Heritage Guide

HERITAGE I

Issues in Community: Citizenship and Justice

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece, dedicated in 438 BCE

Photo by Jeremy Schowalter, January 2003

HERITAGE I TEXTS

• Plato, "Allegory of the Cave"
• Plato, "Socrates' Apology"
• T. Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
• Wm. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (play)
• C. Darwin, "Natural Selection"
• A. Huxley, Brave New World (novel)
• S. De Beauvoir, "Woman: Myth and Reality"
• G. Anzaldua, Selections from Borderlands: La Frontera
• Heritage Guide: An Odyssey in Learning, 2007-2008 (Online)
• Heritage Reader, 2007-2008 (includes the articles listed above)
• D. Hacker, A Writer's Reference. Fifth Edition

For a society to function smoothly and effectively, its members
must share basic tenets of belief and norms of behavior.(6)

Students in Heritage I will ask the questions: What is a community? What communities are we members of? What role does the individual play in a community? What are the expectations and responsibilities of full participation in a community? The seminar asks why communities form, what purposes are served by communities, and what benefits or costs are accrued by members of a community. In seeking answers to these questions, students will also contemplate the role communities have in promoting and inhibiting justice, liberty, and equality among their members and between members of different communities.

What is Community?

The word community is derived from the Latin word communis, which means "shared." You will identify the many ramifications of the etymology--study of the origins of words--of community. As you read each text, you will find that you need to be sensitive to the cultural and historical context of each work, as each work is a reflection of its times.

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." (H.D. Thoreau)

Before you read the first text of Heritage I you should consider the following questions:

• What is your own definition of community?
• How are communities established?
• What responsibilities do members of a community have to each other?
• What responsibilities do members of a community have to integrate people of differing cultures and identities into the community?
• In what ways do individuality and culture both strengthen and constrain community?

Before you read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and "Apology" you should pause to consider what it means to read critically. People often read superficially. In the Heritage Seminars you will need to read critically, to question the text, dissect it, and put it under the microscope of your mind. The more you engage a text, the more satisfaction you will derive from it, though at the outset it may be a struggle. Until you learn to read with a skeptical and precise mind, you will be the person chained in Plato's cave.

Allegory of the Cave

…and if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put them to death. (From Plato's Allegory of the Cave)

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" is discussed in The Republic, a dialogue written by Plato (428-347 BCE) in Athens sometime after his teacher Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 BCE. Socrates had engaged in a life of philosophy that posed a fundamental challenge to the democratic community of Athens. His way of life constituted such a deep challenge because it consisted of questioning the truth of opinions that the citizens and rulers of Athens took for granted and on which they founded their communal life.

Perhaps the most important opinion for any community is what it considers justice to be. In The Republic, Plato presents Socrates and the young discussants of the dialogue in hot pursuit of precisely this question: What is justice? While grappling with this question, the participants in the discussion are compelled to confront many other related questions, among the most pressing and puzzling of which is, What are the obstacles preventing human beings from knowing not only what justice is, but from knowing the truth about anything at all? Socrates, the main speaker of the dialogue, can be said to answer this question by offering an image or allegory that depicts the obstacles to knowing the truth while nurturing the hope that the obstacles can indeed be overcome.

Socrates' allegory depicts human beings chained in a cave such that they are able to see only images cast on the cave's wall before them. Some of the cave dwellers gain their freedom and leave the cave to learn that the world outside is very different from the images presented on the cave wall. As you read Socrates' portrayal, try hard to imagine exactly what the cave looks like, where each of the many characters in the image are located, and how, where, by what means, and for what purposes they move from one part of the cave to another and, in some cases, out of the cave altogether as well as back into the cave. Most importantly, consider which aspects of society are represented by which elements of the image and what are the alternative views of education described by Socrates.

In short, the allegory asks us to question how we know what we know.

• Who influences what we know?
• The media?
• The Internet?
• School?
• Parents?
• Friends?
• What do education and inquiry involve?

"Achieve enlightenment,
then return to the world of
ordinary humanity."
Basho

The following selections will help you explore the friction that occurs between individuals and their communities.

The Apology

The Apology of Socrates is Plato's portrayal of his teacher Socrates' defense against charges brought by three leading Athenian citizens, as well as against rumors that had been circulating about him for years. He delivered his defense before 501 of his fellow Athenians serving as both jury and judges of the case. Socrates is found guilty of the formal charges and sentenced to death.

The fate of Socrates is in keeping with that of those who, in "The Allegory of the Cave," returned to the cave to educate at least some of their fellow citizens. In "The Allegory" Socrates asks, "And if [the cave dwellers] were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn't they kill him?" Glaucon, one of his young discussants, answers, "No doubt about it." The bearers of truth are bound, in Glaucon's, and perhaps in Socrates', view to suffer at the hands of the vast majority of their fellow citizens. In any case, The Apology offers us a stark conflict between political demands for loyal citizenship and philosophical demands for the pursuit of truth.

It is quite common to view the Socrates portrayed by Plato as either a pre-figuration of the Christian martyr who sacrifices his life for the sake of truth and justice or, alternatively, as the forefather of the early modern thinkers of the Enlightenment who called for freedom of speech and toleration of religious differences. To say nothing of the fact that these two views may be deeply at odds with one another, there are textual reasons to doubt that one or the other is simply true. It may be that they are partly and even ultimately true, but one does well to try to read the text on its own terms rather than through these later, potentially distorting, lenses.

To that end, it makes sense to keep in mind a number of questions while reading The Apology:

• Do you think Socrates is innocent or guilty as charged?
• Do you find him to be a convincing witness in his own defense? Should he have expected the poets, craftsmen, and politicians to have responded well or poorly to his public humiliations of them?
• What is the distinction between law and justice?
• How should a member of a community to which you belong respond to injustice?
• Considering a community to which you belong, what are the consequences -- both rewards and sacrifices-- of confronting the majority?
• When should members of a community who hold a majority opinion listen to members of the group who do not agree?
• In a community of which you are a member, what is the fate of a member of a minority, an individual whose experience of reality is very different?
• What potential problems concerning community and democracy need attention?

Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

(Jefferson, Declaration of Independence)

By early June of 1776, the Continental Congress anticipated that the thirteen American colonies would soon vote to break away from England to establish their own country. The small committee assigned the task of composing the Declaration of Independence delegated Thomas Jefferson to write the first draft. Jefferson worked intensely on the draft for many days. It was revised by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, then by the other members of the committee, and finally by the Congress as a whole. After declaring independence on July 2, Congress voted to adopt the Declaration on July 4, formally constituting the United States of America as a sovereign country.

The first paragraphs of Jefferson's initial draft remained almost entirely untouched during the long process of communal revision. The most significant substantive revisions pertained to the question of slavery: the words "inherent and" were cut from the beginning of the now famous phrase "inalienable rights," as was a paragraph containing a spirited denunciation of slavery as an "assemblage of horrors" that constituted a "cruel war against human nature itself." The deleted paragraph is as follows:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

The omission of this paragraph from the Declaration reflects the insistence of several Southern states that slavery not be mentioned in the document.

Consider the following questions as you read the Declaration of Independence

• How could the founders hold it to be a self-evident truth that all men are created equal and at the same time consent to the persistence of slavery in the new United States? Did the founders not understand the meaning of their own pronouncements? If they did understand their meaning, why did they not insist in the immediate extirpation (rather than what Adams called for: "the total eventual extirpation") of slavery? Was abolitionism the only morally defensible position to adopt?
• What are the Declaration's pronouncements regarding, and allusions to, God and how significant are they?
• According to the Declaration, must a government be "democratic" to be considered legitimate?
• What does the Declaration suggest about rights? What are rights to begin with? How does one distinguish the claim, "I have the right to 'x'," from the statement, "I want to have 'x'"?
• What is so special about the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Are they more essential than other conceivable rights or just three of many co-equal rights?
• What can one learn about equality and the creation of a just community from the long list of grievances against England?

"The true aim of government is liberty." (Benedict Spinoza)

The Souls of Black Folk

Herein the longing of black men must have respect: the rich and bitter depth of their experience, the unknown treasures of their inner life, the strange rendings of nature they have seen, may give the world new points of view and make their living, loving, and doing precious to all human hearts. (The Souls of Black Folk, 90)

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was one of the greatest African-American thinkers of the twentieth century, and TheSouls of Black Folk was his greatest book. In it, Du Bois reveals the inner lives of African-Americans as he understands them, explains how those inner lives have been shaped by slavery and its aftermath, and constructs a political and educational framework within which African-Americans can pursue not only equality but also greatness.

"Of Our Spiritual Strivings," the first essay in The Souls of Black Folk, explores African-American identity as a problem: "being a problem is a strange experience" (Souls, 1). For Du Bois, African-American identity is a problem in part because African-Americans are perceived as a problem. Even their champions depict their past as horrific, their present as troubled, and their future as uncertain. However, African-American identity is also a problem because Africa and America point toward different and conflicting understandings of the most important matters. To use Du Bois's language, different and conflicting "ideals" emerge from Africa and America. African-Americans are faced with the difficult problem of making a stable and worthy identity out of these elements. Resolving this problem is vital not only to them but also to America altogether, so that "some day on American soil two world-races may give to each other the characteristics both so sadly lack" (Souls, 7). As Du Bois shows in "Of the Faith of the Fathers" and "Of the Sorrow Songs," American music and religion are indications of what such a resolution might look like.

The development of African-American identity as Du Bois understands it depends on colleges and universities. The aim of higher education is to prepare students less for moneymaking than for confronting the question of how one should live. In "Of the Wings of Atalanta," Du Bois show us African-American students and teachers grappling with the same curriculum, "the riddle of existence," that has been the heart of higher learning since the dawn of civilization (Souls, 51-53). In confronting this riddle of existence, African-Americans not only cultivate new points of view that are distinctly their own but also assert their humanity, which cuts across the color line, in the fullest sense of the word, so that Du Bois is able to claim in "Of the Training of Black Men": "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not . . . .So wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil" (Souls, 67).

The development of African-American identity also depends on politics, and W.E.B. Du Bois was not only a thinker but also an activist who helped initiate the civil rights movement. In "Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," Du Bois outlines a strategy for African-American advancement in the twentieth century. Because of its careful weaving together of two requirements of human dignity, striving to better oneself and claiming one's due, this essay has deservedly outlived the political circumstances that occasioned it.

As you read The Souls of Black Folk, ask yourself:

• What is a soul? Are souls always made up of conflicting elements? If so, how does a stable identity emerge, or how is such an identity made, out of such elements?
• What is race? Is it the kind of thing that can be connected with different ways and understandings of the most important things?
• What is the aim of education? Must one really confront "the riddle of existence to be human in the fullest sense of the word? What does confronting the riddle of existence mean?
• How should a community respond to a grave injustice whose effects remain long after the original perpetrators and victims have disappeared?

More generally, ask yourself:

• What does it mean to be a human being in an unjust world?
• How does the landscape around us shape our sense of self?
• How do you see others and how do you think they see themselves?
• How do you see yourself and how do you think others see you?
• What prominent values shape the various cultural communities to which you belong and thereby you?

The Merchant of Venice

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
The Merchant of Venice, IV.1.182-185)

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was first performed in 1598. The action of the play switches between Venice, a bustling commercial center, and Belmont an idyllic, dreamlike locale. The play can be seen as a story about contracts and promises, where the characters subject themselves to sworn bonds of friendship, love, filial duty, and monetary obligation. These bonds and obligations are the source of the play's multiple conflicts.

The play opens in Venice where we meet the charming and profligate Bassanio who has devised a scheme to woo the wealthy heiress, Portia of Belmont. Bassanio asks his close friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant, for money to finance his plan. Antonio would happily back Bassanio's venture but for the fact that the entirety of his fortune is invested in several ships presently at sea. Antonio offers to use his credit to secure a loan for Bassanio.

The scene moves to Belmont where Portia and her maid Nerissa describe the "riddle of the three caskets" devised by Portia's deceased father that will serve to test the worthiness of her potential suitors. Portia vows to be bound by her father's will that she marry the first man to correctly solve the riddle.

Back in Venice, Bassanio and Antonio approach Shylock the Jewish moneylender for a loan. Shylock tells of his repeated humiliation by Antonio for being a Jew and for lending money at interest. In spite of this, Shylock agrees to loan Antonio the necessary sum, taking in collateral the promise of a pound of Antonio's flesh, should he default on the loan.

These bonds of Portia and Antonio set in motion the rest of the action in the play. With money secured by Antonio, Bassanio sets off to Belmont and solves the "riddle of the caskets", thus gaining Portia's hand and wealth. Meanwhile Antonio receives reports of various catastrophes suffered by his ships, causing him to default on his loan from Shylock.

A trial convenes where the Duke of Venice hears Shylock's suit against Antonio. Shylock demands strict application of the laws of Venice awarding him a pound of Antonio's flesh. Portia enters disguised as a renowned lawyer from Bologna. Portia movingly appeals to Shylock to abandon his strict adherence to the laws of Venice and to show mercy toward Antonio. Shylock using cold logic refuses Portia's pleas. As Shylock prepares his knife to remove Antonio's heart, Portia launches into a brilliant legal argument, completely reversing Shylock's case. At the end of this courtroom drama, Antonio is free and Shylock's own life is now forfeit unless he submits to Antonio's will that he convert to Christianity.

In structure, The Merchant of Venice is a comedy. After numerous twists in plot, young lovers are united in marriage at the end of the play. To theatre-goers in Shakespeare's time, the demise of Shylock the Jew might have appeared comical. But in spite of how Shylock may once have been viewed, audiences today cannot be unmoved by the injustices he suffers or the poignancy of his argument to be treated with equality.

As you read The Merchant of Venice consider the following questions:

• What duties, bonds and contracts do the characters explicitly and implicitly subject themselves to? Where do these come into conflict?
• What relationship is there between justice and mercy, between justice and the law?
• Is Shylock just in his demand for a pound of Flesh?
• Portia speaks movingly about mercy. Is Shylock's compelled conversion an act of mercy?
• Portia and Shylock dominate the other characters in the Christian male controlled society of Venice depicted in the play. What are the sources of power for these two outsiders?

Natural Selection

Man selects only for his good
(Natural Selection)

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), though the grandson of the famous horticulturalist Erasmus Darwin, trained to become a minister. As a minister, he sailed (1831-36) on the HMS Beagle, bound on a voyage of exploration to South America. Darwin noticed how the flora and fauna differed from what existed in England. His observations shaped the rest of his career as a self-taught naturalist and developer of the theory of natural selection.

Once he returned to England, never to travel again, he continued his research. He published his conclusions in a work called On the Origin of Species (1859). He feared negative reactions from theologians of the day, and so he omitted the evolution of human beings from his work. Later in his Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) he included human evolution. His ideas, while accepted by the academic community at large from the 19th century onwards, are still a source of controversy today in the United States. In his work, Darwin used the modern scientific method: developing a working hypothesis based on observations and evidence and then testing his hypothesis to support or refute it. His hypotheses depended on his observations of the natural world. As would any good researcher, he included material that he thought spoke against his original hypothesis.

After you have read "Natural Selection," consider the following questions:

• How does Darwin help you shape your understanding of the broader world around you?
• What constitutes scientific evidence and how does such evidence support or refute a scientific theory?
• What does Darwin's theory explain about human biology, what, if anything, can't it explain about humans?

These essays and texts invite you to examine the issues and themes raised in Heritage I from multiple perspectives. Keep in mind the following questions as you read Darwin's Natural Selection and Huxley's Brave New World:

• How does a biologist define identity?
• Is it merely a matter of genetics?
• Or, is it simply an instance of cultural adaptation?
• How much can science tell us about human nature?
• What have you learned about human identity and individuality from reading the texts you have this term?

"Man is like any other organism, shaping himself to his environment
so wholly that after he has taken the shape if you try to change it, you alter his life."
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Brave New World

"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded. "If one's different,
one's bound to be lonely. They're beastly to one."
(Brave New World, p. 137)

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was born in Surrey, England into a family of scientists, educators, and writers. Although interested in a career in medicine, a degenerative eye disease forced him to make different plans. In 1916 he graduated from Oxford and began a career writing satire.

Huxley's novel Brave New World written in 1932 belongs to the genre of utopian literature - literature about idealized societies. However, Brave New World explores a dystopian future world where science has learned how to produce nearly identical embryos ideally conditioned to the work and lifestyle of one of five social castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta or Epsilon. While the Alphas are the intellectual ruling class, the Epsilons are little more than trainable humanoid laborers.

In addition to having all workers physically and emotionally conditioned for their climates and careers, the Brave New World eliminates the distraction of families. There is no marriage. Sexual Intercourse and human procreation have been separated. Children are created and raised in "hatching and conditioning" centers. Sexual encounters are free of disease, pregnancy, and commitment and are just one of the many state-approved forms of entertainment. Human activities are engineered to best serve the needs of commerce. If the pleasures and distractions of the real world are insufficient, Soma is a readily available hallucinogenic narcotic with no addictions, side-effects or hang-overs.

In this perfectly controlled world we meet Bernard, a misfit. Perhaps the hatching center made a small error along the way or perhaps the control of embryos is not as advanced as thought. Either way, Bernard doesn't quite match the expectations of his caste. He's too small and he thinks too much. He also hasn't "had" as many women as a man of his caste should. However, he has plans to remedy this by taking Lenina on a trip to a reservation of savages - a land where natural procreation still exists, people still believe in religion, and people still age naturally.

On this trip they meet John - a savage, yet a misfit in the land of savages. Bernard uncovers John's bizarre link to civilization and brings John back with him. The rest of the novel deals with John's reactions to society and societies' reaction to him.

Though written over 70 years ago, Huxley's ideas are perhaps even more timely today than they were when he wrote this prescient novel. As you read Huxley's text, ask yourself:

• What makes an ideal society?
• What is the difference between unity and uniformity?
• Are variability and diversity a strength in a culture or a weakness?
• What impact does the pursuit of a college education have on your social class? Are some jobs "beneath" college graduates? Are some "beneath" college students?
• Does sexual promiscuity stabilize or destabilize a society?
• Does religion stabilize society or is it merely a social narcotic?
• As modern science maps the human genome, the embryonic engineering of Brave New World looks less incredible. What limits, if any, should society put on science's ability to manipulate genes?
• What is the balance between individual needs and the needs of society? Should we sacrifice one for the good of the many?

Classism in Society

Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Anzaldúa ask you to consider the role of class in creating inequities in communities and how individuals ought to react. The writers offer different views on how to react or respond to imperfect communities. De Beauvoir asks us to examine what happens when we "mythologize" specific groups within a community, notably women, thereby preventing them from participating fully in society. Anzaldúa asks us to consider how identity is determined and what it means for a person's sense of belonging to a community.

Woman: Myth and Reality

Few myths have been more advantageous to the ruling caste than the myth of woman: it justifies all privileges and even authorizes their abuse. (De Beauvoir)

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was one of the most important figures of the French existentialist movement, as well as the companion of its best-known exponent, Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir wrote what is now acknowledged to be a classic of the 20th century: The Second Sex (1949). At the time she wrote this seminal work, France had just survived World War II (1939-1945), and women in France had finally gained the right to vote (1945).

In her work, de Beauvoir was concerned with what happens when we identify someone, in this case women, as "the other," as outcasts, as less than full members of their society and culture.

To her, women were not born but raised to be women. In the excerpt you will read, de Beauvoirdiscusses how women are harmed by persistent myths about their place in society. We need only look at recent events in Afghanistan, Africa, and the Middle East to understand how the marginalization of any segment of society works to undermine that society as a whole.

De Beauvoir also saw herself as a "gadfly." Her intention was to force readers to look at how the world (read European male) distorted women, Jews, and nonwhites. In the essay you will be reading, de Beauvoir discusses the myth and reality of women. The myth of women, or rather myths of women, leads to their subordination.

• What would de Beauvoir see today that would confirm her thesis?
• How do you "other" members of society?
• How do members of society "other" you?

Borderlands / La frontera: The New Mestiza

Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) was born and raised in rural Texas where she worked in the fields together with her family during her childhood. She received Masters degrees in English and Education from the University of Texas at Austin and was completing her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz at the time of her death. Andalzúa moved to California in the 1970s where she taught migrant children. Later she became a lecturer at San Francisco State University. She was one of the first openly lesbian Chicana writers, a feminist thinker and cultural theorist whose work helped to define queer, female and Chicano identities. During her life, Anzaldúa published poetry, theoretical essays, short stories, autobiographical narratives, interviews, children's books, and edited multicultural anthologies.

Andalzúa is best known for Borderlands / La frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) which was recognized as one of the 38 best books of 1987 by Library Journal and 100 Best Books of the Century by Hungry Mind Review and Utne Reade. In this book, Andalzúa challenges the culturally determined roles imposed on individuals from the outside. She claims that those who do not conform to the Western binary thinking are socially ostracized. For this reason, Andalzúa redefines her identity through what she calls a "mestiza consciousness": "a new value system with images and symbols that may serve to heal the split between white ... and colored, ... male and female."

As you read the selection from Anzaldúa's text, ask yourself the following questions:

• Without a binary thinking system (male/female, night/day), what can we use to conceptualize the world? Does the poem Borderland offer any suggestions?
• Are you caught between two or more different identities (racial, ethnic, sexual, etc.? If so, what kind of competing claims do they make on your beliefs, values or goals?

Your valuable, and required, texts during your sojourn at Carthage include A Writer's Reference, a text you will find useful throughout your college experience. In addition to the texts discussed above, you will also have other readings chosen specifically by your instructor for this class.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

As you synthesize what you have learned this semester, the following questions might help direct your thinking:

• How has the introduction of new cultural ideas or factors changed and/or drastically altered a community to which you belong?
• How is knowledge/education fundamental to a community?
• How can a community preserve its integrity when surrounded by a dominating culture?