His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation

Abstract

barriers created by the differences between previous and contemporary culture, between medieval religiosity and modern secularism, for instance. Montás is deeply concerned about the barriers that current students face to immersing themselves in liberal learning. This is why he so firmly emphasizes the role pedagogy plays in whether a student feels alienated from or invited into the beauty and power of these texts. To demonstrate this point, Montás describes his own experiences reading and teaching St. Augustine’s Confessions. As a student who had a formative encounter with Evangelicalism before his arrival at Columbia, Montás found in Augustine a deeply sincere seeker of the truth at a time in which he was desperate to understand his place in the world. Augustine’s embrace of the doctrine of original sin and the ways this surfaces in his discussion of human infancy did present impediments to Montás. However, these barriers differ from the obstacles most common among his own students. For undergraduates raised in a secular, post-modern, and often cynical age, it can be quite difficult to sympathize with an author “who lives with a vivid sense of God’s presence” or to “admit to a sincere longing for truth.” This is the kind of barrier Montás thinks we must overcome with deliberate pedagogy. For instance, he spends significant time drawing readers into Augustine’s “sensual and passionate personality,” pointing out the way in which his asceticism is not a shutting off, but an expansion. Hinting at links to future chapters on Freud and Gandhi, Austine’s asceticism is framed as enabling another kind of pleasure, “inner drama, adventure, and life-expanding discoveries” made possible by such a singular focus on knowing God. Part of what is so helpful about Montás’s “show rather than tell” approach is the positive vision of a flourishing liberal arts core curriculum he offers. Perhaps unsurprising coming from a program director and teacher, Montás suggests the path forward is in the teaching and the program design; he emphasizes the collaborative elements of the Columbia Core program in which faculty meet on a weekly basis to discuss how they will be treating the same texts. When changes to this common syllabus are considered, it is done in a highly democratic and collaborative process in which faculty propose and debate texts to be added or subtracted. As a result of such substantial faculty in-put, a new syllabus is usually soundly approved. Montás’s model for collaborative teaching and learning serves as a welcome rallying call in a sometimes isolating and individualistic academy. Having highlighted these more practical insights offered in Rescuing Socrates, readers should be advised: to absorb the full value of Montás’s narrative approach, I can only recommend that faculty, administrators, and the public read it! It is a joy to do so.