departments (who have connections to Lit Departments of course) would say differently. I went to a small state school. Perhaps the radicals are at the Ivy League schools? Though people I studied with studied with people like Stanley Fish who I don't regard as a radical.

[Conservatrix]

Forgive the misnomer.
I DO however prefer poetry that is rhymed, with metric feet.
Unrhymed, nonsensical poetry (or whatever I said before) smacks of laziness or lack of skill to me. I was thinking more of the Maya Angelou category actually... I mean, rap rhymes but I would not call it great poetry...

But to each his own.