Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education by Jeffrey Hart (review)

Jeffrey Hart. Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Towardthe Revival ofHigher Education. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 . 27Ip. Doreen Alvarez Saar Drexel University Jeffrey Hart's Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of HigherEducation appears to promise an interesting discussion ofthe issues modern universities face. However, in the place of thoughtful and engaged scholarship , Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe proffers old wine—the old ideas of the Great Books curriculum—in the new bottles ofright-wing harangue. In his preface, Hart makes the dramatic announcement that there is a cultural catastrophe that "is evident to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear" (xii). After this ringing denunciation, the reader is puzzled by the fact Hart neither discusses , analyzes, nor even touches upon the great problems ofthe day. The reader learns that, for Hart, the only evidence ofour immediate cataclysm is the "growing incoherence in the university curriculum, a loss ofpoint and a loss ofseriousness ": one that finds "one 'lifestyle' as good as another" (xii). Even ifwe grant Hart's contention that there is a cultural catastrophe, it is hard to imagine accepting the "growing incoherence" of the "university curriculum" as the central problem in our culture. It is sad that in his insistence on this point Hart resembles the stereotype ofthe university professor who believes nothing outside ofhis discipline is of any real importance. Unfortunately, while Hart's evidence ofcatastrophe is laughable , his solution approaches the ludicrous. Hart argues that the catastrophe can be remedied by the introduction of a two-semester, great books course modeled on the freshman Humanities I—11 at Columbia (introduced in 1919) in every American university. The "growing incoherence" ofour culture is not merely limited to curriculum but appears to be limited to the curriculum ofa single discipline . While it is difficult to take Hart's position seriously (even when I sit in one ofthe endless curriculum discussions with which all university faculty are familiar , I do not link curriculum with catastrophe), his silly point masks Hart's real interest: fighting the secularization ofthe university. Hart fails to muster the intellectual honesty to present his real interest as his premise: that simple act would have made the work approachable and allowed the reader to participate in rational discussion. Ultimately, one ofthe most disturbing elements ofSmilingis Hart's lack of candor about his premise coupled with his desire to cloak his ideology. (Hart, a professor emeritus at Dartmouth, is a senior editor for the National Review .) 98 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2003 Reviews There is a disjuncture between the ballyhoo of Hart's opening salvos and die rest ofthe work. The largest portion ofthe book is comprised ofchapters that are oral in style and read like Hart's classroom lectures for the great book course. In Homeric epics; portions ofthe Bible concerning Moses, Jesus, and Paul; Socrates' writings; Augustine's Confessions; The Divine Comedy; Hamlet, Molieres Misanthrope , Tartuffe, and Don Juan; Candidr, Crime andPunishment; and The Great Gatsby, Hart claims that students will find die "distinctive excellences" of"Western civilization" (xii). Hart's catchphrase is not mere rhetoric: he asserts these distinctive excellences as a counterweight to postmodern literary theory by giving theWest (read America) ownership over the universal intellectual tradition. "Western science and mathematics are universal and essential to modern development. There is no Chinese mathematics or African physics" (245). Hart's syllabus is a traditional one (modeled on one proposed in 1948 by Columbia University's president ) familiar to many of my generation as the course we took as freshmen. In proposing this syllabus as an antidote to our cultural catastrophe, Hart ignores the fact that this syllabus did not prevent many of those educated in die fifties and sixties under its aegis from becoming the very people Hart is railing against. Hart believes that these works present the best ofWestern civilization as understood through what he calls the tension between Athens andJerusalem, or the two poles of truth: "philosophy/science" and the "disciplined insights of Scripture ," a description of whose roots are in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, and Leo Strauss, the University ofChicago philosopher and prominent Neo-Platonist. Quoting the German philosopher Herman Cohen, Hart's argument is...