One of the most salient discussions on Grounds is mental wellness. Last week my fellow columnist Hasan Khan wrote on the need for greater mental health resources in the wake of a litany of studies of college campuses reporting the same finding: an unprecedented number of college students suffer from stress, anxiety and depression and many often have little recourse but to leave school. It is likely true the University could do far more to equip its students with the right tools and resources to find support, but perhaps an alternate route to wellness is right in front of us.
A feature in The Atlantic documented the transformative power of Harvard’s third most popular class, Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory. Prof. Michael Puett sees his class as a way to “to give undergraduates concrete, counter-intuitive, and even revolutionary ideas, which teach them how to live a better lives.” Classes in ethical reasoning like Puett’s might be the antidotes we need as college students overwhelmed by the cacophony of social media and the harsh banality of consumerism. Technology isn’t the answer, but maybe wisdom from the past is.
While the world we live in is barely recognizable from that of Confucius, Marcus Aurelius or Montaigne, the guiding principles of a good life from their time should be largely the same as they are now. Competing for grades, for jobs and for places in the most selective organizations takes its toll on our ability to ground ourselves in what really matters: our own wellness. Puett’s students reported having greater clarity and purpose in their everyday lives as well as their long-term goals.
Ethical reasoning is less about finding answers to global problems and more about distilling principles into everyday actions. For Puett, “The Chinese philosophers we read taught that the way to really change lives for the better is from a very mundane level, changing the way people experience and respond to the world, so what I try to do is to hit them at that level. I’m not trying to give my students really big advice about what to do with their lives. I just want to give them a sense of what they can do daily to transform how they live.”
The project of the liberal arts is less about gaining skills necessary for the workplace but rather integrating lessons from all disciplines into a positive, balanced mindset. As students, our success can’t be found in the next thing — getting into that major or getting that job — but from daily actions which form the foundation of a life well-lived, a life of happiness and excellence.
When social media, smartphones and standardized tests attract more of our attention than the tenets of the Socratic method, it is no wonder mental wellness is in short supply. Asking and discussing questions to stimulate lively debate, to think critically and to test new and old ideas can rewire our brains to reinvigorate, refresh and recharge. These neglected philosophical principles are not kooky “mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie” but the things we’ve lost on our way to industrialization. By harnessing philosophical principles from the past into the present, we can overcome the alienation and stress of the modern world.
What can the University do to better inculcate students with the truths and writings of philosophers, artists, statesmen and theologians? Initially we might be inclined to think it’s up to us to take advantage of the opportunities of the liberal arts education that are already afforded to us. But the ability to take classes from an array of departments is more of a symptom than the cause of a liberal arts education. The Socratic method, properly understood, should be the continual application of our ethical and intuitive faculties to problems, imagined and real, from all facets of life. In other words, we can’t even begin to harness the potential of the liberal arts if we do not start from a coherent framework of ethical principles and intuitions that make sense of our relationship with the world around us.
An Ethical Reasoning requirement would compel us to question the way things are to a greater extent than any class taught in apparent isolation ever could. Reading original texts from all religious and political traditions would challenge our preconceived conceptions (or rather the politics and religion we’ve inherited from our parents) in a way that would enrich the value of all classes we take henceforth.
Ben Rudgley is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at b.rudgley@cavalierdaily.com.
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