Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

As I endeavor to read great books, I turned next to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Generally I love this kind of book. I'm a big Jane Austen fan. But I also read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and didn't love it. So I proceeded with low expectations. Fortunately, I really enjoyed the book.

First of all, Jane Eyre, unlike her Austen-like fellow characters, is poor. She's an orphan, taken in by wealthier relatives who mistreat here. She is not looking for a man. The book is so much more about her and her character growth than marriage, although that, of course, is included. 

She begins as a wholly unlikable, yet pitiable creature. Jane is loud and opinionated and headstrong. But she also has a strong moral center on right and wrong. She is sent to a boarding school and forgotten. She must forge her own way in the world. However, by this point, she has been molded and shaped in her character and, while not necessarily having achieved perfection, knows that as the goal. 

She finds employment with the Rochester clan as a governess for Mr. Rochester's ward. This is where the book turns Austen-esque as Jane and Mr. Rochester, twenty years her senior, declare their undying love and intention to marry. Jane is saved by a rich, but unattractive, man who plucks her from obscurity, intending to lavish her with his fortune and make a fine lady of her. As with most Victorian romantic novels, the love is told to the reader and described in voluminous terms, but the reader is never shown the love. Why Mr. Rochester loves Jane is unclear. She's different from the other women who are apparently vacuous and money-grubbing. She is an interesting conversationalist. Even he calls her plain looking, however. She's subservient and clearly his inferior. They have no chemistry or event that bonds them together. It just is that they are mad for each other. 

Of course there is a twist and "happily ever after" is abandoned. But 1/3 of the book remains. Jane continues in a very different adventure with a family when she literally collapses on their doorstep. But the story circles around and all ends well.

One thing the book had going for it was a real sense of a life that seemed wholly unfair, yet through it all the thread of God's sovereignty runs. Jane, and consequently those around her, learn to trust in God's plan and call for righteousness, especially when it's hard. Jane spends the book learning the lesson and implementing it. Those around her, including Mr. Rochester, must discover its truth in their own way. The redemption of injustice and trial turn God into the hero of the story. While the moral is clear, Trust God and Do Right, I don't believe it was heavy-handed or overdone. It feels real. It feels hard. But in the end, it feels right.

Charitable Writing by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III

My Seminar team is making an intentional effort in the upcoming school year to inculcate "Intellectual Virtues" in our students. A helpful companion book was suggested by one of the teachers, Charitable Writing by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler III. I found this book invaluable to our mission.

The authors begin by lamenting that writing is taught the same in public and Christian schools. They realized the error in this and this book is their attempt to correct that. The dual command to love God and love others should infuse everything a Christian does, including writing. Yet the current model of writing is hardly a model of love, but rather that of war. Arguments are made and the opposition is refuted. Someone wins and someone loses. While recognizing the importance of making an argument, the authors desire to infuse the search for truth through writing with love. 

Realizing that writing is truly a communal activity, Gibson and Beitler divide the writing process into three components: Humble Listening, Loving Argument, and Keeping Time Hopefully. I marked up particularly helpful advice that I intend to put into practice in my Rhetoric class. 

Humble Listening: After you've successfully grasped the argument's content (what it says) through paraphrase, turn to a consideration of the arguments form (how it says) and function (what it does). Don't evaluate at this stage; instead, attempt to describe how the argument is constructed and what the argument's parts--its paragraphs, sentences, and word choices--accomplish. By paraphrasing your peers' ideas and describing the form and function of their arguments, you'll be better equipped to offer them evaluative feedback and suggestions for improvement when it is time to do so. Humble listening, we are suggesting, begins the process of offering feedback not with a summary judgment about the success or failure of this or that. It opens like Alice Duer Miller's "Splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer." In humility, we can respond by simply offering back what we heard--describing what the writer said, how the writer went about saying it, and for what purposes. Giving your peers' writing back to them in this way will almost certainly be a revelatory experience for them, and for you. 

The authors propose a new metaphor for writing to replace the old one of war: a feast. 

Loving Argument: To recognize that writing not only can be but also should be a hospitable practice has profound implications for Christian writers. To write hospitably requires that we use words and genre conventions that our reader will recognize and understand. To write hospitably requires that we take the time to edit our writing so as to make it approachable. To write hospitably requires that we actually think about who our readers are in the first place. Above all, to write hospitably requires that we recognize writing as a gift. "And yet,; Gibson writes, "I know of few students who describe their academic papers as gifts. As "work' or products' or achievements' or 'projects'-but not as gifts." As Gibson perceives, our educations form us to understand our writing first and foremost in terms of our personal productivity or success. It's about us. That, of course, is not how a banquet functions. A banquet succeeds when the hosts and guests enjoy themselves together.

"Keeping Time Hopefully" is to say that writing needs to be a slow, savored process. A labor of love. The Gibson and Beitler compare it to the "Slow Food" movement which desires and intentionality and appreciation for the eating process. It is not procrastination, but deliberation. 

Keeping Time Hopefully: A second, related way to revitalize revision is by recognizing it as an opportunity to love our readers. Revision can be an act of charity. To recall several features of J. I. Packer's definition, charity involves giving of oneself and what one has, freely and without consideration of merit, to meet the actual needs of specific people and promote their greatness." Few of us understand revision in such terms. Instead of viewing it as a gift that promotes others' well-being, we see it as obligatory work we must do to strengthen our writing, earn the "A," get published, or win awards. We may have been taught to revise with the rhetorical needs of our readers in mind, but we typically strive to meet the needs of those who are in a position to promote us--professors, bosses, and other "higher-ups." The social position of our readers should matter to us because, if we're being honest, our desire is usually to make ourselves, not others, great.

This book is a fantastic wake-up call to me as a teacher to try to infuse love in all I do and especially to help my students to infuse love in what they do. 

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Because it is such a classic, and probably an absolute must for classical educators, I decided to read the entire Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. I had read portions of it, and had watched the Hillsdale videos on it as well as heard Spencer Klavan on it. But it seemed time to actually read it. Besides, I had to read something floating in the pool. 

It was as good as I'd hoped. 

Aristotle can be tough. His overarching goal is to categorize everything. As he does this, his writing can seem repetitive and actually somewhat obvious. But it is his drilling down on definitions--on saying what something is, and what something is not--that causes us to see what we thought we already knew in a new light. 

Nicomachean Ethics proceeds Politics because Aristotle thought his students needed to know what exactly is the good at which they are aiming before embarking on a political program. That said, he begins Ethics with this familiar line:

Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that the good is that at which all things aim.

He is saying that everything we do is in pursuit of something we would call "good." It is therefore incumbent upon us to define this term. This preoccupies the rest of the book. 

Of course we could also say that we aim at "happiness" and Aristotle will explore this next. He creates a term, "being-at-work" for when a thing is its best self. When it is doing what it is made to do. This is "good." A tree, which is being as tree-like as it can, is a good tree. Human "beings-at-work" aim to be happy. And we can only be happy by aiming at the highest goods. Therefore only a good human is truly happy. A good human is one who has mastered the virtues to the extent he has internalized them and they define him. 

Therefore Aristotle proceeds to define the virtues. He shows that the virtues rest as a mean between two vices. Courage is between recklessness and cowardice. This does not mean that a virtue is exactly between them, but it is somewhere in the middle. The circumstances and our own natural proclivities will determine where the exact mean is. This makes it a difficult target to hit. Aristotle advises to overshoot in the direction that is hardest for you. If you are naturally cautious, aim for reckless and vice versa. In this way, you will hit closer to the virtuous mean than if you gave into your own natural desire. We become virtuous as we continuously do the virtuous thing. This is why it's important to know what that is. 

This brings Aristotle to the virtuous way of thinking. Humans make choices. And they make choices based on deliberation. Deliberation only involves subjects in which the particular human has some agency. In order to be virtuous, each person must deliberate and choose the most beautiful choice with the most beautiful of intentions. Repeating this process then leads to a virtuous person. Often, we are seduced into thinking that we can push the line in the small things, but when it counts, we will act virtuously. This is the opposite of what Aristotle wants us to see. Each deliberation, and therefore each choice, defines and builds our character. The kind of character needed to make the tough choice simply cannot be called into existence without practice.

When it comes to justice, Aristotle describes it as giving what is due. It is the most public of virtues and the one that requires all the others. Unlike courage, which can be done when called upon and doesn't need the other virtues, justice requires a virtuous way of thinking in order to understand what is actually due. Each situation is unique and requires serious deliberation and beautiful choices. Justice is the virtue of all other virtues. And once a man understands justice, he can make practical application and exercise practical judgment. 

Aristotle seems to go off topic when he dives into friendship. He categorizes friendships as those of utility--a relationship with an accountant--and those of pleasure--people who share a hobby--and those of virtue. This last form is rare. It is the friendship in which each person makes the other a better person. It's hard, but possible, among unequals. This is a friendship for the simple sake of the friendship. We are tempted to say that our friendships are of this sort. Yet Aristotle, as he is wont to do, reminds us that if we are complaining about a friendship, it is because it is not serving us. Therefore it is a friendship of utility. Ouch. I can see how most friendship fit into the first two categories. This makes sense. A virtuous friendship can only exist among virtuous people. Aristotle has spent the book so far showing how difficult that is. If there are two virtuous people, and they find each other, this must be rare.

Returning to his ideas of the "good," Aristotle calls us to be good humans. The end of the book makes clear that all this discussion of ethics is nothing more than a prelude to governing. He knows the men he is teaching will become law-makers and as such must know how to make good laws. He ends the book with, "So having made a beginning, let us discuss it." 

I love that this whole book was a prelude to the discussion of how best to govern a society. We rarely think about politics or politicians and say, "Well if you want to discuss that, we need to spend 10 or 20 hours discussing the good, virtue, wisdom, justice, and practical knowledge first."

Too bad.