Families that Discuss together, stay together

Families that Discuss together, stay together
Families that Discuss together, stay together

Saturday, June 20, 2015

To Be Moral or To Be Intelligent? That is the Question.

It occurred to me that I have never written about an essay that I read at least once each year. The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, by John Erskine. It is an essay that aligns and balances me in preparation for a new academic year filled with The Great Books of the Western World. Erskine's premise is that because of our English literary heritage, we suffer from a false assumption that The Good, the True and the Beautiful is not compatible to intelligence and that those who are intelligent must be evil or going towards it. His essay attempts to correct our thinking by strongly implying that intelligence and morality are inseparable.

Our inherited literature is to blame, he says. Shakespeare's King Richard is highly intelligent, but evil, as is Lady MacBeth, Iago and Edmund. On the other hand, "the prizes of life go to such men as Bassanio, or Duke Orsino, or Florizel—men of good conduct and sound character, but of no particular intelligence." In Paradise Lost, Milton places Satan on the highest pedestal of intellect as well as the most evil, of course. But of God and his goodness, Milton places him as "illogical, ...heartless and repressive." Dickens, Fielding, Scott or Thackeray do the same thing. Their good, well-intentioned characters flounder in a pool of careless blunders. It is no wonder that we associate intelligence with mischief or unintelligence with moral character. It is ingrained in us from our very foundation.

This idea begs me to contemplate some of my family members who have decidedly dropped the faith of their upbringing. I hadn't thought of this before writing my blog post today, but now it is clearer to me that it is quite possible my beloved family members believed the qualities set forth in Dickens, Shakespeare, Fielding, etc. without being discriminate and thus could not or cannot add morality to their lives if they wanted to remain intelligent. I digress...

Now, I said that I read this essay yearly to balance and align myself (and now I am even more interested in doing this after realizing the destructive idea in the last paragraph) in preparation to begin a new academic year. This essay helps me to remember that Morality and Intelligence must be inseparable.

One of my mentors, David R. Bednar, writes that intelligence is an action springing forth from the knowledge in the head that is understood in the heart. Wherefore, the action that proceeds from knowledge and understanding is an intelligent action or Intelligence.

My goal in academics is for me to learn and help my children learn all we can to become beautiful people in thought, word and deed. Erskine writes, "Through measureless time [the office of intelligence] has been to make of life an opportunity, to make goodness articulate, and to make virtue a fact." It is my goal again to re-align my knowledge in order to match Godly morality and to become just a little more intelligent this year.




—All quotes above are from the Essay in my Gateway to the Great Books, Volume 10.

3 comments:

Shelley said...

I appreciate your insights Julie. I never thought about reading this every year at the start of the school year, but I like the idea of that as a tradition for me and my scholars as we begin again to learn with a more academic focus each fall.

I had not thought about how some might lose their faith because they did not want to lose their intelligence. It always seems to be the opposite I see or consider. Thanks for the thought!

Anonymous said...

Thank you Shelley, It is a beautiful goal to have. I look forward to studying and discussing it with you online this coming week.

Anonymous said...

In response to a friend's question of why Erskine would be saying that intelligence is more important than being good, I wrote to her:

I think Erskine, rather than writing which was more important: goodness or intelligence; he was saying that we must balance it. His main premise was that in all these English Novels, we have inherited as our foundation, the good do stupid things because they are not using their brain and the clever ones use their brain to do bad things. He is suggesting that we must be good and do good because we have first thought through to the end and can choose intelligently.

Part of the problem with our literature is that it is coming out of the dark ages when the Catholic Church dominated everything and kept intelligence away from the people. The people were not allowed to read, understand and interpret the Bible---only the leaders could do that. The commoners spoke the Italian language, but the "religious language" was in Latin. This served as a way to keep the people subjected to the will of the leaders in both the government and the church (as both were one back then---study The Double Sword: One sword meant the spiritual power and the other sword signified temporal power). The Renaissance brought a new light into the world with the help of artists, musicians and religious leaders who opposed the "old way", the Bible was brought to life in the people's languages, but the paradigm of either you are good and dumb or clever and wicked did not change fast enough and thus, our literature reflected that.

Now Erskine, is pleading with us that we have a moral obligation right now to be good and intelligent and that we must balance them or we cannot do all that we were created to do in this life.

One example of this comes from my friend, who recently testified to another friend of the miracles of God, and her friend texted back something like, "My, you are getting spiritual." My friend's reaction resembled self-doubt and possibly offense for a time, but because she is not only good, but intelligent, she worked through her doubts and offenses within her mind and heart and began to see clearly how to react intelligently instead of making a stupid and foolish mistake of sending an offensive text back. This is precisely what Erskine wants to teach us. Acting intelligently while being good. Cinderella's mother said it best, We must have courage and be kind!

I have made it a habit to read this article each year during the summer so that I am better prepared to be morally good and morally intelligent. I hope this response inspires you to read it again and again in your life.