Another Sort of Learning

I've been reading James Schall's Another Sort of Learning, a collection of essays published in 1988. Schall was Jesuit priest and professor of philosophy at Georgetown and elsewhere. I'm not sure how I first heard about this book, but it suits well with my intention to grow in understanding of political and moral philosophy.

Schall is winsome, entertaining, and serious at the same time. He loves Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Belloc and Chesterton. Each chapter is followed by a brief reading list, books that Schall thinks people ought to read. These lists, coming at the end of thoughtful essays, are like pots of gold at the end of a series of rainbows.

Somewhere Schall comments on the modern tendency to see man as primarily a political being. For people with this kind of understanding, politics must provide the answers to our problems, because all of our problems are essentially political. Or perhaps they are psychological, and the answer lies in the realm of the therapeutic.

These two contending attitudes seem to dominate. An alternative, that sees man as, foremost, a spiritual being, or sees the spiritual as primary and the political or psychological as secondary or subsidiary to that, is closer to Schall's view.

I'm not equipped to comment in-depth on all of this, except to say that I'm in agreement with Schall generally. When the political is primary, I think, you always get a tendency toward totalitarian thinking. When the political is primary, the political solution is all-important. Those who stand in the way are then standing in the way of the ultimate good. It is a short step then to the demonization of the opposition. See The Politics of Vituperation).

An article at Front Porch Republic put it this way.

There are two kinds of men: homo politicus and homo adorans.

 I think it might well be true. And Schall would probably think so too.