Shakespeare or petroleum?

By Dr. Lucio F. Teoxon Jr.

Personality tests given the Organization Man often carry questions which call for an assessment of his values. One such question runs: “Who helped mankind most, Shakespeare or Newton?” This restates the question earlier raised in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed: “Which is more beautiful and precious, Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?”

These queries suggest a dichotomization of culture into two camps which C.P. Snow explored in his “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Thus, if the first part of the question is chosen, one aligns oneself with the humanities; and if the second, with the sciences, the professions, or the practical arts.

The great scientific breakthroughs in contemporary times have so transformed civilization that the scales are strongly tilted towards the latter choice. On the macrocosmic scale, man has toyed with the prospect of interstellar travel past the threshold of the black hole to other universes. On the microcosmic level, he has not only charted the elusive tracks of particles in the world of the infinitely small but gone on to tinker with himself by cracking the secret code of life locked in the DNA.

This is all to the credit of science and technology. But have they helped man a whit in understanding the human heart? The humanities could not lay claim to a monopoly of the wisdom of the heart, but at least it has paid attention to the riddles it poses. To a great extent, literature, philosophy, or the arts have brought man back into the presence of himself—into self-awareness as it were.

But the nagging problem ever remains. Why did Hitler’s holocaust happen? Or Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The humanities did not do much to stay the hands that killed one’s own brother. Christ and the Buddha long ago showed that there is a different way of living. But love has not also saved man. What will save us from ourselves? Dostoevsky says beauty will, for without it nothing is left in the world. And if even that fails?

Then, perhaps, the fear of nothingness, of being blown up into smithereens, will make us learn at last.

(Version 2)

For forty years or so, I have stuck it out in the academe, driven as I was by pure and simple idealism. My great faith in the transformative power of knowledge and learning also sustained me across the years. As a professor in the liberal arts tradition, I put a premium on academic excellence and the cultivation of the intellectual life. I was chiefly interested in sound scholarship and free inquiry.

The invaluable importance of the humanities particularly literature (my field), philosophy, religion, and the arts as civilizing or humanizing components in one’s overall education is beyond dispute. Deep exposure to these disciplines brings about an integral development of the individual as a human person.

Midway in my academic career, I found myself up against a megatrend in college education—the downturn of the liberal arts vis-à-vis science and the professions. A keeper of the arts, I saw the dwindling number of students taking up degree programs in the humanities and their eventual dismantling as white elephants by university governing bodies.

These alarming developments cannot but call to mind the question that Dostoevsky posed in his novel The Possessed: “Which is more beautiful and precious, Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?”

This query is of course wrongly put. In point of fact it is not a question of one or the other. Both are needed for our optimum advancement. Nevertheless, it suggests a dichotomization of culture into opposed camps which C. P. Snow so described in his “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.”

Thus, if the first part is chosen, one aligns oneself with the humanities; if the second, with the empirical sciences. The contemporary scientific breakthroughs have so transformed civilization that the scales are tilted in favor of science. Thanks to it scientists now speak about the prospect of interstellar travel in the immensity of outer space far across other universes. What is more, they have not only charted, if uncertainly, the elusive tracks of particles in the world of the infinitely small but also cracked what used to be the secret code of life in the DNA in the Human Genome Project completed a few years back.

That is all very well. But then it should be asked, Was there ever a corresponding scientific breakthrough in unlocking the riddles of the human heart? (By heart I mean the center of our being, the pure essence of our original nature.)

The answer to that question should be obvious. Although the humanities cannot claim to have done so either, in a definitive way that is, their votaries have consistently paid attention to the inner life of humanity. This much they have done: they have brought back man into the presence of himself — into an awareness of himself and his infinite possibilities — and helped him see his place in the order of the universe. What else could be more fundamental than this?

For the job of the humanities is to induce man to confront himself, understand who he is or what he is here for, and shake the truth out of himself. While the man in the lab occupies himself with testing the validity of his hypothesis about the phenomenal world, the humanist wrestles with questions of eternity, the timeless in you and me.

The decline of the humanities must by all means be arrested or reversed. Even if they do not occupy the center stage in higher education today as they used to do, they should be allowed their rightful place in the scheme of things. When for lack of the wisdom of self-knowledge our inward development as human beings fails to keep pace with advancements in science and technology, knock on wood, our very own inventions may well become Frankenstein monsters.

Now in semi-retirement, I have re-established connection with the academe. I hold my ground against the onslaughts of pharisaism hereabouts. Whenever and however I can, I afford myself the luxury of indulging my lifelong passion for the Platonic ideals of the Good, the True and the Beautiful.