READING

THE WORLD

READING THE WORLD

Ideas That Matter

THIRD EDITION

MICHAEL AUSTIN

B

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reading the world: ideas that matter / edited by Michael Austin.—Third edition pages cm—(Third edition). Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-93630-8 (pbk.)

1. College readers. 2. English language—Rhetoric—Problems, exercises, etc. 3. Critical thinking—Problems, exercises, etc. I. Austin, Michael, 1966 II. Title

PE1417.R396 2015

808'.0427—dc23 20140338120

Instructor's Edition ISBN: 978-0-393-93845-6

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company, Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

Contents

Preface xv Timeline xxi Pronunciation Guide xxvii

part 1 reading the world

1 EDUCATION 3

HSUN TZU Encouraging Learning 5

To pursue [learning] is to be a man, to give it up is to become a beast. SENECA On Liberal and Vocational Studies 13

I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money.

* LAURENTIUS DE VOLTOLINA Liber Ethicorum des Henricus de Alemania 21

A painting of a class lecture at one of the medieval world's most famous universities.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Learning to Read 24

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN from Knowledge Its Own End 31

Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE To Teachers 40

In this critical period, the child's life is subjected to the education factory, lifeless, colorless, dissociated from the context of the universe, within bare white walls staring like eyeballs of the dead.

0 Image

VIRGINIA WOOLF Shakespeare's Sister 46

It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare.

RICHARD FEYNMAN O Americano Outra Vez 53

After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant.

MARTHA NUSSBAUM Education for Profit, Education for Democracy 61

From early on, leading U.S. educators connected the liberal arts to the preparation of informed, independent, and sympathetic democratic citizens.

2 HUMAN NATURE AND THE MIND 71

PLATO The Speech of Aristophanes 74

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

MENCIUS Man's Nature Is Good 78

Human nature is inherently good, just like water flows inherently downhill.

HSUN TZU Man's Nature Is Evil 84

Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.

THOMAS HOBBES from Leviathan 94

. . . wherein men live without other security than what their own strength. . . . In such condition there is no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

JOHN LOCKE Of Ideas 100

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished? . . . Whence has it all the materi­als of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

0 Two Pictures of the Brain 104

A phrenology chart and a PET scan offer two images of the brain.

0 CARL JUNG from The Red Book 108

An illustration from the psychiatrist journal of calligraphy, drawings, and writings.

RUTH BENEDICT The Individual and the Pattern of Culture 112

No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.

NICHOLAS CARR A Thing Like Me 123

Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities.

DANIEL KAHNEMAN from Thinking, Fast and Slow 134

Conflict between an automatic reaction and an intention to control it is common in our lives.

3 LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC 145

0 AESCHYLUS The Eumenides 148

Accept my argument. Don't let rash tongues / hurl threats against this land, condemning it / to sterile fruitlessness. Ease your anger.

PERICLES The Funeral Oration 158

In sum, I say that our city as a whole is a lesson for Greece, and that each of us presents himself as a self-sufficient individual, disposed to the widest possible di­versity of actions, with every grace and great versatility. This is not merely a boast in words for the occasion, but the truth in fact.

PLATO from Gorgias 166

What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly?

ARISTOTLE from Rhetoric 177

And if it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things.

AUGUSTINE from On Christian Doctrine 184

I think that there is hardly a single eloquent man who can both speak well and think of the rules of eloquence while he is speaking.

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ from La Respuesta 189

But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of the kitchen. . . . had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.

WAYNE BOOTH The Rhetorical Stance 198

The common ingredient that I find in all of the writing I admire—excluding for now novels, plays and poems—is something that I shall reluctantly call the rhetorical stance.

GLORIA ANZALDUA How to Tame a Wild Tongue 205

If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language.

TONI MORRISON Nobel Lecture 217

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; it does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI Networked Politics from Tahrir to Taksim: Is There a Social Media-Fueled Protest Style? 225

It is [. . .] easier to use social media to communicate a message or an image of refusal or dissent rather than convey complicated arguments.

THE ARTS 233

MO TZU Against Music 236

If you ask what it is that has caused the ruler to neglect the affairs of government and the humble man to neglect his tasks, the answer is music.

BOETHIUS from Of Music 242

There can be no doubt that the unity of our body and soul seems to be somehow determined by the same proportions that join together and unite the harmonious inflections of music.

LADY MURASAKI SHIKIBU On the Art of the Novel 248

The novel is . . . not, as is usually supposed, a mixture of useful truth with idle invention, but something which at every stage and at every part has a definite and serious purpose.

0 JOHANNES VERMEER Study of a Young Woman 253

A painting of a young, unknown model by one of the greatest Dutch masters.

EDMUND BURKE from The Sublime and Beautiful 256

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers . . . as fear.

0 WILLIAM BLAKE The Tyger 262

What immortal hand or