Texts:1980 Eros and Education: Difference between revisions
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<h1>Eros and Education</h1><h4 style="margin-top: - | <h1 style="border-bottom: 0;">Eros and Education</h1><h4 style="margin-top: -1.5em;">Introspective Reflections on Self-Education</h4> | ||
<blockquote>Unpublished: Written November 1980.</blockquote> | <blockquote>Unpublished: Written November 1980.</blockquote> | ||
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<p>Until now I have not rightly sought credit where credit is due. I have a corpus, still to grow, the center of which to date has been one large, solid book. I have been unabashedly critical of <i>Man and His Circumstances: Ortega as Educator</i>; such self-criticism has been essential to my further development, but also highly prejudicial to the proper assessment of my accomplished performances. I have wanted to go beyond the Ortega book, to write works very different and much more difficult. And until I began to reflect on the enunciated criterion for promotion, I assumed that the book was irrelevant, for, after all, it already had entered, as a work in press, into my promotion to associate professor and my review for tenure. So dismissing its relevance, however, makes sense only with reference to the criterion of development, with respect to which <i>Man and His Circumstances</i> serves merely as a starting-point in a struggle for renewed growth in which I try to move substantially beyond what I there attained. But I do my performance a grave injustice by not taking this book into account.<ref>In the Post Script, I give a fuller review of the reception of <i>Man and His Circumstances: Ortega as Educator</i>.</ref> On the academic performance-ladder, one first demonstrates "promise," then "significant achievement," and finally "professionally significant arrival." If my first book, in its various stages from larva to pupa to adult, is good enough to carry the burden of each of these demonstrations of achieved performance, then it should serve as such.</p> | <p>Until now I have not rightly sought credit where credit is due. I have a corpus, still to grow, the center of which to date has been one large, solid book. I have been unabashedly critical of <i>Man and His Circumstances: Ortega as Educator</i>; such self-criticism has been essential to my further development, but also highly prejudicial to the proper assessment of my accomplished performances. I have wanted to go beyond the Ortega book, to write works very different and much more difficult. And until I began to reflect on the enunciated criterion for promotion, I assumed that the book was irrelevant, for, after all, it already had entered, as a work in press, into my promotion to associate professor and my review for tenure. So dismissing its relevance, however, makes sense only with reference to the criterion of development, with respect to which <i>Man and His Circumstances</i> serves merely as a starting-point in a struggle for renewed growth in which I try to move substantially beyond what I there attained. But I do my performance a grave injustice by not taking this book into account.<ref>In the Post Script, I give a fuller review of the reception of <i>Man and His Circumstances: Ortega as Educator</i>.</ref> On the academic performance-ladder, one first demonstrates "promise," then "significant achievement," and finally "professionally significant arrival." If my first book, in its various stages from larva to pupa to adult, is good enough to carry the burden of each of these demonstrations of achieved performance, then it should serve as such.</p> | ||
<p>When I was reviewed for tenure, <i>Man and His Circumstances</i> was in page proof, if I remember correctly. As such it could evidence significant achievement, but whether it would evidence my professionally significant arrival as an academic writer was then entirely moot, for it was then unknown how relevant reference groups would receive the published book. Since the tenure review and the actual publication of the book, it has achieved a status, which can properly be described, I think, as one of having, in a professionally significant sense, arrived. Someone as prominent as Salvador de Madariaga said of it in <i>Los Domingos de ABC</i>, "Suffice [for my point] the excellent book by Professor McClintock, which every student and follower of Ortega must read" (9/30/73, p. 7). The English educational critic, G.H. Bantock, has seen fit to deal with it with some care, albeit critically, as is his wont, but also respectfully, as he saw was its due. The book was reviewed carefully in German by the educational historian Günther Böhme, as well as in diverse American journals. A prominent intellectual historian, Robert Wohl, has recently described it as "the best guide in English to Ortega's life and the literature about him."<ref> For Wohl's remark, as well as certain reservations about the book, see Robert Wohl, <i>The Generation of</i> <i>1914</i> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p.268, n. 1.</ref>> On the strength of it, the University of Chicago Press invited me to edit a book of essays on Ortega, an invitation I turned down, and also on the strength of it, I have had several invitations to speak on Ortega, only one of which, last summer, have I accepted. In response to it, <i>The New Republic</i> commissioned a piece from me for its prestigious "Reconsiderations" series (B8),<span class="cite"></span> which I wrote, and publishers have asked me to translate Ortega further, which I have declined to do. Whether I like it or not, I have become the American authority on Ortega. | <p>When I was reviewed for tenure, <i>Man and His Circumstances</i> was in page proof, if I remember correctly. As such it could evidence significant achievement, but whether it would evidence my professionally significant arrival as an academic writer was then entirely moot, for it was then unknown how relevant reference groups would receive the published book. Since the tenure review and the actual publication of the book, it has achieved a status, which can properly be described, I think, as one of having, in a professionally significant sense, arrived. Someone as prominent as Salvador de Madariaga said of it in <i>Los Domingos de ABC</i>, "Suffice [for my point] the excellent book by Professor McClintock, which every student and follower of Ortega must read" (9/30/73, p. 7). The English educational critic, G.H. Bantock, has seen fit to deal with it with some care, albeit critically, as is his wont, but also respectfully, as he saw was its due. The book was reviewed carefully in German by the educational historian Günther Böhme, as well as in diverse American journals. A prominent intellectual historian, Robert Wohl, has recently described it as "the best guide in English to Ortega's life and the literature about him."<ref> For Wohl's remark, as well as certain reservations about the book, see Robert Wohl, <i>The Generation of</i> <i>1914</i> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), p.268, n. 1.</ref>> On the strength of it, the University of Chicago Press invited me to edit a book of essays on Ortega, an invitation I turned down, and also on the strength of it, I have had several invitations to speak on Ortega, only one of which, last summer, have I accepted. In response to it, <i>The New Republic</i> commissioned a piece from me for its prestigious "Reconsiderations" series (B8),<span class="cite"></span> which I wrote, and publishers have asked me to translate Ortega further, which I have declined to do. Whether I like it or not, I have become the American authority on Ortega.<ref>I am aware that some may grant my arrival through the book but question the professional significance of that. I will show clearly in the Post Script that the book is held to be significant by people of the educational profession and by people not of it but concerned <i>with</i> it, among others. To hold my arrival with the Ortega book to be not professionally significant in the face of such evidence would be to read my work and those who respond to it as professionally significant out of the profession. To be sure, I do hold that an academic community in extreme situations faced with fundamentally dangerous ideas does have a responsibility to identify those dangerous ideas as beyond the pale and to give convincing, <i>public</i> reasons for so doing—with due process and an equally public opportunity for those propounding the offensive ideas to meet the criticisms mounted against them. An argument of professional irrelevance or professional perniciousness made <i>in camera</i>, with no intention to uphold it in public, one made in the face of <i>prima facie</i> evidence of professional relevance and value, would seem to me, however, to be an intolerable invasion of other people's freedom to teach and to learn.</ref></p> | ||
<ref>I am aware that some may grant my arrival through the book but question the professional significance of that. I will show clearly in the Post Script that the book is held to be significant by people of the educational profession and by people not of it but concerned <i>with</i> it, among others. To hold my arrival with the Ortega book to be not professionally significant in the face of such evidence would be to read my work and those who respond to it as professionally significant out of the profession. To be sure, I do hold that an academic community in extreme situations faced with fundamentally dangerous ideas does have a responsibility to identify those dangerous ideas as beyond the pale and to give convincing, <i>public</i> reasons for so doing—with due process and an equally public opportunity for those propounding the offensive ideas to meet the criticisms mounted against them. An argument of professional irrelevance or professional perniciousness made <i>in camera</i>, with no intention to uphold it in public, one made in the face of <i>prima facie</i> evidence of professional relevance and value, would seem to me, however, to be an intolerable invasion of other people's freedom to teach and to learn.</ref> | |||
<p>Clearly, with <i>Man and His Circumstances</i>, I arrived as a writer; clearly with my frequent rejection of resultant opportunities I refused to stay put in the secure niche at which I had arrived. The arrival is a matter of achieved performance, to be dealt with as such; the refusal to stay put is a matter of my development, to be dealt with at length below. Here my achieved performance is the question and my basic claim is simple: my book on Ortega is a publication that has not merely shown "promise," nor simply "significant achievement," but one that has further, in a professionally significant sense, "arrived." One should not say, in effect, "<i>tant pis</i> little fellow, it is nevertheless a first book and first books don't count with respect to promotion to full professor; you 'arrived' but you did it ahead of schedule and therefore we won't believe it unless you do it again." Such reasoning would subject me to double jeopardy in this domain, it would require in my case, and only in my case, that I prove capable of a second coming.<ref>I am aware that some may grant my arrival through the book but question the professional significance of that. I will show clearly in the Post Script that the book is held to be significant by people of the educational profession and by people not of it but concerned <i>with</i> it, among others. To hold my arrival with the Ortega book to be not professionally significant in the face of such evidence would be to read my work and those who respond to it as professionally significant out of the profession. To be sure, I do hold that an academic community in extreme situations faced with fundamentally dangerous ideas does have a responsibility to identify those dangerous ideas as beyond the pale and to give convincing, <i>public</i> reasons for so doing—with due process and an equally public opportunity for those propounding the offensive ideas to meet the criticisms mounted against them. An argument of professional irrelevance or professional perniciousness made <i>in camera</i>, with no intention to uphold it in public, one made in the face of <i>prima facie</i> evidence of professional relevance and value, would seem to me, however, to be an intolerable invasion of other people's freedom to teach and to learn.</ref></p> | <p>Clearly, with <i>Man and His Circumstances</i>, I arrived as a writer; clearly with my frequent rejection of resultant opportunities I refused to stay put in the secure niche at which I had arrived. The arrival is a matter of achieved performance, to be dealt with as such; the refusal to stay put is a matter of my development, to be dealt with at length below. Here my achieved performance is the question and my basic claim is simple: my book on Ortega is a publication that has not merely shown "promise," nor simply "significant achievement," but one that has further, in a professionally significant sense, "arrived." One should not say, in effect, "<i>tant pis</i> little fellow, it is nevertheless a first book and first books don't count with respect to promotion to full professor; you 'arrived' but you did it ahead of schedule and therefore we won't believe it unless you do it again." Such reasoning would subject me to double jeopardy in this domain, it would require in my case, and only in my case, that I prove capable of a second coming.<ref>I am aware that some may grant my arrival through the book but question the professional significance of that. I will show clearly in the Post Script that the book is held to be significant by people of the educational profession and by people not of it but concerned <i>with</i> it, among others. To hold my arrival with the Ortega book to be not professionally significant in the face of such evidence would be to read my work and those who respond to it as professionally significant out of the profession. To be sure, I do hold that an academic community in extreme situations faced with fundamentally dangerous ideas does have a responsibility to identify those dangerous ideas as beyond the pale and to give convincing, <i>public</i> reasons for so doing—with due process and an equally public opportunity for those propounding the offensive ideas to meet the criticisms mounted against them. An argument of professional irrelevance or professional perniciousness made <i>in camera</i>, with no intention to uphold it in public, one made in the face of <i>prima facie</i> evidence of professional relevance and value, would seem to me, however, to be an intolerable invasion of other people's freedom to teach and to learn.</ref></p> | ||