Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education [Hardcover]

Mr. Jeffrey Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2001

Although the essential books of Western civilization are no longer central in our courses or in our thoughts, they retain their ability to energize us intellectually, says Jeffrey Hart in this powerful book. He now presents a guide to some of these literary works, tracing the main currents of Western culture for all who wish to understand the roots of their civilization and the basis for its achievements. Hart focuses on the productive tension between the classical and biblical strains in our civilization, between a life based on cognition and one based on faith and piety. He begins with the Iliad and Exodus, linking Achilles and Moses as Bronze Age heroic figures. Closely analysing texts and illuminating them in unexpected ways, he moves on to Socrates and Jesus, who "internalized the heroic", continues with Paul and Augustine and their Christian synthesis, addresses Dante, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Moliere, and Voltaire, and concludes with the novel as represented by Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby. Hart maintains that the dialectical tensions suggested by this survey account for the restlessness and singular achievements of the West and that the essential books can provide the substance and energy currently missed by both students and educated readers.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

According to Hart (English, Dartmouth Coll.), the interaction between Athens and Jerusalem, between philosophical-scientific ideas and scriptural-moral thought, has made Western civilization unique. Similarly, the literature of Western civilization from the Iliad and Exodus, to the Divine Comedy and Hamlet, and on to Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby has continued this "dialectical tension," the melding of these two seemingly opposite premises. Hart believes that it is imperative that college students continue to study Western civilization and its literature but asserts that more and more institutions of higher learning have pushed such courses aside, favoring the more politically correct concept of multiculturalism. Hart's ideas aren't necessarily new, but his call to arms is justified. Studying the dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem forces us to examine not only other cultures but also our own prejudices. The tension created between intellect and faith, Hart rightfully suggests, aids freedom and democracy. Primarily for academic and larger public libraries. Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Not all academics are riding the wave of multiculturalism. Hart, professor emeritus at Dartmouth, stubbornly holds out for the primacy of Western culture. To justify his intransigence, he invokes the distinctively Western tension between Athens and Jerusalem, between rationality and faith, which has fostered in Western culture an artistic and political dynamism found nowhere else. Wearing his erudition with the ease of a senior scholar, Hart first establishes how the dialectic between the classical and biblical strains of Western culture began, Achilles' wrath against the Trojans answering to Moses' defiance of the Egyptians. He then plumbs the imaginative significance of this dialectic in Western literature, from Augustine's Confessions to Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby. Though daring in its sweep, Hart's synthesis leads readers not toward new and original insights, but rather back to valuable old ones, now catastrophically neglected. In predicting that academe will soon shake off the ideologies regnant since the 1960s, Hart may be indulging in wishful thinking. But if his prediction does prove correct, no book will offer more help in guiding the project of cultural reclamation. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; Copyright 2001 edition (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087047
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087048
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,530,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Western Civ. Lives!, March 4, 2002

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (Hardcover)

"Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe" is the summation of a career's worth of teaching for the noted scholar Jeffrey Hart. This is a cheerful book, but not in a blind, Panglossian way. Hart sees signs of revival everywhere in the academic world from the disaster of multiculturalism. It has been a disaster, and great damage has been done. But Hart demonstrates that Western civilization is big enough, *inclusive* enough, to survive and appeal to anyone who values reason and dialogue instead of hatred. The canon was never as closed as its critics contended. Both the faith of Paul and the skepticism of Voltaire can co-exist. There is a constant dialectic between Athens and Jerusalem, between empirical knowledge and the claims of faith. Hart writes clear, lucid prose; it's like you are in the classroom with a master teacher (and it's quite an contrast with the unreadable Derrida, Foucault, etc.) At the heart of this book is an examination of the power of Western thought to transform reality. He writes of Shakespeare's movement from the realpolitik and tragedy of the middle plays to the transcendance of "The Tempest", where contraries are reconciled and love triumphs. He writes about the "invention of love" in Dante's "Divine Comedy." My favorite chapter is about Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." It's a wholly original and exciting interpretation. Hart writes that "Gatsby" is a book about magic; Gatsby is a kind of sorcerer who can lift and redeem himself and the world. If you are curious about what your politically correct professors aren't telling you, pick this book up.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enduring Questions with Elusive Answers, April 9, 2002

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (Hardcover)

Hart is obviously concerned, deeply concerned about certain trends in higher education which he perceives to be neither "higher" nor more "educational" than others. On the contrary, he views them as having resulted in a cultural "catastrophe." In the Preface, he recalls a professor of his at Dartmouth, Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, who once asserted that "the goal of education is the citizen. He defined the citizen in a radical and original way arising out of his own twentieth-century experience. He said that a citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-create his civilization." This is one of Hart's core concepts throughout the book. For him, the most central of narratives to explain history, "one which goes furthest, I think, in covering the facts, has been called 'Athens and Jerusalem.'" The former represents a philosophic-scientific approach to actuality, with the goal being cognition; the latter represents a scriptural tradition of disciplined insight and the aspiration to holiness.

Hart was motivated to write this book because, as he explains, "....I sense that out across our nation, the dark fields of the republic as Nick Carraway called it, a growing number of students and professors long for something more serious and more lasting. Therefore my title [was selected] because of the intellectual force and civilizing energy of the indispensable works to be considered." He organizes his material within two Parts: "The Great Narrative" (focusing on the juxtaposition of "Athens and Jerusalem," Moses, Socrates, Jesus, and Paul) and "Explorations" (focusing on Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Moliere, Voltaire, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hart's primary objective in this book, as I see it, is to suggest how a rigorous consideration of what he calls the "Athens and Jerusalem" narrative can help to revive higher education from "the dark fields" in which it now finds itself.

At this point, I'd like to share a few concerns of my own within the context of discussing Hart's book. First, according to substantial research, approximately 35% of public high school graduates are functional illiterates; the percentage is even higher among those who attempt to enlist in one of the military services. Second, other research studies indicate that approximately 90% of those now teaching in public schools will continue to do so through the year 2015. Finally, at least one research study of public schools in California suggests that only 35% of each hour in a classroom is devoted to completing an academic task of some kind. If these statistics are to be believed, even allowing for some variances of percentage, the "catastrophe" to which Hart refers has implications far beyond higher education.

As indicated earlier, I share many of his concerns. Having taught for thirteen years in two New England boarding schools (Kent and St. George's) after earning a graduate degree in comparative literature at Yale and, more recently, being involved with the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminars, I also share Hart's passion for "The Great Narrative" and lament its widespread neglect in undergraduate liberal arts education. Many other readers will also share Hart's concerns but disagree with his proposed responses to the causes of those concerns. It remains for each reader to determine whether or not Hart's analysis is valid Also, to determine if it would be desirable to re-establish the "Athens and Jerusalem" narrative, "The Great Narrative," as a core curriculum, at least in four-year colleges and universities. True to the spirit of Western Civilization, Hart raises only the most important questions. Man's efforts to answer them continues. Meanwhile, Pilgrims are well-advised to remember Voltaire's admonition: "Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it."

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Back to Basics, June 10, 2002

By 

Judith C. Kinney (Westerville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education (Hardcover)

Like Harold Bloom's HOW TO READ AND WHY, this book is mistitled. It does not take on the "cultural catastrophe" or deal with the "revival of higher education." Hart has his favorite works of Western thought and literature and discusses them intelligently and entertainingly but does not relate them to what is now going on in college classrooms, as his title suggests. What he does is relate religious thought and texts to secular thought and texts throughout the centuries. He compares and contrasts the religious ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition to the secular ideas of the Enlightenment and modern works as embodied in Homer, Moses, Socrates, Jesus, St. Paul, Augustine, Dante, Hamlet, Moliere, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you're interested in the ideas of these people and their works, you should enjoy the book.

Of course, the title Hart chose (or maybe his publisher chose it) is more likely to sell books than a more accurate title would.

Hart's only reference to cultural catastrophe is this line in his afterword: "multiculturalism is an ideological academic fantasy maintained in obvious bad faith."