January 28, 2009
the last professor
Everyone is reading Stanley Fish’s essay, “The Last Professor,” in the New York Times (January 25), a column itself based on the title of a book by Frank Donoghue, one of Fish’s former pupils. It seems highly appropriate that a column entitled “Last Things” should be interested in one entitled “The Last Professor.” A professor who does not in his discipline also touch on its relation to the last things is merely a professor, not a wise man as a result of what he has learned about the whole of reality that he encounters in his studies, however narrow. The “last professor” must, as Cicero said in his essay on “Old Age,” finally take his stand before the last things if he is to live, what Aristotle called, a complete life. The phrase, “the last professor” means, in Fish’s context, that what a professor is said to do in his professorship no longer has any market. The lives of students have no place for the “impractical” enterprise of simply knowing. Everything is now practical, “down-to-earth,” job-oriented. No one, it is said, cares for things “for their own sakes,” to use Aristotle’s expression. As a letter to the editor said, the teachers are looking to the AFL-CIO for help. That is, everyone now recognizes that Fish is right.more from First Principles here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 09:39 AM | Permalink
Comments
As a friend, a former philosophy professor, remarked:next to inherited wealth, teaching at a university is the best way to make a living.
I admire S. Fish. But then he too made a nice living by going from one rank to another, to tenure, to a deanship etc etc...plus royalties from his books.
The last shall be first.
Why do people getting on in years look back and see that what they had no longer is the same and that things (they think)were so much better.
I can recall a time when elite colleges imposed quotas for minorities, did not allow women into their schools, took in mostly those with money in their background. Then came the G.I. Bill and a new America.
If places of higher learning are concerned (so it is asserted) mostly with jobs and employment, then what of our earlier schools that taught for those going into the clergy, or, land grant schools, into farming?
If you want to know for the sheer sake of knowing: try books without seeking college credit.
After all, the people who give so generously to help build up endowments have backgrounds in successful careers.
Posted by: fred lapides | Jan 28, 2009 10:13:01 AM
meh
Posted by: Jonathan | Jan 28, 2009 1:19:04 PM
That is a bit painful to read with all those commas, awkward phrasings, and seemingly erudite quotations. The authoer should take to heart what Aristotle said about moderation rather than what he said about a complete life.
Posted by: tyen | Jan 28, 2009 2:24:06 PM
What is it that motivates ones desire to simply know for the far-reaching benefit of knowing; it may be wiser to ask what it is that limits ones desire to seek the truth about something that is sweeping?
Consider the phrase “An Inequality of Options”:
- Where a civilization provides a crushing advantage of opportunities to expand the individual wealth of its people over the opportunities to expand their dignity and honesty.
- Where commerce demands a forward contract of people’s time to feed its production, and by meeting their obligations eventually exhausts them, vegetating any balance of their thought.
How can the fruits of justice guide the actions of society when there is no free thought left to comprehend what is just?
Posted by: Mark Stenekes | Jan 28, 2009 5:29:42 PM
"Highly appropriate"?
Nice.
Posted by: P | Jan 30, 2009 2:27:31 PM
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