Washing Giants’ Feet

One good way to learn is to sit at the feet of a good teacher.

But a better way to learn is to wash the feet of those teachers with the greatest minds, the intellectual giants of the Western Tradition. 

When it comes to education, Plato’s Socrates considered dialogue to be the best vehicle for acquiring knowledge; apparently, he disapproved of writing believing it was one of the quickest ways to miss the point.

If we only read books, he argues, we might get the gist of the thing being taught, but we won’t be able to ask questions about those things we didn’t understand. He felt that by reading, we would miss the tones, the nuances, and ultimately, the point. To get to listen, ask questions, and receive feedback from someone in the know is the most valuable learning experience.

Cardinal John Henry Newman observed just how valuable it was when he wrote, 

“The general principles of any study you may learn by books; but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in who it lives already” (Idea of a University).

In other words, some things are better caught than taught he thought. (See what I did there? 😉 )

The only problem with all this is access the great minds is usually limited. And, even if there were numerous great minds alive during our own lifetime, the probability that we would ever meet them, let alone get to know them, personally, or learn from them, is only one notch next to nil. 

For example, Leo Strauss once asserted,

Teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the great minds or, in order to avoid any ambiguity in a matter of such importance, the greatest minds. Such men are extremely rare. We are not likely to meet any of them in any classroom. We are not likely to meet any of them anywhere. It is a piece of good luck if there is a single one alive in one’s time. For all practical purposes, pupils, of whatever degree of proficiency, have access to the teachers who are not in turn pupils, to the greatest minds, only through the great books. Liberal education will then consist in studying with the proper care the great books which the greatest minds have left behind….!

He is saying if we want to learn from the great minds, we will more than likely have to seek them out in books. But, you ask, what is wrong with just sitting at the feet of a good teacher? 

Well, if we can find a good teacher who is already versed in the wisdom of these greatest minds and is willing to discuss their great ideas, all the better. It’s good to sit at their feet.

But these teachers will merely be a guide. The real teachers will be the great minds they lead us to—in books.

And, if you want to learn from these intellectual giants, you’ll first have to learn what it means to wash their feet (John 13:14).

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You may be interested in listening to the most recent episode of the Consortium Podcast my colleague and I recorded on The Four Levels of Reading, from Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book.