It’s a fair question. How worthwhile is it to keep studying the works of people like Goethe, Shakespeare, Neizsche, Dostoyevske or even Plato given how much the horizens of thought and knowledge have advanced since 1900?
One should understand that this question is one of relativities. If one could read and digest (not merely speed read) a hundred books a day, and had ten lives, then studying Shakespeare etc. clearly makes sense. But given the relatively scarce resource of our lifetime’s allotment of study time, how much should be allocated to readings from before the 20th century?
Celestial Koan freely acknowledges that this challenges him too, and he certainly hasn’t spent nearly as much time studying the past classics as he would like. All too often he suffices with summaries, highlights, extracts, and such like. Nevertheless, he has certainly included a sampling as a necessary foundation for his other studies and accumulation of wisdom. Here are a few thoughts as to why they should continue to be included in one’s studies.
Perspective.
It’s very easy to get so caught up in the feast of new data, facts, information, knowledge and even thoughts and understanding that we lose contact with wisdom and perspective. Perspective is one of the key differentiators between wisdom and mere knowledge. Temporal and historical perspective are two of the important characteristics of wisdom, which is why wisdom tends to be associated with older people.
Transfer of Experience.
It’s easy enough to keep ramming more and more information and knowledge into young minds, but putting wise heads on young shoulders remains a challenge. How do you teach the things that commonly only come with experience?
Foundations
Now we have calculators, smart phones, computer and spreadsheets, why do we need to learn arithmetic and times tables? Because knowing how to use tools doesn’t give one a full perspective on what one is doing mathematically. What is the calculator doing, and how do we understand the operations?
Likewise when grappling with older philosophical and literary works one is learning about the foundations of the discipline and field of study. One can just study the impressive superstructures and castles in the sky we can now build, but there’s a lot to be said for examining the footings and foundations too. No sensible captain of a liner fails to take a tour of the bilges when they take over their command.
Historical Perspective And Context
One of the problems of development is that our language, modes of expression, perspectives, ways if thinking, values and so on keep changing. A natural consequence is to lose contact with the way people thought, viewed reality, and made decisions, in the past. It’s very easy to wonder how generals could be so stupid as to send men charging against machine guns, think a sailor could fall over the edge of the Earth, or commit ritual suicide for the sake of honour, unless one has at least temporarily immersed oneself into their world. Great authors and thinkers hold up mirrors to the society of their times.
It is by studying the works of the past that one becomes familiar with the importance ascribed to such matters as place, obedience, honour, loyalty and service in a feudal system. The difficulties of trying to run a global empire when the fastest means of communications were sailing ships and horses become more apparent. The way life is viewed when toothache is an almost inevitable common experience, and when contraception is not an option, greatly improve ones perspective on the ‘reality’ of the human experience historically.
The importance of religion in a largely illiterate world, and the inevitability of clashes between superstition, religion, nation states / kingdoms, and academia become obvious.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what we have now, or in the last century, are some sort of normal valid human experiences. Only when we realise that this century is completely atypical, unlike anything else in human experience, and quite possibly unstable and short lived, can one understand the wisdom of people like Joshua of Nazareth, Mahatma Buddha, or The Prophet Mohammed.
Context
An important characteristic of wisdom is that it considers statements within their proper surrounding context. How can we appreciate the wisdom of the great teachers of the past if we have spent no time coming to appreciate the thoughts, writings and values of any century except the most recent?
Hope these thoughts help.