More Thoughts

The Great Books Authors win can win the trust of conscientious intellectuals in two ways: the first being through the self-evident truth of their principles, the second being through the sound methods of their logic. If either of these elements are admirable the author in question ought to be given fully fair hearing and attention by respectable intellectuals, even if the author's conclusions are difficult and/or repulsive to your own opinions.
Conversely, if both of these elements are evidently absurd, the committment of the reader to some attempt at understanding the author's arguments ought to be less rigourous. If too much credit is given to an author when he is evidently wrong, one will end by becoming confused and befuddled - and here at T.A.C. you may end up dead, because chances are, your section won't want to spend a lot of time being vehemently generous to blatant idiots.
Now, we read very few works by blatant idiots in this program. Occasionally, in the junior and senior year years, the authors we read are brilliant in some areas and quite obviously nuts in others. Such as Galileo, who discovers the inverse square law, but then he thinks that the infinite can be actual. The former is that of law of gravitational force - really an amazing discovery, much to Galileo's credit. The latter is a principle which is evidently false, and his arguments to support it are completely illogical (they just reek of sophistry). Mr. B's helpful advice to us concerning this issue was, 'Don't distress yourselves over not being able to understand him! He's irrational. Sin is also irrational - there's no good reason for doing it. Similarly, this is irrational and there's no good reason for thinking it.'
Now, of late, we've had some violent debates on this "Due Process of Investigation" thing, in two of our classes.
First of all, some people seem to think that Aristotle is not due a fair hearing in his discourses on politics. In fact, someone very influential seems to think it's okay to give crazy examples displaying types of morally repugnant behavior which she wants to suggest (but never prove, just suggest) fall from an acceptance of what Aristotle argues about citizenship and leisure. Now, with all due respect, Aristotle is painfully logical, in everything he does. Not to mention, we already accept all the principles he claims for proof (as they are taken from his work on ethics). So, naturally, I'm having a hard time restraining myself from socking this influential individual in the shnooker.
Second, we're reading an essay by one of those rare, completely insane authors in Music class: a certain atonal composer by the name of Webern. Now, we never accepted any of Webern's principles - for instance, that repetition is the key to comprehensibility in music, or that music is natural law ('law' taken in the modern, Newtonian sense - something which we observe as necessary and regular behavior of some thing. It's not St. Thomas' natural law, which is some law that regulates our behavior by inborn principles. Webern's music is supposedly shaken out of us by some natural, irresistible urge) according to the sense of sound. These are absurd principles to start an argument from - and moreover, Webern's syllogisms don't follow, he equivocates all over the place, and his grammar is horrible. Now, after these results are found by fair investigation, there comes that point where it would be folly not to admit that he was both disordered and stupid. Mind you, Christian charity constrains us to love him as a human being - but it does not require us to say he's a genius. Some people in the section seem to think that the rest of us are being unfair in coming to what should be a rather obvious conclusion - namely, that this guy is irrational - and probably more so than Galileo. *sigh*
So, that's been my week. Hope all the rest of you are fine and well.
Much luv,
from ME