"Even the boldest among us rarely have the courage for what we truly know." Friedrich Nietzsche

Learning is painful. Like any muscle, when stretched, the brain is uneasy and, moreover, never quite able to return to its original position. One of the great wonders of the university is its ability to stretch the brain, to open vistas, to wound the soul even as it heals. Who can read that "God is dead" and not shiver (especially those holding the knife)? Who can hear Milton's paean ring across the centuries, melding the pagan and pious, and not revel for a moment in the possibility of escaping from darkness? Or who can read Machiavelli's admonition to be feared rather than loved if one cannot be both and not glance over their shoulder, half expecting Cesare Borgia's minions?

Unfortunately, the capacity to experience the great works of literature is actually diminishing, precisely as the capacity for pain dwindles as well. How can the death of God wrench the souls of those who grew up without Him? How can the greatness of a Christian epic and the heroism of a hubristic Satan awe those who see good and evil as mere values rather than absolutes? And how can Machiavelli's struggle to overcome chance by abandoning Plato's ideal city appear radical or threatening to those whose only exposure to Socrates comes from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?

Our capacity for pain is dulled by a world which teaches us that suffering is bad. Unhappy with your marriage? Get out! Can't deal with the stress of life and the burden of existence? Prozac your way to happiness! Feel marginalized for your views? Accept yourself- we're all beautiful inside! In essence, since nothing is our fault, we spend enormous amounts of time and money insulating ourselves from the nasty emotional and psychological side effects of things we have given up trying to control. Since learning involves a certain amount of uncomfortableness with one's state of mind, it is not always a directly pleasurable experience, and is often initially much the opposite. Hence, the experience of learning tends to be skipped over in favor of preserving one's own prejudices.

Learning can also be painful as it tends to undermine our current understanding of self esteem. Whatever their political stripes, the great thinkers, Marx, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Machiavelli, Freud, Descartes, Milton, Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Smith, et al., all set extremely high intellectual and analytical standards. Whatever one thinks of the specifics of each their systems, the careful reader cannot fail to see that these authors offer commentary which retains its salience even outside of its immediate historical context (Yale University literature professor Harold Bloom offers an excellent discussion of this in "The Western Canon"). Though various, watered down combinations of these thinkers (mostly Nietzsche, Marx and Freud) are employed in defence of deconstruction of aesthetic, intellectual or moral standards, all of them embody something far surpassing the host of critics clamoring for their reconstruction or even total elimination. It is a sad commentary on our time that, despite our sophistication, the most fertile grounds and grandest achievements lie within the walls of the graveyards of our gods.

Sadly, the attack on the great thinkers (often carried out in the name of ideologies they helped conceive) is often motivated by sheer resentment as much as it is fueled by a quest for truth (itself a questionable notion). Never mind that Milton birthed one of two modern epics able to stand next to Dante and Homer (the other being Tolstoy's "War and Peace"), for Milton was a sexist and a Christian to boot. Though a marvelous author and supreme psychologist, Shakespeare too appears before the modern tribunal for his rampant misogyny. Rousseau was a pervert, Plato an elitist and Smith a tool of the new emerging capitalist regime- plus, they all had penises. Even the three ushers of postmodernity, Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, find themselves under siege for a variety of crimes ranging from racism, sexism and vulgarity, not to mention arrogance.

Of course, with the past conveniently castrated, modern "thinkers" avoid unsavory comparisons with their intellectual ancestors, as long as their intentions are good (though the basis of judging what intentions are good remains to be seen). Thus it is that Maya Angelou continues to recycle her autobiography in ever new and refreshing forms, Sylvia Plath replaces Shakespeare, and John Rawl's "Theory of Justice" replaces Plato's "Republic," a democratically saccharine alternative for those without the taste for thought. Unfortunately, Rawls' only opponent in the curriculum is Robert Nozick, an easy match considering Rawls tells dedicated democrats exactly what they want to hear and that no one else, despite Kant, Aristotle, Mill, Nietzsche, Spinoza, etc., is allowed to challenge him. And what we end up with is a vague notion that being better is no more special than being worse.

This is not to say that the postmodern era has not produced its share of thinkers. Heidegger, Habermas, Gadamer, Wittengenstein, Camus, and others all acted in the spirit of philosophy, some even turning to the past for a fresh look at things long abandoned or at least trying to understand the past in order to criticize it (a la Foucault). However, even their insights are offered up in a haphazard and useless manner, and without a proper location in an intellectual tradition. They can speak to us, but they cannot hurt us. In other words, they cannot make us learn.

My purpose in writing is not to argue for a blind embrace of the past, nor for a masochistic shattering of idols simply for the sake of finding something real. Rather, in an age when choice and openess are all the rage, knowledge of all alternatives is crucial, especially substantive alternatives. The danger we face in levelling standards and ignoring the past is the perception that any way of living is as good as another. Rather than fostering individual creativity, self-esteem, etc., this sort of malaise tends to produce the average, a range of choices which are nothing more than meaningless trends. Moreover, when people cannot find reasons to defend particular choices, the institution of choice as a whole eventually becomes arbitrary. One is reminded of Camus discussion of suicide: if life is meaningless, even bothering to act purposefully and kill oneself is ultimately absurd.

Basically, embracing the past and the ability to feel pain means embracing the possiblity of making an informed choice. Do we so easily endorse Rawls' distributive justice when we see radical equality's impact on individual happiness as described by Socrates or Burke? Do we simply accept the outcomes of our political process after reading Weber's critique of bureaucracy or the Federalists' realpolitik concerns about unbalanced conflict? Do we gloss the banality of socialism's ultimate human condition after reading Nietzsche's critique of the last man? Do we dare characterize all Christians as mindless authoritarians after reading Milton's defenses of regicide and divorce? In each case, we must answer No!

Ultimately, and perhaps most appropriately, do we accept wholesale exactly what our universities sell us after Plato's warning about sophistry and its charming of youth? The process of answering these questions may be painful, but such an enterprise is far better than ignoring the questions altogether. I humbly suggest an intellectual renaissance.