Making the old new ... again

In response to my earlier post on Will Okun's approach to the classics, regular reader and commenter SA makes the following observation: One might ask whether we read classic literature in order to affirm specific truths of some kind, or to discover something? If the former, it would make a great deal more sense to offer students some texts which contain the same truths as older texts but do so in language that is intelligible to them. I agree with SA's point that if the task is mere affirmation (i.e., we're trying to teach life lessons here), then the old text isn't necessarily necessary. I wonder though, in response to this point, if discovery and affirmation aren't two sides of the same coin, particularly when teaching older texts.

She continues with a nice turn of phrase: Perhaps, for those teachers finding sleeping students a problem, encouraging students to approach these supposedly "irrelevant" texts more like a sleuth than a slave would keep some students awake in class.

I like the "sleuth" idea a good deal, and find that when we're hunting and happen upon something it's pretty good. I'm trying this out in the first part of my introductory class by re-configuring the way we look at Descartes and Hume. Previously I taught Descartes and Hume in the context of epistemology only, but this semester I'm using a "span" approach to these thinkers, with the aim of talking about the connections between worldview, knowledge, God, and structure.

For example, I'm beginning with Part II of Descartes' Discourse on Method (1637) to try and divine the approach he'll take to the investigations in the Meditations (1641-42). The idea here is that we are able to understand - from the Discourse - more directly the kinds of values that Descartes thinks are important when it comes to the discovery of knowledge. Then we will examine the Meditations (1-3, 6) to see how well his stated values are honored. We'll look at portions of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) - especially sections 2-7 - and see which values Hume emphasizes with respect to knowledge, and see how they emerge in Parts II and V of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously in 1779), which is Hume's thoroughgoing attack on monotheism and Natural Theology.

The aim here is for students to see the texts in three ways: first, in terms of philosophical content - these texts form classic answers to the questions "What can we know?" and "What can we know about the existence of God?" Second, they should see and evaluate these texts in terms of their consistency by considering structural questions - are the stated approaches and positions of the earlier works honored and consistently expressed in the later work? Third, they must consider the models and structures offered by Descartes and Hume in terms of their own body of knowledge - what do they value when it comes to epistemological matters? This approach to the text should model the discovery - affirmation continuum that SA discusses above.

This disrupts the order of the textbook I'm using, but that doesn't bother me too much. It seems like at the beginning of every semester I'm thinking of new ways to approach the problem of teaching equivalent classics in my discipline. This is a funny thing, because my teaching (and probably life) mentor has been teaching literature for 35 years, and he starts over every time. I wonder if this problem changes when one is a minister/pastor. Probably not, but I'd be interested to find out.