Luca Pensive
Professor of Economics at UCLouvain
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The study of the classics is an aesthetic and moral education which develops a critical sense. A public school that cultivates talent regardless of social origin is the only condition to allow access to the classical world for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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“I just discovered that reading the Odyssey is not part of the compulsory humanities program in Belgium. Do you realize?” From this observation by a friend and colleague at the University of Louvain, a discussion arose between colleagues on the need to devote an important space in teaching to the transmission of classical culture.
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“My children,” continues another French-speaking colleague, “have never read Hugo, but that did not prevent them from obtaining their university degree and from now on being respected professionals who are fully integrated into society.”
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It would therefore seem that studying the “classics” is not strictly necessary to succeed in university. nor to obtain a satisfactory and remunerative job upon graduation. So why bother to study languages and authors who have been dead for centuries? The question is not idle, because it underlies an idea of society and a vision of the world.
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“Canon occidental”
My point is that studying the classics makes people more aware of their cultural roots, more aware of the complexity of the human being, more skeptical and therefore less permeable to totalitarian ideologies and Manichean logics. Accordingly, I believe that Latin, ancient Greek and related cultures and literatures should be part of a quality secondary education, and that it is desirable that students be familiar with the main works of European literature, especially in pretty much what Harold Bloom called the “canon occidental”. Of course, I am aware that there is a trade-off between the study of classics and the study of Science subjects, as well as foreign languages, and that the ideal education system will therefore have to reconcile the different needs and find a balance between them.
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Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, to mention only the giants, speak of all of us and to all of us.
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Obviously, awareness of one’s own cultural roots can only be increased by studying the classics. This is particularly important in the European context. We talk a lot about identity pressures in post-Cold War Europe. When I think about my identity, I feel Italian and especially Roman. But if we take a step back, my culture has its roots in the Greco-Roman culture, in Christianity, in the scientific revolution, in the Enlightenment. The culture of a Belgian (Walloon or Flemish), of a French, of a German, of an English shares these same roots. Differences between these cultures obviously exist, but they are in my opinion minor compared to the preponderant weight of their common denominator. Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, to mention only the giants, speak of us all and to all of us. The awareness of these roots, the expansion and consolidation of the “republic of letters”, Which, according to Joel Mokyr, contributed so much to the industrial revolution and therefore to the economic and political success of Europe, would strengthen in our citizens the feeling that what unites us is much more important than what divides us.
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Excellent for “soft skills”
If studying the classics can make us better citizens and reveal to us how our European societies are built on a single cultural foundation, I am also convinced that this makes us better people.
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Reading of Achilles’ anger and his magnanimity, Aeneas’ fury and his pity, Odysseus’ thousand tricks and his presumption can teach our children ethics through emotion and example. , in a deeper way than a civic or moral education book. The depth of the characters, the universality of their actions will forge in our children intangible skills of great importance in personal and professional life., what we call in English the soft skills.
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Take the case of the Odyssey. Odysseus is one of the archetypes of Western man. Curious and naive, insightful and courageous, magnanimous and fierce, Machiavellian and loyal. Nostalgic, still in love with Penelope, and yet unfaithful husband (Circe, Calypso). Ulysses embodies the conflict of man, caught between the thirst for knowledge and the incessant search for his own place in universal harmony (the cosmos). Saint Thomas Aquinas writes that the truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus. In this sense, Ulysses is the hero of truth. His research, his journey, have continued to fascinate readers for centuries, from Virgil to Joyce to Dante.
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It is no accident that the rediscovery of works from Greco-Roman antiquity played a key role in the development of Humanism and the Renaissance in the 15th century.
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The classics show us complex individuals, with multiple facets, irreducible to a simplified characterization. Their epic is distant, their aesthetic foreign. Reading these works amounts to an education in complexity, to an effort of exegesis and interpretation in the light of contemporary experience which stimulates the critical attitude of the reader. So, the study of classics is also an education in the critical sense and therefore in freedom. It is no accident that the rediscovery of works from Greco-Roman antiquity played a key role in the development of Humanism and the Renaissance in the 15th century.
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Education for citizenship, knowledge, complexity, freedom, reading the classics also amounts to education for greatness. The author of the Treatise on the Sublime writes that the sublime is the echo of a great soul. The study of great authors brings us closer to the sublime, and in doing so it nourishes the aspiration for greatness and facilitates its understanding.
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“Anti-elitist” tendency
We could ultimately ask ourselves whether the study of the classics, however formative it may be for man as well as for the citizen, cannot be undertaken profitably individually, that is to say outside the school context. This is only rarely possible, in particular for people of family origin who are socio-culturally deprived. Anyone with a minimum of familiarity with reading the classics knows that the aesthetic and content distance between our sensibility and a literary work of the past increases in proportion to the temporal distance that separates us from its author. It is difficult to read Aeschylus without having knowledge of the culture of ancient Greece. To appreciate the classics, you need a literary education. In wealthy families, the family lexicon is often nourished by classical culture. The children of these families will naturally be better able to approach the classics than their peers of equal talent, but of more modest origin. Only school can equalize this knowledge. A serious and demanding public school, which cultivates talent regardless of social origin is the only condition to allow access to the classical world and its aesthetic and moral richness to children from underprivileged backgrounds.
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Admittedly, good classical training is not within everyone’s reach. However, in my opinion, nothing is more pernicious and counterproductive than the “anti-elitist” tendency which seems to be in tune with the times, and which, in the name of equality, pushes to reduce the weight of classical culture, and therefore the level of requirement associated with its study. In this way, our young people are deprived of the possibility of building a solid general culture regardless of their family origins. Do we really want Ovid and Leopardi, Racine and Goldoni, Baudelaire and Rilke to be accessible only to the wealthy?
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