Ever since Sen. Marco Rubio’s comments about vocational training during last Tuesday’s Republican debate, I’ve been getting letters from friends, students, and former students who know my checkered past.  Like this one:

Question:

Inquiring minds, or at least impish ones, want to know why you, with what may be unique expertise, haven't weighed in on the welders vs. philosophers controversy.  Seems to me we have, in your very being, some pretty strong evidence that the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Reply:

Here is what the Senator said:  “For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational training.  Welders make more money than philosophers!  We need more welders and less philosophers!”

Here is what I wish he had said:  “For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational training.  People in the trades are employed in skillful and honorable work, and make a decent living for their families.  It’s not for me to say how many welders and philosophers we need, but we need them both.”

The Senator’s line about welders making more money than philosophers has been flayed in the media because it happens to be false; over their lifetimes, people who have seriously studied philosophy do make more money.  But that is just a distraction.  Suppose philosophers really did have smaller incomes.  Is money the only good reason for choosing what to do with one’s life?  Perhaps we could find a philosopher to explain what is wrong with that way of thinking.

As to how we need to have fewer philosophers – I seem to recall that the Athenians said something like that before executing Socrates.  No doubt we would be better off with fewer sophistical philosophers, the kind who have forgotten that “philosophy” means “love of wisdom.”  But we won’t get rid of sophists by making fun of the philosophical life, and it would be wonderful if more people loved wisdom.

By the way, you can love wisdom without majoring in philosophy.  You might even love wisdom and be a welder.

Or a carpenter.

____________________

This is really my union card, but I have truncated my first name, recentered that part of the image, and deleted my Social Security Number.

[C]onscientia est sicut praeco Dei, et nuntius; et quod dicit, non mandat ex se, sed mandat quasi ex Deo, sicut praeco, cum divulgat edictum regis.  Et hinc est, quod conscienta habet virtutem ligandi in his, quae possunt aliquo modo bene fieri.

“Conscience is like God's herald and messenger; and what it says, it does not command of itself, but commands it as coming from God, like a herald proclaiming the edict of the king.  So it is that conscience has the power to bind us concerning things which can in some way be done well.”

-- St. Bonaventure, II Librum Sententiarum, Distinction 39, Article 1, Question 3, Conclusion

When I was fresh out of graduate school I didn’t believe in anything.  I did my job, but I did have a certain difficulty teaching -- for what could I possibly have to say to my students, and what could it possibly matter?  Here I was, teaching Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and the other greats, and I would sometimes want to weep for the beauty of the appearance of truth.  But I would hold all that in, telling myself that it was an illusion.

The cure was to return to the faith I had abandoned years previously.  People often suppose that faith and reason are opposites.  What I found was just the opposite:  Until I rediscovered faith, I couldn’t trust reasoning either.  Recovery of the belief that the mind is ordained for knowing truth made it possible to believe that teaching is a meaningful activity after all.

You would think that would end my trouble with teaching, and it did for a while, but then it produced a new problem.  The new problem would have been impossible for me in the old days when I hadn’t cared about my students, but now I had begun to love them.  And so now, if they were indifferent to learning -- if they were in college just to have a good time, to please their parents, or to get their tickets punched -- it was crushing to me.  So few of them did show that spark of wanting to know what is true that for a few years I burned out on teaching.

This cure this time was charity.  I had burned out by learning to love a little; I recovered by learning to love a little more.  Everyone is called to care for what is true, but not every student is called to the intellectual life, and I learned to make the distinction.  I tried to do what I could for my students no matter their situations, and took to heart St. Paul’s advice “admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”  It turned out that more of them wanted to learn something than I had thought.

The last difficulty developed as a consequence of the deepening realization that modern universities no longer believe in their vocation.   If the universities are in a death spiral, as it increasingly seems that they are, then what could I do?

The cure for this final trouble was hope.  I had been thinking of the decline of the universities as though my job were to make everything right.  No, the day’s worries are sufficient for the day; my job is to do what I can in my place.  Don’t I still have a classroom?  Don’t I still have students?  Despite everything, don’t some of them still want to learn?  If at times, teaching is like throwing a stone into a still pool so that it strikes the surface and vanishes, what of that?  I don’t have to see the results in this life.  Sometimes I do, and that is a blessing.  But He sees, and that is enough.

“So faith, hope, love abide, these three”; and curiously, they are pedagogical necessities.

In a conversation with grad students the other day, I suggested that all other things being equal, adoption policy should give preference to couples.  Though a few of them agreed, others objected that such a policy would amount to “punishing singles.”

I found that an interesting expression.

In the older view, duties come before rights.  The important thing is the well-being of the children; parents have rights to care for their children because this is best for the children themselves.

In the newer view, rights come before duties.  The important thing is what grown-ups want; anyone who wants a child has a right to be given one, and the state has a duty to hand one over.

Those who take the newer view don’t push it all the way.  They usually accept some minimum level of competence as a prerequisite for the right to adopt.  For example, most would agree that children should not be given to singles who are drug addicts.  So another element of the newer view would seem to be that singles are just as competent as couples to raise children.

It is an interesting take on the natural order of the family.  Mothers are dispensable.  Fathers are dispensable.  One person of either sex is enough.  At least – as one of my students suggested -- if there is wealth enough to hire a nanny.

Well, sometimes one parent really is the best one can do.  Some mothers, and some fathers, must raise a child alone through no fault of their own.  I salute them, just because their lot is so hard.  The task requires heroic virtue.  One must try to be a mother and father all at the same time, which is impossible.

But to say that I, as a single, have a right to adopt is to say that I should have the power to inflict a missing parent on the child:  To make some little soul fatherless or motherless, though he could have had a mom and a dad.

New lecture video:  True Toleration

The logician’s wife is having a baby.  As soon as the baby is born, it is placed in the father’s arms.  The mother asks, “Is it a boy or a girl?”  The father replies, “Yes.”

Next post:  Punishing Singles