Bearing Witness to War
Not everyone values 2500+ year old epic poems. If that’s you, give an expert the chance to convince you. In this episode of EconTalk, Russ Roberts interviews Claudia Hauer about war, education, and strategic humanism. Hauer is an expert at making the case for the importance of reading classical texts and often had to as a visiting professor at the U. S. Air Force Academy. Hauer, a faculty member at St. John’s College (Santa Fe) where students learn ancient Greek as a part of their education, is also the author of Strategic Humanism: Lessons on Leadership from the Ancient Greeks, which is the focus of this interview.
Dr. Hauer mentions teaching these two very different student populations: U. S. Air Force officers-in-training and St. John’s College students, who specifically sought out a “great books” style education. Hauer argues that both groups of students, disparate as they may be in their approaches and goals, have something to take away from the humanities, particularly the ancient Greek epic poetry she teaches them.
Hauer’s students from the Air Force Academy often entered the classroom convinced that an ancient war poem has little to offer them. On the surface, the weapons and ways of combat portrayed in Homer are very far from modern life and war. During Hauer’s and Roberts’ conversation, they refer to this notion of practical knowledge: τέχνη (technê) in classical Greek.
Technê is a notion that can (in most cases) be translated as craft, i.e. how we achieve excellence (in Greek: ἀρετή [aretê]) in a particular domain. It is professional knowledge, experiential knowledge that comes from doing a thing. It is, as Roberts mentions, the root of our word technology but it does not mean exactly the same thing.
Hauer argues that the Greeks, even for non-specialists, are worth reading, and describes how she successfully convinced her classes of officers-in-training that they could find a reading of Homer worthwhile. The Greek tradition of how best to be human, she argues, is still worth discussing even a couple thousand years later, and in the case of those training to lead in the military, these texts have particular relevance:
I do think it’s important that we read it if only to bear witness to some of those objectifying tendencies during war. But, even above and beyond, it teaches us certain timeless lessons about comradeship during war, and also those cycles. Jonathan Shay has this book, Achilles in Vietnam, in which he points out that the cycles, the emotional cycles that we see unleashed in Achilles over the course of the Iliad–betrayal by the commander, withdrawal from the fighting, death of his close friend, and then a cycle of grief that leads to murderous, barbaric rage. Jonathan Shay points out that these cycles are timeless: that they continue to play out on the fields of battle.
And so I think, insofar as what happens in the Iliad is still a part of the war landscape, I think it’s important that we read it. Could we get beyond that? Could we actually push into some territory that suggests it’s worth reading for its own sake? I think, the similes–I think the way Homer sets the backdrop of war against the natural landscape, and explores the way men fighting are like lions, or like natural forces, like torrents of rain or thunderstorms–I think he’s really starting this work that the Greeks will continue in their literature, which is: How do we begin to locate the domain of the human being against our sort of helplessness as creatures in this world of force and power?
And, we don’t always fully understand our relationship to nature, our relationship to the animals. And that’s the problem that the Greeks worked out in all of their literatures–is that, because the gods didn’t hand human being to them on the platter of scripture, they kind of have to work it out for themselves. In that sense, I would argue that the Iliad, we should read it for its own sake.
Like many moderns with a humanist education, much of my adult life will be spent behind a laptop. What kind of technê does that require? Did my education equip me with any sort of technê? Is knowing how best to be human a form of technê? Is it something that can be taught or transmitted? Technê as a concept is ubiquitous in Greek literature and philosophy. In Meno, Plato opens with a question: “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Without getting too far into the Greek text (Plato uses a different word similar in meaning to technê), it is clear that readers are being invited to contemplate the practical implications of knowledge about what is good and true.
Aristotle treats similar questions in Metaphysics, where he distinguishes between the knowledge of an artisan and a master craftsman. For Aristotle, experience is a necessary but not sufficient condition for knowledge. Wisdom is what elevates experience, although he notes that simple experience also can be a very useful thing for humans, as “It would seem that for practical purposes experience is in no way inferior to art; indeed we see men of experience succeeding more than those who have theory without experience.”
In their philosophical discussions, poems and plays, the Greeks had complex and sophisticated views on practical knowledge, and there are far more examples than I can list here. These conversations are accessible to us (particularly given resources online like the Online Library of Liberty) whether we are a soldier, sailor, academic or autodidact. We are still asking these human questions.
Here are some other questions to consider:
1- Dr. Hauer convinced her Air Force Academy students to read the Iliad, a poem about war. Does it have relevance for those of us who aren’t engaged in developing the technê of war or the technê of reading Greek literature? How might that be? Is it more or less relevant than the Odyssey, as mentioned in the podcast episode?
2- The humanities can be viewed as impractical, since they are not often directly connected to job training. However, the ancient Greeks were very much interested in the practical implications of ideas about knowledge. Why did the Greeks distinguish between purely contemplative knowledge and practical expertise? What may their approach to knowledge acquisition have to teach us about education today?
3- What parallels can we draw between physically practical skills, like carpentry, athletics, medicine, or making art, and how we practice virtue?
4- Would the ancient Greeks consider the humanities as we conceive of them now to be a form of technê? In what ways are the humanities similar to the kinds of technê present in professional fields, such as medicine, the military, etc.?
5- What kinds of humanistic disciplines do you believe would most benefit from the ancient Greek insights on knowledge transmission, and how? What can students of the humanities learn from modern practical disciplines?
Related Resources
“A leadership class from the ancient world”, essay by Josiah Osgood
“Mr. Truman’s Degree”, essay by G. E. M. Anscombe (1956)
τέχνη, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon
Technē in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nancy Vander Veer has a BA in Classics from Samford University. She taught high school Latin in the US and held programs and fundraising roles at the Paideia Institute. Based in Rome, Italy, she is currently completing a masters in European Social and Economic History at the Philipps-Universität Marburg.
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