RESCUING SOCRATES

A Dominican-born academic defends the humanities in a time of retreat.

A senior lecturer at the Center for American Studies at Columbia, Montás writes of coming to the U.S. as a teenager with only a limited command of English and, by dint of hard work and exhaustive reading, attaining the kind of liberal arts education that harkens to ancient Athens. The word liberal is enough to set some critics off, while the liberal arts are often conceived in modern universities as a block of requirements that diverge from the student’s primary major instead of being foundational. Columbia is unusual among universities in offering a “core” that involves reading the Western canon (it has lately added a parallel core for works of world literature other than the West’s). Montás reviews several texts that are especially central, for various reasons, beginning with Saint Augustine’s Confessions as a text that recounts the acquisition of values and beliefs through the act of reading itself. Despite that Western/non-Western division, the author also includes Gandhi’s Autobiography for much the same reasons. Montás is enthusiastic about Plato and Socrates, less so about Aristotle: “Reading Aristotle can feel like chewing on cardboard. Don’t expect enchantment.” The author also recounts teaching underprivileged students and watching them “undergo a kind of inner awakening,” taking the words of Socrates “seriously and personally.” In the end, writes Montás, the core and its texts are meant to guide readers into thinking about what has been translated as virtue but that really means excellence . What does excellence constitute, and how do we attain it? Montás delivers a spirited defense that may seem old-fashioned in the current milieu of deconstruction and arid theory of the academy but that he insists can deliver a means of combatting social inequality by grounding students in a common intellectual tradition.

A vigorous argument in favor of reading and discussing the canon in order to better our minds and souls.