I offer some wisdom from Professor Robert P. George, a Facebook friend and colleague. While he is one of the nations foremost conservative intellectuals and is not shy about his opinions, he is exceedingly civil and gracious, and as he states in the profile below, “I want to make sure all my students understand why it is that reasonable, well-informed people of good will can be found on both or all sides of the question.” I try to model my approach to public discourse after his, and so I have a high regard for his advice and counsel: Advice to young scholars and, especially, to aspiring public intellectuals: Although it is natural and, in itself, good to desire and even seek affirmation, do not fall in love with applause. It is a drug. When you get some of it, you crave more. It can easily deflect you from your mission and vocation. In the end, what matters is not winning approval or gaining celebrity. Your mission and vocation is to seek the truth and to speak the truth as God gives you to grasp it. There is a particular danger for those who dissent from the reigning orthodoxies of a prevailing intellectual culture. You may be tempted to suppose that your willingness to defy the career-making (and potential career-breaking) mandarins of elite opinion immunizes you from addiction to affirmation and applause and guarantees your personal authenticity and intellectual integrity. It doesnt. We are all vulnerable to the drug. The vulnerability never completely disappears. And the drug is toxic to the activity of thinking (and thus to the cause of truth-seeking). To me, the reality of this temptation, no less than any other temptation, should keep us mindful of the need constantly to tend the garden of ones interior life. If anything can immunize us against the temptation to love applause above truth, it is prayer. We all need that immune system strengthener. Even those of us who think we are strong, who flatter ourselves with the thought that we are invulnerable to the lure of approval, are weak. In fact, in our self-flattery we are, perhaps, among the most vulnerable. It is so easy to think of oneself as Socrates --- until the hemlock is served.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:08:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015