19
What are the
benefits of
teaching across
the program—
to you and to
your students?
The benefit is that the
whole community is
engaged in what we hold
most dear: learning. For
me and for my colleagues,
that means not settling
into our “learnedness”
at the expense of being
alive to the questions
pursued in the works we
read across a variety
of traditionally disparate
If you could
bring any of
the program’s
authors into the
21
st century,
who would it be?
This question assumes
that the authors might be
more interestingly present
in the flesh than in their
books or the discussions
we have about their
books, and that there are
things going on today
sufficiently different from
what went on in their day
to make it worthwhile to
show them our world and
get their response. There
is a lot of talk about how
much everything has been
changed by technology,
but it seems to me mostly
empty talk. The central
concerns and difficulties
of being human, the joys
and sorrows, the laughable
and the tragic, have not
changed. A good marriage
is not easier to achieve by
Ms. Victoria Mora, Tutor
Ph.D., Philosophy
Yale University
Mr. Edward Cary Stickney, Tutor
M.A., Philosophy
Albert-Ludwigs Universität
disciplines. For our
students, it means
not settling into the
kind of passivity that is
possible when there
is an expert at the
head of the table
on whom they can
rely for the answers.
We rely on each other
for our learning, and
that means we are all
responsible for being
learners. And it is
just a great pleasure.
computer or through anti-
anxiety drugs. A life is
not well-lived because it
is permeated with rapid
and powerful tools.
The authors we read are
already alive and well and
ready to give their opinions
about the things we are
worried or curious about,
including current events;
one just has to read them
thoughtfully, discuss
them, write about them.
By doing so, one not
only gets an idea of what
they would say about
this or that, one learns
what one thinks oneself.
That turns out to be
more valuable than an
exclusive interview
with Shakespeare.