This Is What We Do

Even before Friday morning, I was feeling despondent; partly premonitions of doom (local political doom, apocalyptical climate and environmental doom), partly the after-effects of a heavy teaching load this term and of a year in which I seem to have been ill and/or insomniac quite a lot of the time, hence massively behind with research and writing commitments. And now? We’re definitely leaving the EU, and still at risk of a disastrous version of that departure; the culture war will continue and probably accelerate, with Johnson’s ‘bring the country back together’ a form of ‘you lost, time to get with the programme’ coercion rather than a genuine concern about engaging with other views; nothing will be done about climate change, or poverty.

I’ll be fine, of course, which is why my age bracket is where a majority starts voting Tory despite everything they stand for; house ownership, secure job with good salary (universities are likely to be ever more beleaguered, but it’s a heck of a cushy number compared with most people), safely and obviously British in accent and appearance, and even the barriers going up against Europe will be a minor inconvenience rather than a serious problem. The issue is rather spiritual or psychological; the anger and frustration, the feeling of being out of step with (former?) friends and the country as a whole, the eroding sense of self, and above all a feeling of helplessness and uselessness, not just that the problems are too big – it is a constant struggle not to embrace total denial of climate change and environmental degradation, because thinking about it is too painful – but that my potential contribution to making a less crappy world is so pathetic.

I mean, who cares about another article on Roman economic thought or another blog post on Thucydides misattributions? I can well imagine that climate and environmental scientists struggle with the fact that nothing they do makes enough of a difference, but at least they’re doing something that’s relevant to the crises confronting humanity. As the result of a series of poorly-considered choices made decades ago, I find myself as a specialist in a branch of knowledge that is all too often elitist, a luxury indulgence for people who can afford it, a carrier of all the values that I loathe about our current political regime. And even if we struggle to decontaminate it of its more toxic elements, as Edith Hall continues to do magnificently and as I gestured towards in the Classics: What’s The Point? book, at best we produce something that’s not actively malign, rather than something that the world really needs.

Yes, of course this is the depression talking. I wouldn’t start from here if I were you, but there isn’t a terribly plausible scenario in which things end up very differently – I don’t think I’d be in a much stronger position to improve the world if I’d become a historian of medieval monasticism instead. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of novels or chefs, either, which were the main non-academic alternatives. I may sometimes wish I was working in a field where more than a handful of students want to talk about engaging with the modern world, not just the ancient one, but that’s probably a case of the grass being always greener and the students more engaged on the other side of the corridor, so to speak…

We are where we are. There’s a case, I imagine, for treating the academic stuff as just a job, paying the bills so as to permit efforts to make things less bad in other ways. So, yes, I am thinking of trying to re-join the town council, if opportunity arises. But, at least at the moment, it’s a job that seems to consume all my energy and still demand more, so it’s hard to imagine doing much else. And so, if I want to make a difference, it has to start here; to rework Nietzsche: interest in classical antiquity may be just a Western prejudice, but let us at least try to employ it in the interests of the present. The content of our research and teaching is of course endlessly fascinating, but this is more about how we engage with it and present it to our interlocutors, above all our students. This is what we do…

(1) Teach, and exemplify, the search for truth; never stop asking questions, never settle for an answer – and especially not a simple or comforting answer – except as a provisional assumption as a basis for further enquiry; always push the analysis further, always open up problems and ambiguities rather than trying to close them down. Critical thinking is a skill, a praxis, and an attitude, not an innate talent. It can be taught; we can teach it.

(2) Teach the politics of truth: understanding rhetoric, recognising cognitive dissonance and cognitive traps, knowing how to engage with theory and ideology. The study of antiquity is inseparable from the history of scholarship and the study of classical reception, and the social and material conditions of the production and consumption of knowledge more generally; students need to see all of this, to recognise the mechanisms and tricks, and spot the man behind the curtain.

(3) Promote cosmopolitanism. As Lucian remarked, the true historian should not be a citizen of any specific polis – but, we must add, we should be familiar with as many of them as possible, to avoid the temptation to take our own assumptions and prejudices for granted as a norm. Yes, easier said than done – realistically, if I set reading in another language, it won’t be read – but I can make the effort to introduce non-anglophone scholarly traditions, to make them at least partly available to students even if they can’t engage directly.

(4) Create conditions for practising civil discourse; building the confidence to articulate one’s own views, while also respecting others and negotiating differences. This, I think, is the hardest thing; somehow both stepping back to create a space in which they don’t feel intimidated or constrained by fear of giving a wrong answer, and also actively managing the discussion where necessary, to make sure that everyone is included. Last term I tried to promote an idea suggested by the philosopher Harry Brighouse, of discouraging ‘ping-pong’ discussion – student addresses comment to lecturer, lecturer responds, another student responds to the first one but by addressing the lecturer etc. – but too often the result was three students talking energetically with each other and the rest feeling bored and disaffected, wishing (according to the mid-term feedback) for me to do a lot more talking. Next term I’m wondering about getting one student to act as ‘chair’ for discussion of another student’s presentation… It’s about trying to orchestrate and simultaneously model constructive engagement.

When I say “this is what we do”, I mean that partly as a statement; this is what we do. It’s not a call to change our practice or scholarly principles – but perhaps to be more consistent in applying them (I know there are times when I take the easy way out of setting a ‘good enough’ reading list, or giving up on class discussion because no one is engaged and it’s easier all round if I just talk at them), and perhaps to prioritise and emphasise some of them a bit more, if only for my own sake. This is what we do; this is why what we do matters, and could change people’s lives.

It’s not about the red pill; the idea of a single moment of enlightenment, a gnosis that will reveal the true nature of the world to the elect, is precisely one of those idiotic denials of complexity that plague humanity. It is rather the slow process of education, acquiring and practising the habits and attitudes of critical engagement and self-reflection, and critical respect for the strongly-held views of others while remaining dedicated above all to truth rather than lies and self-serving illusions. Our only hope is that more people learn to engage with the world critically.