This sign is posted on the door of one of my favorite professors from college, Dr. Lewis. I took his intro Philosophy class because everyone kept telling me, "Don’t take Dr. Lewis. He’s too hard. You’ll fail." So I took it, and I got an A-minus. More importantly, I loved the crap out of everything we studied and discussed in the class. I sat on the front row, because no one sits on the front row, as you might occasionally get asked things - gasp! - and have to answer.
It turned out that most of the people who didn’t like Dr. Lewis didn’t like him because they resented that they had to take Philosophy 111. They resented that they paid obscene amounts of money to attend college and then weren’t permitted to skate through classes they didn’t care about.
Also, his exams were a bitch: six hours of writing, divided into 3 sections: short essay, long essay, and dialogue. He’d give you three or four philosophers and you’d have to write a dialogue between them. It was hard as hell to think about, but if you studied and understood, it was insanely fun once you got started. After earning my A-minus in his intro course I decided I’d minor in philosophy, and I took two more courses with Dr. Lewis: Philosophy of Religion and Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (commonly abbreviated HKN). They both kicked my ass; every class session was to my brain what a hard-core workout with a personal trainer would’ve been to my body. I got A-minuses in both classes, and for my entire life I will always be proud of that.
There was a cadre of good friends of mine who loved Dr. Lewis’ classes, took all of them, and, in the case of my friend Matt, stayed an extra year at Wake to get a philosophy major. When we had to take courses with other professors we were almost always disappointed. After lectures we’d spend an hour in his office, talking over minor points of the lecture or reading. I was raised by college professors, and Dr. Lewis reminds me a lot of them. When I came out, Dr. Lewis called me into his office and told me he was behind me 100%, because as he’d thought and read about it, he’d decided that the church should adopt gay-friendly theology. I’d have cried, except you don’t cry in The Office.
Two weeks ago today Brian and I were walking around Wake’s campus, and I was knocking on doors, seeing professors and people to whom I hadn’t spoken in quite awhile. I wanted to introduce people to Brian, and show him the faces I’d been talking about for so long.
But when we got to Dr. Lewis’ door, I said, "Can I do this one alone?" I wasn’t sure why, except I just wanted to talk to him alone for a minute.
When I entered, there was a student in there. Dr. Lewis greeted me warmly and asked me to wait a moment while they finished talking; I gladly did so. The student was explaining his idea for his Philosophy of Religion paper, the topic of which, I quickly realized, was remarkably similar to the one I’d done my senior year on the theodicy of John Hick.
Yes, I’m linking to a Wikipedia article about John Hick in a post about Dr. Lewis. His students will know why I feel a bit dirty doing that. I highly recommend that you go get an actual book and read the actual words with an actual page. Be careful; you may get something called a "paper cut."
The student left and I took his seat, and Dr. Lewis and I started talking. I quickly caught him up on my life - that I’d dropped out of Yale (the school he’d encouraged me to attend and for which he’d written my recommendation letter), moved home, and decided to become this writer. I explained that I’m working on a novel about the end of the world, only it’s not the end of the world, see, and there’s all this subtle political and spiritual commentary, and as I explained it I started to feel like a giant hack, so I asked him how he’s been doing.
We talked about the state of college students today. Dr. Lewis said it was discouraging to feel that the students were learning more from the electronic media than from their classes, that between digital cable (now standard in every Wake dorm room) and the internet, the students were seeing college as less about learning and more about being handed the world, digitally. Wake students are no longer required to take Basic Problems of Philosophy, a policy change I’m going to vehemently disagree with here, on this website. (Yes, I see the irony).
"They are learning everything they think they need to know from the electronic media," he said, "and I’m the enemy of the electronic media."
I grinned wide and thought, briefly, about shutting down this website. I’m not going to, but I understood what he was talking about; people are being taught from an early age that the internet and technology can take the place of human interaction, that reading a website is as good as reading a book, that if students don’t want to have to take a class, they just shouldn’t, because they’re paying.
Dr. Lewis taught me better than that. He taught me to challenge what my culture is handing me. That television really is, for most people, the same as the shadow puppets in Plato’s cave, and that Eminem is jello and Mozart is creme brulee.
Also, how to think. The man, more than anyone else, ever, taught me how to think.
After half an hour of talking, I had to leave, and he said it was very good to see me again, and we shook hands, and I left. I felt good, and unsettled, like the mud at the bottom of the river had been stirred up and was not going to settle back down for a bit. Which is always how I felt in his classes.
Thanks, Dr. Lewis. I know you’ll never read this - or the e-mail I sent you in January 2000 saying I was sick as a dog and wasn’t going to make it to class that day (this was before I understood that you have never checked e-mail) - but thanks. The Owl of Minerva is taking flight.
Also, you’ll notice that this week’s reading is Frederick Copleston’s History of Philosophy, Vol. 1; all of Father Copleston’s volumes were much-beloved, much-required, wouldn’t-have-graduated-college-without-them texts from Lewis’ classes. Definitely recommended, and affordable.
