Restoring Beauty by Louis Markos

Author:Louis Markos
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830859382
Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Unfortunately, the would-be restorer of the Tao to our modern educational system must contend with far more than this devaluing of imagination, sentiment, and the classical virtues. The anti-Tao stance of modern Western education also manifests itself in a simple dismissal of all set standards or touchstones. Most people consider this impulse to embrace pure subjectivism and relativism to be a recent product of postmodern thought. It is, in fact, a very old impulse that can be traced back to the fifth-century BC sophists against whom Socrates and Plato sought to define themselves. These ancient, “pre-postmodern” philosophers were really itinerant teachers who, for a price, would teach their pupils the arts of rhetoric and logic by which they could learn to make the weaker argument the stronger. (They were also, incidentally, the first cultural and ethical relativists, who taught that morality shifted from one Greek polis to the next and was therefore neither universal nor cross-cultural.) The great Greek comic playwright Aristophanes was an archenemy of the sophists and saw full well the danger posed to the polis (city-state) by their educational theories and practices. Though often considered a “liberal” for the bawdy nature of most of his plays, Aristophanes was, in matter of fact, a reactionary who hoped to return Athens to her more traditional virtues and values (as Cato and Cicero sought to do in the latter days of the Roman Republic). Indeed, in a cogent parallel to modern America, where many wonder if we will ever revive in our young people those strengths and values that empowered us to fight off the twin evils of fascism and communism, Aristophanes hailed the traditional virtues of Athens as the key source of power that enabled her to resist Persian aggression (at the Battle of Marathon in particular) and thus preserve freedom in the West.

In order to illustrate the dangers of a sophistical, values-free education and to show (like Dickens after him) that we reap what we sow, Aristophanes wrote a brilliant comedy that is as parable-like in its form as Hard Times. In the play (Clouds) a father (Strepsiades) with grand designs for his progeny sends his son (Pheidippides) to the school of the sophists to learn how to make the weaker argument the stronger. His reasons for doing so are purely practical. Strepsiades is in debt, and he wishes to find a way to relieve himself of the burden of paying off his creditors. At first he goes himself to the school of the sophists but is too old and slow-witted to learn their wisdom. Having failed himself, he manages, with much effort, to persuade Pheidippides to go in his place. The son agrees, and, in the second half of the play, Strepsiades does manage to get his debts canceled by making use of the relativistic logic of sophistry.

Unfortunately for the triumphant father, the play does not end here. In the closing scene, Strepsiades and his son get into a debate, and Pheidippides strikes his father. When Strepsiades

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