The Right Breadth: Go Read Something

Cross posted from the Castoff Review.

Speaking of “great books” and education, see this selection from an interview with Charles Taylor, philosopher:

At the time of Max Weber – maybe we nostalgically magnify that – and even slightly later, you found that philosophy students in Germany, were given an incredibly broad course in Greek philosophy and the history of philosophy, and Kant and German idealism; but they also read Weber, Durkheim, Troeltsch, and Dilthey. So they had a broad understanding of how the questions then being debated had got to that stage.

That was one of the things that struck me when I managed to see the tail end of it – because I think it’s dying out, even in Germany. When I visited Habermas, he was handing on that kind of education to his students, even though he didn’t necessarily agree with a lot of the stuff that he was conveying to them. That’s what got me riled up when I went to Oxford – they were so narrow, those people: they weren’t even reading one tenth of the tradition that had got them to where they were.

…

You make many powerful assertions about modern identity drawn not only from philosophy but from the history of religion, and literature and art and so on. It is difficult for someone who does not have that breadth of knowledge to assess your claims adequately.

Yes. So great (laughs) – so people might go and read something! It connects up with what I was saying about my ideal picture of the German university circa 1920: that we really should have that kind of breadth in our education system for the history of humanities, social science, and so on. So I’m not displeased by that kind of reaction. If people really want to know if an idea is right, then they’ll go and read something, and it will make them capable of forming their own view about how we got to where we are.

Cross posted from the Castoff Review.