The Power of Stories
“God made man because He loves stories.” ― Elie Wiesel
A sample chapter from our forthcoming book: “Driving Plato’s Chariot: Lessons on Student Ethical Development. Related ICAI webinar presentation slides can be seen at the link.
The vase image explained: A passage from Plato’s Phaedrus:
“Of the nature of the soul . . . let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be composite — a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble . . . [but] the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and the other is ignoble . . . and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him.”
A central perspective In this chapter:
“Our seminar is filled with stories, including stories about the truth-telling integrity of Frederick Douglass and a Confucian metaphor about goodness in human nature. Two of our stories, however, invite students to tell stories about themselves: How they wish to be perceived in the future (the Retirement Banquet exercise) and people to whom they are most grateful (The Gratitude Statement). Instead of a didactic lecture from a teacher, these assignments invite students to understand and empower the better angels of their own nature.”
Chapter topics:
[1] Human beings as story-telling animals
[2] Stories students tell about themselves
[3] Stories for human connection, ethical development, and self-discovery
[4] Stories to enhance engagement in learning
[5] Stories to build a commitment to truth-seeking and truth-telling
[6] Stories to demonstrate the importance of trust
[7] Stories to promote intellectual humility
[8] Stories to enhance courage, integrity, and resilience
[1] Human beings as “story-telling animals”
Greek gods like those named in the “Apollo” moon landings and NASA’s more recent “Artemis” space mission have been part of the human imagination for thousands of years. Why do we continue to use them to personify some of our most important aspirations?
The answer highlights a quality of human nature: our minds require stories to help us define goals, empower imagination, shape character, inspire empathy, and form cohesive bonds with others. Human beings, in short, are preeminently “story-telling” animals. [1] The Academic Integrity Seminar (AIS) is grounded on that premise. Most of our assignments immerse students in a story. We’ll explore several of those stories here and in subsequent chapters.
[2] Stories students tell about themselves
Our seminar is filled with stories, including stories about the truth-telling integrity of Frederick Douglass and a Confucian metaphor about goodness in human nature. Two of our stories, however, invite students to tell stories about themselves: How they wish to be perceived in the future (the “Retirement Banquet’’ exercise) and People to whom they are most grateful (The Gratitude Statement). Instead of a didactic lecture from a teacher, these assignments invite students to empower the better angels of their own nature.
Seminar Assignment: “The retirement banquet” exercise
Please pretend you’re at a retirement banquet. This is a serious and formal occasion, not a “roast.” The person retiring is 70 years old and at the end of a long career. You know this person well — both inside and outside the workplace. It’s your job to say a few truthful, descriptive words about them. What character or personality traits come to mind?
Question for you to answer: Pretend the person retiring is you. In short, we’re asking you to project yourself into the future and to identify at least five descriptive words you hope others would say about you at a comparable event.
No student so far — out of many thousands completing the seminar — has shared an aspiration to be known as a skillful liar or a master of economic exploitation. Instead, most write a story similar to this example from “Jane”*
Jane is one of the most caring souls I have ever met. She is a leader and has spent her whole life helping and leading others into a bright future. She is tenacious with everything she does and has a fire in her, a powerful sense of determination in her for accomplishing any of her goals. Unlike many people in today’s world, she is also optimistic, a light to many others. Whether it’s a colleague getting too stressed or overwhelmed at work, or a neighbor who just lost a loved one, she is always there to help. Jane is also a responsible person who knows how to prioritize her time and beliefs. She is an amazing friend and someone whom I will dearly miss seeing every day at work . . .
Seminar Assignment: “The gratitude statement”
Students also tell stories about themselves when they identify admired role models in their gratitude statements. Here’s the assignment:
Please read Book One of the Meditations of Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
Question for you to answer. Following Marcus’ general style, please write a concise statement of gratitude identifying the ethical and intellectual debts you owe to family members, teachers, or friends. Fictitious names are permitted, but the statement of gratitude should be genuine.
This gratitude statement submitted by an AIS student exemplifies most of the responses we receive:
The format of Marcus Aurelius’s statements in his gratitude statement really intrigued me. I think it showed me how grateful I am to have a supporting cast (family, friends, teachers). Additionally, writing the assignment out (with my personal connections) forced me to reflect on my actions and see how much I “cheated myself” out of. I am indebted to all of my close friends, family, and teachers and I owe them to conduct myself in a manner that reflects their honest and generous actions . . .. I would encourage this sort of reflection activity for others. I feel like from time to time I will do this process to sort out my thoughts and feelings.
Aware only of his own satisfactions and his own happiness, hoarding them as a miser hoards his purse . . . the egoist cannot be grateful. Ingratitude is not the incapacity to receive but the inability to give back — in the form of joy or love — a little of the joy that was received or experienced. This is why ingratitude is so pervasive a vice. [Ungrateful people] absorb joy as others absorb light, for egoism is a black hole.
— Andre Comte-Sponville, Professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne [2]
[3] Stories for human connection, ethical development, and self-discovery
The Retirement Banquet and Gratitude Statement exercises invite students to draw upon the human capacity for empathy and social cooperation. Charles Darwin described that capacity as a foundation for ethical development:
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives — of approving some and disapproving of others; and the fact that man is the one being who certainly deserves this designation, is the greatest of all distinctions between him and the lower animals . . . Owing to this condition of mind, man cannot avoid looking both backwards and forwards, and comparing past impressions. Hence, after some temporary desire or passion has mastered his social instincts, he reflects and compares the now weakened expression of such past impulses with the ever-present social instincts; and he then feels that sense of dissatisfaction which all unsatisfied instincts leave behind them, he therefore resolves to act differently for the future, — and this is conscience. . .
The appreciation and the bestowal of praise and blame both rest on sympathy; and this emotion, as we have seen, is one of the most important elements of the social instincts. Sympathy, though gained as an instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit . . . The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection.” [3]
Our tutor responses to student answers sometimes cite Darwin’s language in the context of this unusual suggestion:
Please take a tour through a local graveyard (I’m serious) and see how many gravestone inscriptions you can find like this:
“John will be long remembered and admired for developing a clever financial product that duped thousands of old people out of their life savings.”
Why don’t we find more candid gravestones like John’s? His financial product may not have been illegal — at least initially. And he can’t go to jail because he’s dead. If ethical perspectives are irrelevant (e.g. only money and power are perceived to count), why should people like John hesitate to proclaim their financial “cleverness” for all to see?
Suggestion: human beings are highly cooperative social animals. We want to be remembered for what we’ve built (our social instincts), not what we consumed or destroyed (our selfish instincts).
We examine the connection between social cooperation and the human moral sense in Chapter Three — citing the work of Martha Nussbaum, Carol S. Dweck, Charles Darwin, E.O. Wilson, Robert Sapolsky, Ralph Gomory, Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Haidt, among others. A genetic predisposition to cooperation, however, isn’t a guaranteed pathway to higher forms of moral development. Environmental influences — including family, peers, and culture — can turn the natural willingness of children to help companions into irrational hatred of others.
When Darwin wrote that human beings can look “both forward and backwards” he was describing our capacity for “mental time travel.” One evolutionary outcome of this capacity is the construction of an internal narrative (try to imagine yourself without one). Choosing among competing narratives is our biggest challenge. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” might have inspired abolitionism in the United States, [4] but the film “Birth of a Nation” did the opposite. Advancing a commitment to more expansive forms of empathy and cooperation requires added components of reason, experience, and knowledge. William Storr wrote in this regard that:
Story, then, is both tribal propaganda and the cure for tribal propaganda. Atticus Finch, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, advises his daughter that she’ll ‘get along a lot better with all kinds of folks’ if she learns a simple trick: ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ This is precisely what story enables us to do. In this way, it creates empathy. There can hardly be a better medicine than that for the groupish hatred that comes so naturally and seductively to all humans. [5]
[4] Stories to enhance engagement in learning
One of the founding stories in Western Civilization depicts the insatiable curiosity associated with engagement in learning. Why did Odysseus have himself tied to the mast? He insisted on hearing the fateful sirens — while requiring his shipmates to plug their ears. His ultimate goal was to become the first person to actually listen to the sirens’ songs and live to tell the tale. There are many meanings in this story, but one of the most important is Homer’s depiction of a hero as someone who is an irrepressible learner as well as a great warrior.
The Teacher [Confucius] said, ‘Why didn’t you just [say] I am a man who in eagerness for study forgets to eat, in his enjoyment of it, forgets his problems.
— Confucius Analects, 7:19 [6]
Engagement in learning is exemplified in the life example of Abraham Lincoln (also featured in Chapter Five). This characteristic can be seen in a statue on the campus of Syracuse University. [7] Lincoln is depicted sitting on a horse stopped to eat grass. A distracted Lincoln — engaged in a book — takes no notice.
The statue is fitting. People who knew Lincoln referred to him as a “stubborn reader.” Historian William Lee Miller wrote:
It would be quite a study to go through the available record to identify all the places, times, and postures in which those who had known Lincoln in Indiana and in New Salem remembered him reading a book: reading while the horse rests at the end of a row, reading while walking down the street, reading under a tree, reading while others went to dances, reading with his legs up as high as his head, reading between customers in the post office, reading snatched at length on the counter of the store. [8]
For all his outward gregariousness, Lincoln was a solitary man who rarely revealed himself to others. Reading was an antidote to loneliness and a way for a precocious mind to find companionship.
Troubled college students sometimes make the mistake of regarding reading and studying as stressful diversions from their inner turmoil. The opposite is true. Few pursuits are more conducive to mental health than engagement in learning. A mind turned inward on itself is wandering in barren terrain.
Perhaps the best way teachers can encourage engagement in learning is to demonstrate it themselves. Do they share Aristotle’s view that “to learn gives the liveliest pleasure?” [9] If so, how is that belief demonstrated to students?
Teachers who display their own engagement in learning are sending an implicit message: they don’t know everything. An admission of incomplete knowledge is an invitation to partnership with students. Both can engage in the pursuit of wisdom together. [10]
Highly effective teachers . . . often display openness with students and may, from time to time, talk about their own intellectual journey, its ambitions, triumphs, frustrations, and failures, and encourage their students to be similarly reflective and candid. They may discuss how they developed their interests, the major obstacles they faced in mastering the subject, or some of their secrets for learning particular material. They often discuss openly and enthusiastically their own sense of awe and curiosity about life.
— Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do [11]
AIS tutors also suggest to students that building competency in any field doesn’t have to entail mindless drudgery. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi cited the example of a “well-known West Coast rock climber” who exhibited characteristics of what Csikszentmihalyi called “Flow”:
It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You make your body go and everything hurts, then you look back in awe at the self, and what you’ve done, it just blows your mind. It leads to ecstasy, to self-fulfillment. If you win these battles often enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world.
Csikszentmihalyi wrote that “the battle” wasn’t against the self. It was, instead, for the self and “against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness.” Those who succeed in this effort, he wrote, will understand that the “deep enjoyment” Flow provides “requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration” [12]
Physicist Richard Feynman suggested that deep engagement in learning can also occur — and perhaps be more enduring — when explorers don’t have a predetermined objective:
“I think what we’re doing is exploring, we’re trying to find out as much as we can about the world. People say to me, ‘Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?’ No, I’m not, I’m just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we’re just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that’s the way it is, but whatever way it comes out, nature is there and she’s going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate, it we shouldn’t pre- decide what it is we’re trying to do except to try to find out more about it. . . My interest in science is to simply find out about the world, and the more I find out the better it is.” [emphasis added] [13]
[5] Stories to build a commitment to truth-seeking and truth-telling
[Editor’s note: Our related MEDIUM essay “Introducing Students to the Aims and Methodology of Science” contains an assignment related to this topic. AIS tutor comments are included.]
Stories taught in the Academic Integrity Seminar encourage students to identify truth-seeking and truth-telling as essential in building an admirable character and a better world. Making such an effort isn’t a solitary endeavor. It entails a communal orientation (truth-seeking becomes stunted without collaboration) and a social obligation (lying and deception undermine the trust which makes collaboration possible). Also, as suggested below, truth-seeking is not the same as ultimate truth-finding. Too much needless harm and suffering are associated with the latter perspective — grounded (as it typically is) in what Isaiah Berlin described as “unbridled monism” in pursuit of an ever-elusive perfection. [14]
Science is inherently cumulative. There’s no way as a researcher I can go back and replicate everything done before me. I have to accept what’s published as accurate and then build on that.
— Joseph Rosse, University of Colorado Associate Vice Chancellor of Research Integrity [15]
Most examples of truth-seeking and truth telling in AIS readings are drawn from the methodological tradition of science. [16] One of the most famous defenders of that tradition is the American philosopher John Dewey. He wrote:
Those . . . who have arrogated to themselves the title of “fundamentalists” recognize no mean between their dogmas and . . . hopeless uncertainty . . . Until they have been reborn into the life of intelligence, they will not be aware that there are a steadily increasing number of persons who find security in methods of inquiry, of observation, experiment, of forming and following working hypotheses. Such persons are not unsettled by the upsetting of any special belief, because they retain security of procedure. They can say, borrowing language from another context, ‘though this method slay my most cherished belief, yet will I trust it.” [17]
It takes a special kind of intellect to see the scientific method as inspirational. College educators might go beyond John Dewey’s analytical approach and personalize the feelings involved. A good example can be found in Simon Blackburn’s review of Richard Dawkins’ book A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Blackburn, professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, wrote that:
Dawkins unashamedly and gloriously delights in science. If anything is sacred to him, it is truth and the patient road to it. He loves the methods of science and its self-correcting nature. He loves the amazing world that it reveals — -a world far more amazing than any that human beings could invent out of their own heads. A quotation that he provides from Douglas Adams fits him exactly: ‘I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.’ In the last essay in the book he expresses this love in a moving letter to his ten-year-old daughter, extolling science’s reliance on observation, evidence, and the testing of hypotheses, and contrasting them with the ways by which falsehoods come to grip the human mind: by authority, and tradition, and the inner conviction called revelation. [18]
Key words in the preceding paragraph include “awe,” “loves,” and “amazing” — all associated with the pursuit of truth in the sciences. Those emotions can give meaning to truth-seeking in any discipline and have the added benefit of making academic fraud and dishonesty inherently repugnant. [19]
Many empirical and analytical traditions worldwide contributed to the scientific method. Still, a fully developed methodology of science is a remarkably recent development in human history. [20] Disciplined minds focused on seeking confirmable evidence are hard to find now, let alone in prior eras when “[a]t any moment, under any circumstances, a person could be removed from the world of the senses to a realm of magic creatures and occult powers.” [21] We introduce AIS students to this perspective so they might appreciate both the importance of scientific inquiry and their responsibility to sustain it.
Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history’s darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost.
— Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester [22]
The sense of responsibility associated with truth-seeking and truth telling in the sciences is demonstrated by a personal example shared with AIS students. This story entails a decision by a courageous graduate student to report a mistake that required retraction of a journal article.The graduate student wrote:
When I discovered the contamination, I could have quietly moved on and likely nobody would have ever known. Some selfish, anxious part of me wanted to do that. But I believe in the importance of intellectual honesty and owning my mistakes and never seriously flirted with the idea of burying them . . .
Here is the silver lining: I learned something, which is what science is about. I learned that the stigma I perceived was predominantly coming from my own ego. I learned how kind people could be about an honest mistake. I did the right thing, and none of the awful consequences I imagined following came to pass. . . . [I]n the end what really matters is the science and getting it as right as possible. Avoid mistakes with careful science. Correct them with honesty and humility. Have some faith that your fellow scientists will understand. And then get back to the lab. [23]
You will make mistakes. Try not to make big ones . . . A simple error in reporting a conclusion will be forgiven if publicly corrected. But never, ever will fraud be forgiven. The penalty is professional death; exile, never again to be trusted.
— E.O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor at Harvard University and winner of the National Medal of Science. [24]
A commitment to truth-seeking rather than ultimate truth-finding requires qualities of intellectual humility described in Part 7, below. Truth-seeking is also associated with unbiased efforts to seek wisdom from diverse sources. AIS tutors cite Nelson Mandela as an aspirational role model in this regard. In his famous “Statement from the Dock at the Opening of the Defense Case in the Rivonia Trial” (April 1964) Mandela said:
[F]rom my reading of Marxist literature and from conversations with Marxists, I have gained the impression that communists regard the parliamentary system of the West as undemocratic and reactionary. But, on the contrary, I am an admirer of such a system.
The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world.
I have great respect for British political institutions, and for the country’s system of justice. I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration.
The American Congress, that country’s doctrine of separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouse in me similar sentiments.
I have been influenced in my thinking by both West and East. All this has led me to feel that in my search for a political formula, I should be absolutely impartial and objective. [25]
We urge students to see universities as places where truth-seeking occurs in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and diversity. A 1995 decision by the United States Supreme Court remains a foundational statement in this regard. Writing for the majority in Rosenberger v. the Rector and Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that:
In ancient Athens, and, as Europe entered into a new period of intellectual awakening, in places like Bologna, Oxford, and Paris, universities began as voluntary and spontaneous assemblages or concourses for students to speak and to write and to learn . . . For the university, by regulation, to cast disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the nation’s intellectual life, its college and university campuses. [26]
Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
— Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education [27]
Justice Kennedy identified “ancient Athens” as a place where students were seen as integral partners in academic life. [28] Teaching in Plato’s Academy was a form of soul-craft, based on friendship in pursuit of truth. Indeed, the center of Raphael’s famous fresco “The School of Athens” [29] shows Plato, the teacher, pointing up to a vision of eternal harmony, while Aristotle, many years younger and the student, seeks to bring him down to earth to explore and understand the world as it is. Raphael’s image depicts what Aristotle described in his Nicomachean Ethics as an enduring friendship — even as the two disagreed about fundamental philosophical issues. [30]
[6] Stories to demonstrate the importance of trust
In the opening of Chapter Four we contrasted two stories referenced in the Academic Integrity Seminar: “The Wolf of Wall Street” (a 2013 film depicting the rise and fall of “financial criminal”Jordan Belfort) [31] with Federal Reserve Board Chair Alan Greenspan’s “musings of an old, idealistic, central banker” in his 1999 Harvard Commencement speech.[32] Even students who question Greenspan’s libertarian leanings — which were not featured in his Harvard speech — resonate with his observation that “[t]he true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.”
Most aspects of the Jason Belfort story seem entirely composed of “leaving a trail of casualties” in his wake. Here’s a typical response AIS tutors use whenever an admirably candid student cites Belfort as an aspirational role model:
Your essay referred to Belfort’s “success,” but most of us define success as meaning more than conspicuous consumption and relentless pursuit of money. Doesn’t “success” also have something to do with making a constructive contribution to the world and sustaining trusted relationships with family and friends? In the latter context, Belfort doesn’t strike me as “successful” at all. Consider his reported history of spousal abuse, child endangerment, betrayal of colleagues, and drug addiction. Someone — in Belfort’s words — who had enough sedatives “running through my circulatory system to sedate Guatemala” would not be my model of fulfillment or happiness. [33]
Psychoanalyst and anthropologist Michael Maccoby wrote a book titled The Gamesman. The word “Gamesman” was chosen to fit a narcissistic personality in any field or profession who engages in a self-centered, no-holds-barred fight “to get to the top.” Maccoby concluded that the end result of this “fight” was likely to be a solitary life devoid of trust:
“An old and tiring gamesman is a pathetic figure, especially after he has lost a few contests, and with them, his confidence. Once his youth, vigor, and even the thrill of winning are lost, he becomes depressed and goalless, questioning the purpose of his life. No longer energized by the . . . struggle and unable to dedicate himself to something he believes in beyond himself . . . he finds himself starkly alone. His attitude has kept him from deep friendship and intimacy. Nor has he sufficiently developed abilities that would strengthen the self, so that he might gain satisfaction from understanding (science) or creating (invention, art). Without the thrill of the contest, there is nothing.” [34]
The reason I moved the word ‘trustworthy’ to my number one spot [in the retirement banquet exercise] is because of the speech given by Greenspan. In this reading, Greenspan talked about how nothing works without trust, not businesses, relationships, or life. Often, we take trust for granted or we just do not notice it, but it plays a huge role in everything we do each day, and that is why it is my number one.
— AIS student comment
AIS tutors also draw upon practical examples in student life that highlight the importance of trust. Here’s one of our comments:
“Pretend a syllabus in one of your classes states the mid-term examination will be on October 10. Then, at the beginning of class on October 3, the teacher announces “I have good news and bad news: the good news is that I just found a great fare to Cancun! The bad news is I have to leave tomorrow. So, the examination scheduled for October 10 will be administered today. I apologize for any inconvenience, but part of what we do at the University to help prepare students for the unexpected.’”
Students are typically appalled by this scenario. It strikes them as an obvious breach of trust. AIS tutors then remind them that the principle of reciprocity applies. Teachers trust students to do honest work and feel betrayed when that trust is broken.
The qualities that Frederick Douglass displays as a thinker and a writer are that he is very honest . . . He said ‘Mankind is not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust there can be no society.’ I think he is correct that there has to be some kind of trust in society because without it the nation would go into chaos and the good in people would be completely gone.
— AIS student comment
[7] Stories to promote intellectual humility
Intellectual humility is associated with evidence-based reasoning, self-insight, curiosity, sociability, and an active desire to find and consider alternative perspectives. [35] These characteristics are highlighted in an AIS exercise that starts with this question:
What accounts for the success of the Wright brothers in producing “the world’s first successful flights of a powered heavier-than-air flying machine?” [36]
The answer (drawn from readings identified below) includes a “talent for productive argument” [37] taught to them by their father, Milton Wright.
Author Ian Leslie provided the following background, based on a history by Tom Crouch [38]:
“Milton Wright . . . taught [the brothers] how to argue productively. After the evening meal, Milton would introduce a topic and instruct the boys to debate it as vigorously as possible without being disrespectful. Then he would tell them to change sides and start again. It proved great training.” [39]
Arguments between the Wright brothers could become heated (“a good scrap”). [40] Crouch, author of the Bishop’s Boys (1989), wrote that “[i]n time, [the boys] would learn to argue in a more effective way, tossing ideas back and forth in a kind of verbal shorthand until a kernel of truth began to emerge.” [41] The end result was summarized by Wilbur Wright:
“No truth is without some mixture of error, and no error so false that it possesses no element of truth . . . Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly.” [42]
We share this story with AIS students because it provides a memorable example of what intellectual humility and respectful dialogue can achieve.
“[T]he very essence of modern science is that, having admitted ignorance, we can acquire new knowledge.”
— Thomas Hertog, The Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory. [43]
President Obama introduced the subject of vigorous debate and intellectual humility in his 2016 Commencement address at Rutgers University.
“If you disagree with somebody, bring them in — and ask them tough questions . . . If somebody has got a bad or offensive idea, prove it wrong. Engage it. Debate it. Stand up for what you believe in . . . Don’t feel like you got to shut your ears off because you’re too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they’re not making any sense. Use your logic and reason and words. And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments. And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don’t know everything. And you may have a new understanding not only about what your opponents believe but maybe what you believe. Either way, you win. And more importantly, our democracy wins” [44] [emphasis added].
Praise for intellectual humility (expressed in theory, if not always in practice) is associated with the Socratic tradition — most notably Plato’s dialogues Gorgias, Phaedrus, and The Republic. Plato’s aim in this regard was to distinguish between rhetoric (which he saw primarily as the unprincipled pursuit of power) and dialogue (the mutual pursuit of wisdom grounded on respectful refutation, similar to Wilbur Wright’s argumentation with his brother). James Boyd White (Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Michigan) provided a description of this process in a classic University of Chicago Law Review article sometimes shared with AIS students: The Ethics of Argument: Plato’s Gorgias and the Modern Lawyer (1983).
“[R]hetoric naturally treats others as means to an end, while dialectic treats others as ends in themselves. Rhetoric persuades another not by refuting, but by flattering him, by appealing to what pleases, rather than to what is best for him . . . Dialectic is wholly different both in method and object. It proceeds not by making lengthy statements . . . but by questioning and answering in one-to-one conversation. Its object is to engage each person at the deepest level, and for this it requires utter frankness of speech on each side. . . This is not a competition to see who can reduce the other to his will, but mutual discovery by mutual refutation . . . The object of it all is truth, and its method is friendship” [45] [emphasis added].
Learning is hard — and it begins with a perception of the self that does not sit well with self-love. To learn, we have to accept that we are ignorant. There is much we do not know. We are partial, incomplete. It’s even possible that much of what we claim to know is not so. We have been duped before, and we no doubt can be again.
— Mark Edmundson, University Professor of English at the University of Virginia [46]
Mutual learning through respectful dialogue requires cognitive conditioning and disciplined information processing. [47] Do we filter and synthesize knowledge based on whether it matches our assumptions, or do we seek alternative perspectives that may change what we believe? AIS tutors engage students on this topic by asking them to consider Charles Darwin’s “Golden Rule”:
“I had . . . during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer.” [48]
The thinking error Darwin was trying to avoid entails repressing or denying contrary arguments. We invite students to consider better alternatives grounded on a capacity to see a “rich, nuanced reality that defies simple mental compartmentalization.” [49]
We willingly allow highly simplistic narratives to deceive us, gleefully accepting as truth any tale that casts us as the moral hero and the other as the two-dimensional villain. We can tell when we’re under its power. When all the good is on our side and all the bad on theirs, our storytelling brain is working its grim magic in full. We’re being sold a story. Reality is rarely so simple. Such stories are seductive because our hero-making cognition is determined to convince us of our moral worth. They justify our primitive tribal impulses and seduce us into believing that, even in our hatred, we are holy.
— Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better [50]
One of our most appreciated assignments on this topic focuses on the life and work of Frederick Douglass — especially his relationship with Abraham Lincoln.
Please read and consider these two speeches by Frederick Douglass:
> The Composite Nation (1869) (excerpts) [51]
> Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876) (excerpts) [52]
Two questions for you to answer (based on your reading of both speeches)
[1] What qualities does Douglass display as a thinker and a writer? (People continue to read these speeches because they’re powerful and memorable. What makes them powerful and memorable)? Cite a specific example from the speeches to support your answer.
[2] What qualities of character does Douglass display in these speeches? (i.e., what do you find memorable about Douglass as a person, based on what he wrote and how he expressed himself?). Cite a specific example from the speeches to support your answer.
The following AIS tutor comment emphasizes Douglass’s capacity for candid analysis:
In theory and practice, Douglass lived a life of integrity. Truth-telling and intellectual honesty were essential to his persuasive power. In his Eulogy for Abraham Lincoln, for example, Douglass refused to see Lincoln simplistically — either as a saint or a hypocrite. Truth-telling meant highlighting Lincoln’s slow progress in overcoming racial bigotry; the unique set of challenges he faced in forging the war effort; and the fundamental goodness of his heart (“though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery”). That kind of balanced thinking is hard to find. We tend to think dualistically — “Right vs Wrong” — even when we know truth is rarely seen and explained so easily.
I really admire Douglass for being critical yet so analytical of another person where he considered both the positive and negative sides to Lincoln. I aspire to be this way, and it is a big reason why my five [self] descriptive words changed immensely.
— AIS student comment
Frederick Douglass was adept at recognizing the multiple challenges Lincoln faced before and during the civil war. “Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union,” Douglass said, “he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.” [53] In this context, Douglass was analyzing the conduct of the war from Lincoln’s perspective. By doing so (while freely voicing his own disagreement) Douglass allowed other observers to come closer to a multifaceted view of Lincoln’s character and personality.
Douglass also described a disagreement with Lincoln during the course of the war about how to retaliate for Confederate mistreatment of captured black soldiers:
Feeling myself now perfectly free to say to Mr. Lincoln all that I thought on the subject, I supported my demands as best I could with arguments, to which he calmly and patiently listened, not once interrupting me . . . and when I had finished he made a careful reply, covering each proposition that I had submitted to him.
[W]hen it came to the matter of retaliation, the tender heart of the president appeared in the expression of his eyes, and in every line of his care worn countenance, as well as in the tones of his appealing voice. “Ah!” said he, “Douglass, I cannot hang men in cold blood. I cannot hang men who have had nothing to do with murdering colored prisoners. Of course, if I could get hold of the actual murderers of colored prisoners I would deal with them as they deserve, but I cannot hang those who had no hand in such murders.” I was not convinced that Mr. Lincoln himself was right. I could, and did, answer [his] arguments; but was silenced by his over-mastering mercy and benevolence. I had found a president with a heart — one who could, even in war, love his enemies; and that was something. In parting he said: “Douglass, never come to Washington without calling upon me.” And I never did. [54]
Lincoln and Douglass developed a friendship, [55] in part, because candid and respectful disagreements allowed them to see each other whole. [56] The implications go beyond the lives of two extraordinary individuals to encompass the nature of successful learning and the foundation of a democratic society.
Douglass and Lincoln ultimately understood that continual self-making was antithetical to racism. This was because the idea of “whiteness” as a sign of superiority depended on a self that was fixed and unchanging. They stood at the forefront of a major shift in cultural history . . .
— John Stauffer, Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. [57]
Overall, we encourage AIS students to understand that intellectual humility is a quality of emotional intelligence that expands knowledge, [58] enhances cognitive capacity, promotes cooperation, and inhibits our recurring tendency to perceive unquestionable truth as a component of personal or tribal identity. Whatever may be lost by forgoing absolute certainty will be surpassed by an expanded capacity for cooperation, creativity, and wonder that benefits us all. See our related essay “Belief + Doubt = Sanity” in the Appendix.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.
— Judge Learned Hand, 1944 address in New York Central Park [59]
[8] Stories that enhance courage, integrity, and resilience
Part of the universal appeal of stories is the struggle of protagonists to overcome setbacks and challenges. Even when they don’t succeed we want to see how they react. What lessons did they learn? What qualities of character did they display? How might they be worthy of emulation? If these questions sound vaguely familiar it’s because they arise from archetypal hero myths worldwide.
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that Robert Kennedy, “devoured by grief” after the assassination of his brother, turned to a book given to him by Jackie Kennedy: The Greek Way, by Edith Hamilton. [60] Brooks wrote that Kennedy memorized a passage from Aeschylus, which Hamilton quoted twice in her book:
‘God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom . . . ‘ [61]
Brooks concluded that:
If they were doctors of the spirit, the Greeks’ specialty was to take grief and turn it into resolution . . . The story of Kennedy’s grief is the story of a man stepping out of his time and fetching from the past a sturdier ethic . . . The leaders who founded the country were steeped in the classics; Kennedy found them in crisis, and today’s students are lucky if they stumble on them by happenstance.” [62]
Aristotle made recovery from failure a component of his philosophy. AIS students are frequently introduced to this passage in his Nicomachean Ethics:
“Now many events happen by chance . . .[some will] turn out ill [and] crush and maim happiness; for they both bring pain with them and hinder many activities. Yet even in these nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul . . . For the man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances [in] life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances, as a good general makes the best military use of the army at his command [even after a defeat] and a good shoemaker makes the best shoes out of the hides that are given him; and so with all other craftsmen . . .” [63]
For a visual depiction of the Hellenistic view of nobility “shining through” suffering, see what the Wall Street Journal calls “one of the most moving works of art ever made.” This statue — likely created “between 350 B.C. and 50 B.C.” shows a seated boxer “after a bruising bout it is hardly clear he has won . . . [a]nd given the pugilistic conventions of the ancient world, he may be called upon to rise again at any moment to encounter yet another opponent.” [64]
It is not doctrines that console us in the end, but people: their singularity, their courage and steadfastness . . . people [who] show us what it means to go on, to keep going, despite everything.
— Michael Ignatieff, On Finding Consolation in Dark Times [65]
Telling evocative stories to foster resilience is also a component of contemporary psychological research and writing. One of the best known practitioners of that art is psychiatrist Oliver Sacks. In a review of John Hull’s book Touching the Rock, [66] Sacks wrote that Hull — who was totally blind — was able to find:
a new organization and depth and identity. After sinking hopelessly into a bottomless ocean, he discover[ed], in his deepest depths, his anchor and soul: this, for [him], [was] ‘touching the rock.’
“Touching the rock” is the discovery and affirmation of the core of one’s being. Doing so can be a painful process. On university campuses, for example, students with mood disorders can encounter a level of depression and suicidality that requires immediate medical intervention. [67] With support and treatment, they may then exhibit a level of comprehension that can enrich everyone around them. [68]
AIS students are introduced to the life and work of psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli. He’s featured prominently in Chapter Three. Assagioli’s description of “disidentification and identification” helps students visualize what touching the rock might mean for them:
Often a crisis in life deprives a person of the function or role with which he has identified: an athlete’s body is maimed, a lover’s beloved departs with a wandering poet; a dedicated worker must retire. Then the process of disidentification is forced on one and a solution can only come by a process of death and rebirth in which the person enters into a broader identity. But this process can occur with conscious cooperation
[An] exercise in disidentification and identification involves practicing awareness and affirming: I have a body, but l am not my body. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I have a job, but I am not my job… etc. Systematic introspection can help to eliminate all partial self-identifications [69] [emphasis added].
How else can lives be enriched by narrative? Psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize- winning author Robert Coles titled one of his books “The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination.” [70] His insights include the observation that mental health professionals and teachers must engage in both “story-telling” and “story-listening.” In that context, students in AIS tutorials know that someone is reading what they write. They then become teachers themselves — telling a story that may be as instructive to them as it is to their audience (“the best way to learn something is to teach it”). The impact is even greater when a supportive reader/teacher responds with candid commentary, sometimes derived from their own life experience.
The capacity of stories to enhance resilience is not grounded on depictions of perfection. As Will Storr has observed, the most consequential stories invite us to “enter the flawed mind of another” and be “reassured that it’s not only us” who feel conflicted or broken. [71] In this context, introducing students to the right stories may be the most important resource educators can offer young minds encountering sustained adversity for the first time.
FOOTNOTES
[1] We draw upon multiple sources for this perspective, including Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (2013) and Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better (2019).
[2] Andre Comte-Sponville, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues (2002), p.132
[3] Darwin, Charles The Descent of Man (Norton Critical Edition, pp. 200–201)
[4] Lincoln himself understood how empathy could be evoked by compelling stories. In 1862, when introduced to Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), he reportedly made the playful comment “so you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” See Harriet Beecher Stowe: The little woman who wrote the book that started this great war (Ohio State University). http://bit.ly/3GrVzt2
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker emphasized the role of literature in the expansion of empathy and an overall decline of violence worldwide. The following paragraph from his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) contains a concise summary of his thesis:
[T]echnological advances in publishing, the mass production of books, the expansion of literacy, and the popularity of the novel all preceded the major humanitarian reforms of the 18th century. And in some cases a bestselling novel or memoir demonstrably exposed a wide range of readers to the suffering of a forgotten class of victims and led to a change in policy. Around the same time that Uncle Tom’s Cabin mobilized abolitionist sentiment in the United States, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839) opened people’s eyes to the mistreatment of children in British workhouses and orphanages and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea (1840) and Herman Melville’s White Jacket helped end the flogging of sailors. In the past century Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, George Orwell’s 1984, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Elie Wiesel’s Night, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse- Five, Alex Haley’s Roots, Anchee Min’s Red Azalea, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (a novel that features female genital mutilation) all raised public awareness of the suffering of people who might otherwise have been ignored.”
See: “Extract: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker” in The Guardian, November 1, 2011. http://bit.ly/3MqolxU
[5] Storr, William, The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better (2020), Kindle location: 2,613. https://bit.ly/3zvC4vM
[6] Confucius Analects, 7:19
[7] AIS document “Abraham Lincoln and Engagement in Learning”: https://bit.ly/3xQ12VZ
[8] Miller, William Lee, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography, p. 48 (2002)
[9] Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter IV.
[10] Pavela, Gary “Academic Freedom for Students Has Ancient Roots, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27, 2005. Updated by the author on MEDIUM at https://bit.ly/3xYJas3
[11] Bain, Ken What the Best College Teachers Do (2004) p. 18.
[12] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Flow (1990) p. 40–41.
[13] Feynman, Richard, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (2005), p. 23.
[14] Berlin, Isaiah, The Power of Ideas (2002), p. 14. Also published in the New York Review of Books, Vol. XLV, Number 8 (1998). Berlin wrote:
The enemy of pluralism is monism — the ancient belief that there is a single harmony of truths into which everything, if it is genuine, in the end must fit. The consequence of this belief (which is something different from, but akin to, what Karl Popper called essentialism — to him the root of all evil) is that those who know should command those who do not. Those who know the answers to some of the great problems of mankind must be obeyed, for they alone know how society should be organized, how individual lives should be lived, how culture should be developed. This is the old Platonic belief in the philosopher-kings, who were entitled to give orders to others . . .
Someone once remarked that in the old days men and women were brought as sacrifices to a variety of gods; for these, the modern age has substituted the new idols: isms. To cause pain, to kill, to torture are in general rightly condemned; but if these things are done not for my personal benefit but for an ism — socialism, nationalism, fascism, communism, fanatically held religious belief, or progress, or the fulfillment of the laws of history — then they are in order. Most revolutionaries believe, covertly or overtly, that in order to create the ideal world eggs must be broken, otherwise one cannot obtain an omelette. Eggs are certainly broken — never more violently than in our times — but the omelette is far to seek, it recedes into an infinite distance. That is one of the corollaries of unbridled monism, as I call it — some call it fanaticism, but monism is at the root of every extremism [emphasis added].
[15] University of Colorado, Daily Camera, February 7, 2014 http://bit.ly/40IhJPk
[16] See, generally, the topic “Scientific Method” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and History of the Scientific Method in a valuable Wikipedia summary of that topic. See also John Moore, Science as a Way of Knowing (1993). Moore (Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of California-Riverside) wrote that
[The methods of science] “require disciplined minds capable of accurately recording observations, using data from those observations to develop a tentative explanation (a hypothesis), testing the necessary deductions from that hypothesis, and relating the conclusions that are true beyond all reasonable doubt to the existing body of scientific information. Not only does the testing of hypotheses make science a self-correcting enterprise, but so does the practice of one scientist testing the conclusions of another. The result is that science is the most powerful mechanism we have for obtaining confirmable information about the natural world . . . But powerful as it is, we must never forget that decisions affecting human beings must be made by human beings; they do not emerge from science. (p. 504).
A contemporary challenge to the methodology of science is described in the April 27, 2023 Wall Street Journal “The ‘Hurtful’ Idea of Scientific Merit” by Jerry A. Coyne and Anna I. Krylov,
[17] Dewey, John, “Fundamentals,” The New Republic, February 6, 1924, p. 275.
[18] Blackburn, Simon, “The Ethics of Belief,” December 1, 2003 New Republic.
[19] Much of the language in this section comes from our previously published work, including MEDIUM essays by Gary Pavela: “What is Truth: Perspectives from Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens” and “The Meaning of Belief + Doubt = Sanity.”
[20] Even during the late Renaissance, religious authorities in Europe were banning the works of towering scientific figures such as Copernicus and Galileo. Galileo, brought before the inquisition in 1633, and threatened with torture, “disavowed his belief in a revolving earth,” but was reportedly heard to mutter “‘E pur si muove’ (‘And yet it does move’) as he left. See Manchester, William, A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance — Portrait of an Age (1993) Kindle location 2069 and Livio, Mario, Did Galileo Truly Say, ‘And Yet It Moves’? A Modern Detective Story, Scientific American, May 6, 2020.
[21] Manchester, William, A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance — Portrait of an Age (1993) Kindle locations 1,225 and 1,241.
Although they called themselves Christians, medieval Europeans were ignorant of the Gospels. The Bible existed only in a language they could not read. The mumbled incantations at Mass were meaningless to them. They believed in sorcery, witchcraft, hobgoblins, werewolves, amulets, and black magic . . . If a lady died, the instant her breath stopped, servants ran through the manor house, emptying every container of water to prevent her soul from drowning, and before her funeral the corpse was carefully watched to prevent any dog or cat from running across the coffin, thus changing her remains into a vampire . . .
Everyone also knew — and every child was taught — that the air all around them was infested with invisible, soulless spirits, some benign but most of them evil, dangerous, long-lived, and hard to kill; that among them were the souls of unbaptized infants, ghouls who snuffled out cadavers in graveyards and chewed their bones, water nymphs skilled at luring knights to death by drowning, dracs who carried little children off to their caves beneath the earth, wolfmen — the undead turned into ravenous beasts — and vampires who rose from their tombs at dusk to suck the blood of men, women, or children who had strayed from home. At any moment, under any circumstances, a person could be removed from the world of the senses to a realm of magic creatures and occult powers. Every natural object possessed supernatural qualities.
While the general population was immersed in a world “of magic creatures and occult powers,” the Church was focused on condemnation of discoveries by Copernicus and Galileo. See the digital publication “400 Years Ago the Catholic Church Prohibited Copernicanism” (Ohio State University: Origins) https://bit.ly/41q5fMX.
A general account of medieval life can be seen in the book The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 , (1977), pp. 93, 98 by Lawrence Stone (Professor of History at Princeton University):
The extraordinary amount of casual interpersonal physical and verbal violence, as recorded in legal and other records, shows clearly that at all levels men and women were extremely short-tempered. The most trivial disagreements tended to lead rapidly to blows, and most people carried a potential weapon, if only a knife to cut their meat . . . The Elizabethan village was a place filled with malice and hatred, its only unifying bond being the occasional episode of mass hysteria, which temporarily bound together the majority in order to persecute and harry the local witch . . . What is being postulated for the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is a society in which a majority of the individuals that composed it found it very difficult to establish emotional ties to any other person. Children were neglected, brutally treated, and even killed; adults treated each other with suspicion and hostility; affect was low and hard to find. To an anthropologist, there would be nothing very surprising about such a society, which closely resembles the Mundugumor in the Twentieth Century as described by Margaret Mead.
[22] Frank, Adam, “Welcome to the Age of Denial,” New York Times, August 21, 2013 http://bit.ly/3G9Jpop
[23] “Retraction with Honor” (Blog published by research team lead professor Joan E. Strassmann at https://bit.ly/3SzbeKM)
[24] Wilson, E.O. Letters to a Young Scientist, (2013), p. 239.
[25] Mandela, Nelson, Statement from the Dock (April 1964) https://bit.ly/438BKQZ
[26] Rosenberger v. the Rector and Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia 515 U.S. 819
[27] Whitehead, Alfred, The Aims of Education, 1929, p. 2.
[28] See Pavela, Gary Student Academic Freedom Has Ancient Roots, Chronicle of Higher Education and MEDIUM, January 26, 2002 [http://bit.ly/3mizxSu]
[29] The School of Athens (Wikimedia, public domain). http://bit.ly/439eBxU
[30] This discussion is drawn from our May 27, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education essay “Academic freedom for students has ancient roots.” http://bit.ly/3mb9Ymf
[31] Belfort’s Wikipedia entry starts with the line: “American entrepreneur, speaker, author, former stockbroker, and financial criminal.”
[32] Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan: Commencement address at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 10, 1999. http://bit.ly/41aZ3rP
[33] See So, Jimmy “The Real Wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort’s Vulgar Memoirs” The Daily Beast, July 11, 2017 and Belfort, Jordan, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street (2011)
[34] Maccoby, Michael, The Gamesman, 1976. p.111.
[35] Leary, Mark “What Does Intellectual Humility Look Like?,” Greater Good Magazine, November 3, 2021.
[P]eople high in intellectual humility more carefully consider the evidence on which their beliefs are based, are vigilant to the possibility that they might be incorrect, consider the perspectives of other informed people (including those whose viewpoints differ from theirs), and revise their views when evidence warrants.
The authors of the Constitution showed a comparable sensibility, demonstrated by their decision to create a mechanism for future amendments.
[36] The description is provided by the Smithsonian institution at http://bit.ly/3o6A0rm
[37] Leslie, Ian, “A Good Scrap: Disagreements can be unpleasant, even offensive, but they are vital to human reason.” Aeon, July 12, 2021. http://bit.ly/43ixcYx.
[38] Crouch, Tom, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (2003).
[39] Leslie, Ian, supra.
[40] See Leslie, Ian, supra:
“Charles Taylor, who worked on the shop floor of the Wright Cycle Company, described the room above as ‘frightened with argument’. He recalled: ‘The boys were working out a lot of theory in those days, and occasionally they would get into terrific arguments. They’d shout at each other something terrible. I don’t think they really got mad, but they sure got awfully hot.’”
[41] Crouch, Tom, The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (2003), p.103
[42] Tobin, James, To Conquer the Air (2004), p. 90
[43] Hertog, Thomas, On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory (2023), Kindle location 378,
[44] Obama, Barack, 2016 commencement speech at Rutgers University. https://bit.ly/3ZnjxvZ
[45] White, James, “The Ethics of Argument: Plato’s Gorgias and the Modern Lawyer,” 50 University of Chicago Law Review 849, 870–871, (1983).
[46] Edmundson, Mark, The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World (2023), Kindle location 1,019
[47] See, generally, Leary, Mark The Psychology of Intellectual Humility (2018).
[48] Darwin, Charles “Life and Letters,” Part 1, p. 36 (1887). https://bit.ly/3LdRtaI
[49] Alison, Scott, “Heroes: What They Do and Why We need Them” (non-dualistic thinking), January 23, 2020.
[50] Storr, Will,The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better, (2020), p. 163
[51] Douglass, Frederick, “A Composite Nation” (1867).
[52] Douglass, Frederick, Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876). https://bit.ly/3A98kVx
[53] Ibid.
[54] Hord, Fred Lee and Norman, Matthew, Ed., Knowing Him By Heart: African-Americans on Abraham Lincoln (2022), p. 403
[55] Stauffer, John, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2009), Kindle location, 50. Stauffer is Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He said in a 2008 interview that:
Douglass and Lincoln were pragmatists, able to put aside their vast differences and come together as friends. In 1860 Douglass helped elect Lincoln as president. At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln met Douglass three times at the White House. Their friendship was chiefly utilitarian: Lincoln needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy; Douglass knew that Lincoln could help him end slavery. But they also genuinely liked and admired each other. Douglass and Lincoln ultimately understood that continual self-making was antithetical to racism. This was because the idea of “whiteness” as a sign of superiority depended on a self that was fixed and unchanging. They stood at the forefront of a major shift in cultural history, which rejected fixed social stations and included blacks and whites, though rarely women, in the national ideals of freedom and equality
[56] See Ian, Leslie, Conflicted: How Constructive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes (2021). He wrote:
We don’t just do our thinking ‘in the brain’, however. We do it with each other. Our focus on individuals means we underrate disagreement as a route to insight . . .
Scientists who study group decision-making . . . have observed ways in which the absence of disagreement within a group of intelligent people can lead to bad decisions. The better known one is driven by the desire to conform, to follow the lead of a dominant person or people in the room. . . .the social psychologist Irving Janis, the first to name this phenomenon, in 1972, called it ‘group-think.’ The problem here, you might say, is that the group acts like an impulsive individual.” p. 52
[57] Stauffer, John, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2009), Kindle location, 78.
[58] The expansion of knowledge occurs, in part, by exploring different depictions of reality. See an observation by Gary Pavela in the the April 18, 2003 Chronicle Review:
In my senior-level seminar on historiography, I encountered this observation from the Oxford philosopher W.H. Walsh in his book An Introduction to Philosophy of History (1951), p. 113:
Just as a portrait painter sees his subject from his own peculiar point of view, but would nevertheless be said to have some insight into that subject’s ‘real’ nature, so too the historian must look at the past with his own presuppositions, but is not thereby cut off from all understanding of it.
For me, Walsh’s ‘portrait painter’ metaphor has been an invaluable guide through the intellectual world of the past 40 years. Truth, to some extent, is culturally defined, and remains elusive. But cynicism about seeing or defining any aspect of truth is one of the great (and inherently self-contradictory) falsehoods of our time.
[59] Hand, Learned (1872–1961) (United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) cited in Learned Hand’s Spirit of Liberty: A Lesson for Our Times (by D. Brooks Smith, Duke University Law School, 2021).
[60] Hamilton, Edith, The Greek Way (2010)
[61] Aeschylus, Oxford reference.
[62] Brooks, David, “The Education of Robert Kennedy, November 26, 2006, New York Times.
[63] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, 10)
[64] Gardner, James “Masterpiece: Boxer at Rest” Wall Street Journal (June 14, 2013).
[65] Ignatieff, Michael, On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times (2021), p. 258. National Library of Medicine review.
[66] Sacks, Oliver, “The ‘Dark, Paradoxical Gift’” (New York Review of Books, April 11, 1991).
[67] Richtel, Matt ‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens,” New York Times, April 23, 2022.
Here’s relevant guidance we share with AIS students:
Be wary of thinking disorders that promote self-defeating pessimism.
You probably remember this passage written by ABRAHAM LINCOLN when he was a young adult (cited in the Atlantic article we assigned):
“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth …Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not.”
WILLIAM JAMES (“one of the most influential philosophers” in the United States and seen as the “father of American psychology”) wrote something similar when he was in his twenties:
“I am a low-lived wretch. I’ve been prey to such disgust for life during the past three months as to make letter writing almost an impossibility.”
Source: John Kaag: Prologue: A Disgust for Life in Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (Princeton, 2020)
CHARLES DARWIN (“history’s most famous biologist” and one of the greatest scientists of all time) once informed a doctor that “[f]or 25 years” he:
“experienced . . . hysterical crying, dying sensations . . . vomiting . . . Head symptoms … nervousness when E. [his wife] leaves me.”
Darwin later wrote that scientific work was “the only thing which makes life endurable to me.”
Sources: University of Cambridge Darwin Correspondence project and “Charles Darwin and Panic Disorder” in the Journal the American Medical Association (JAMA).
William James, Charles Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln eventually sought help for what they recognized as debilitating mood disorders. That help — even more readily available now from mental health professionals — enabled them to create a sense of purpose that defined them and enriched the world.
[68] See Pavela, Gary, Chronicle of Higher Education, “Fearing Our Students Won’t Help Them” February 18, 2008.
[69] Keen, Sam, “The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli” (interview) Psychology Today, December, 1974
[70] Coles, Robert, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (2014).
[71] Storr, Will, The Science of Storytelling (2019) Kindle location 2,646.
