The Philia Proposal continuedShe once wrote these
revealing words to a friend who was warning her that, with her frail
health, she was putting her great gift of intelligence at risk by
seeking employment as a farm laborer: ‘Yes, I too expect
that exhaustion will cripple me intellectually; but fatigue can be a
form of purification, of the same order as suffering and
humiliation, and as such, it can also be a source of deep joy and
spiritual nourishment. But why should I hold intelligence above all
else? It is such a fragile thing that prison and torture, and
sometimes only words, are sufficient to break it. If that is the
better part of me, then I have not much to protect: why should I
spare myself? But if there is more, if there is something that can
never be broken, that is what I should treasure, and that is what I
am looking for.’ 1 What, then, is that
“something” ? Weil’s answer may well hold the key to a vision
that would provide the inspiration we are seeking: “what above all
else is sacred in all human beings is that inextinguishable part of
our beings, deep within our heart, which, from childhood to the
grave, and despite our experience of evil done, suffered or
observed, never ceases to expect that good rather than harm will
befall it.” 2 What renewed concept of
social action can this vision inspire and support? I’ve entitled my
answer to that question the “Philia proposal”. “Philia
proposal” may remind some of you of “Paideia proposal”. This
is no accident. Paideia is the Greek for “education”. As Jaeger
reminds us, the Greeks thought that learning required a social and
symbolic environment consistent with what is taught. Imagine Plato
standing on the Acropolis, expounding his concept of harmony with,
in the background, the Parthenon, the very embodiment in stone of
the Greek sense of measure, proportion and harmony. “Paideia
proposal” is the innovative education program, launched in the
early eighties by Mortimer Adler, Jacques Barzun, Richard Hunt and
others, who were inspired by the Great Books approach and by this
idea of learning and education.3 Their aim was
to re-think education in America and turn it into a Socratic
dialogue with the classics and the great works of Art. What Paideia
proposal is to the care of the mind, the Philia proposal is to the
care of the soul. |
