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The Lyceum Letter

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The Lyceum Letter THE LYCEUM LETTER Newsletter Vol. III No. 2 ~ Verum Bonum Pulchrum ~ Winter 2006 Surge Qui Dormis! and even parents claim that they want A Message from the Headmaster, Mark Langley students to “think for themselves” or to ARTICLES Greetings from all of us at The Lyceum! engage in “critical thinking.” We hear it said The ancient philosopher Heraclitus remarked that students should decide for themselves Page One: that most men live as if asleep. To a teacher where to learn, what to think, and what to Surge Qui Dormis— Headmaster’s Letter who is continually faced with young people, believe. Is this really the goal of education, or whose growing bodies seem to require no should we all rather be concerned with Page Three: end of sleep, Heraclitus is merely stating the coming to know the truth which is finally Guest Artists: obvious. Heraclitus, however, is pointing to Jesus Christ? Notre Dame Chorale the sort of slumber from which, Our primary goal should be to know the Page Four: unfortunately, it seems many never wake up. truth and gain wisdom. Coming to know the Seneca Trio It is an intellectual sleep, bred of a truth might involve thinking like others for a Works of Mercy: complacent long time; Pro-Life Group satisfaction with thinking like Page Five: an implicit Euclid or Feeding the Poor skepticism. This Aristotle or Alta House state stops any Aquinas. Sports intellectual Basketball Team Blessed John Volleyball Team movement and Henry Cardinal leads ultimately to Newman says Page Six: that complete provocatively in State of the School: paralysis which Academic Progress his Idea of a Pope Benedict University: Page Seven: aptly calls “the “While we are Exam Week tyranny of men, we cannot relativism.” Page Eight: help, to a great Lyceum Fine Arts: In a recent extent, being Praxis of the Arts interview with Aristotelians, Advent Lessons The original congregation of the Chiesa Giovanni , St. John’s Beckwith in Ignatius Press, 1906. The building became the first home of The Lyceum in 2003. for the great & Carols noted priest and Master does but Page Nine: author James V. Schall, S.J. made the analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, Recorder following comment about the human mind: and opinions of human kind. He has for good or ill “…we have a mind that is not of our own told us the meaning of our own words The Fall Plays: Everyman making. This mind is not given to us to and ideas, before we were born. In Shepherd’s Play think whatever we wish, but to think many subject-matters, to think whatever is true.” correctly, is to think like Aristotle; and Page Ten: we are his disciples whether we will or Children’s Choir Intellectual license ought to be distinguished from intellectual freedom. no, though we may not know it.” Page Eleven: Thinking whatever we want, for good or for Newman seems to be suggesting that men Upcoming Events ill, amounts to nothing more than some sort are naturally Aristotelians, and the purpose of Thesis Night - March 24 of intellectual license. True freedom, school would therefore be to become better Spring Auction however, consists in having the “tools of Aristotelians. This would seem to be of - April 28 thinking,” and actually thinking the truth. universal importance, for as Father Schall Christ reminds his disciples that “the truth points out “…John Paul II, following will make you free.” Aristotle really, remarked that every person is In our day, it is common to hear educators something of a philosopher.” The real challenge for us all is to there is no truth. The effect is the something outside themselves. engage in what Socrates calls the same. That is, each such person is Relativism is a poison that lulls its “examined life” which consists in really a slave to that tyranny of subjects into a sort of dreamy reflecting on and discussing our relativism of which Pope Benedict ignorance of reality, of being, of ideas with others speaks. truth itself. Like the fabled “lotus” to discover if we Allan Bloom in his Closing of encountered by Odysseus and his actually have the the American Mind, says: men, the sweet lotus, once eaten, truth or not. “There is one thing a professor can be lulls its victims into a dreamy What is the absolutely certain of; almost every forgetfulness about all that is most alternative to student entering the university dear. The lotus nearly destroyed thinking like believes, or says he believes, that truth the men of Odysseus, making Aristotle or is relative. If this belief is put to the them forget their duty and instead, Aquinas? Well, test, one can count on the students' “they wished to stay, to we can try to Observant Touriste and Political reaction: they will be remain among the Lotus- think for Philosopher Alexis De Tocqueville uncomprehending. That anyone Eaters, feeding on the plant, ourselves, but how do we know should regard the proposition as not self- eager to forget about their we are not really subtly influenced evident astonishes them, as though he homeward voyage.” by the thoughts of some other were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. This is indeed a tyranny. But in thinker and are unwittingly These are things you don't think about.” this case it is a deceptively intellectual disciples of benign tyranny that lulls someone else? Alexis De men to sleep. To be Tocqueville suggests this very unaware of the things that thing in his masterpiece every human mind was Democracy In America, he says: created to know is to be “America is therefore one asleep. To be unaware of of the countries where the the great questions, the precepts of Descartes are great ideas which are part least studied and best of the “great applied.” conversation” that has How disappointing to wake taken place among such up one day having proudly brilliant thinkers as Homer considered oneself to be a and Heraclitus, Plato and “critical thinker” only to Aristotle, Augustine and discover that one has been an Those ruled by the tyranny of Aquinas, is to be asleep. To be unwitting disciple of a dead 17th relativism do not seem to realize unaware of or unresponsive to century philosopher! If we cannot their own predicament. Relativism Beauty - to beautiful music and help thinking and makes its adherents art, to beautiful and wholesome living our lives comfortable with their own literature, to beautiful drama, to according to some ideas. Besides being a denial beauty of the soul - is to be asleep. philosophy, doesn’t of objective truth, relativism To be a moral relativist - tolerant it make sense to claims a sort of false of every action, unable to be “wake up” early and tolerance that makes room outraged at what is truly evil and find out what the for everyone except for that unenthusiastically responsive to truth is? This is one who holds that truth is right and just action, to be supposed to be the one and the same for all. Rene Descartes unresponsive to the good - is to aim of education. —Father of Doubt, I think... A relativist certainly does be asleep. To be unaware of the Or should we rather agree with not consider this life to be a Catholic Church and her present those who maintain that each journey towards our final home battle for minds and hearts, her person should have the license to where we will see Truth itself. battle on behalf of the unborn and think what he pleases, and that Such a life is painful, as truth is the defenseless, her battle for each should determine for himself found only by those who are souls and for the salvation of all his own truth, or better yet, that willing to submit themselves to mankind, is to be asleep. 2 What can one do with those “…one day, midway through the places. As Father Schall says, who have been lulled into this semester, you will look at the “…changes in human affairs slumber of relativism? Odysseus class. Suddenly a young man or begin in individual souls, no doubt took action: woman in the back row, who under grace, in out of the way “I forced them, eyes full of seemed at first clueless, is sitting places like Bethlehem or in the tears, into our hollow ships, there with eyes wide open. You small German town in which dragged them underneath the know that suddenly the student Benedict XVI was born.” has woken up in that sense for 2 rowing benches, and tied them We hope that each Lyceum which the classical university was up. Then I issued orders for student is in the process of an supposed to exist for its pupils, to my other trusty comrades to intellectual awakening. We hope let them know that there was light. embark and sail away with that God’s grace has ample They were supposed to, made to, speed in our fast ships, in case freedom to work in our little out see it.” another man might eat a lotus of the way school. We desire and lose all thoughts about his We at The Lyceum hold that nothing more for our students journey back.” intellectual freedom is not the than “the light” which St. Paul Such drastic measures might be license to think whatever one speaks of in his letter to the wishes but rather the freedom to Ephesians: necessary, but alas, they are unavailable to a teacher with his think the truth. We hold that “Awake, thou that sleepest,, and arise students. Father Schall proposes education is about giving students from the dead, and Christ shall give thee the opportunity to encounter truth light.” slightly less coercive measures for waking students from their itself, that truth which is one and We hope each of our students relativistic slumber.
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