I put my current reading list on a separate page. I have been reading widely this past month -- more widely than I normally do the rest of the year. I have my own informal analytics system going after several years of blogging and my high tides for philosophical reading are June/July and December/January. I am guessing this is because homeschool takes a back seat during these times. I should be planning or spending leisurely hours with the kids, but instead I read (though I have been planning and trying to build summer memories with the kids, as well)
When you are reading Great Books, everything connects to something else, and soon you find you are interested in Everything in the World. Somehow the whole immense human conversation comes into view. It is as if you build yourself a ham radio and then pick up voices from the whole world.
In my case, this leads to a version of "galloping madly in all directions." And this is what is happening now. I can see how it would happen that so many Victorian gentlewomen would then compose themselves a "reading plan". I see it frequently in Charlotte Yonge's books, but her books were not the first time I had encountered the idea. I think perhaps there is some mention of study plans in Sense and Sensibility? Not sure, though. And last year I found the idea in Elisabeth Leseur's journal -- she wanted to improve her level of education, so she set herself a program of study.
This kind of reading plan requires leisure, of course. Leisure in a specific sense that for the most part was a brief episode in the history of women. I am probably over-simplifying, but the idea that women had equal intellectual capacity and desire as men came to the fore around the time of the Enlightenment; and then about a century or so later, it kind of funneled into political and career activism. Edith Stein is one of those who kept an eye on the transition towards a kind of pragmatic feminism focused on political clout and equality in the workplace. The anti-feminism backlash to this tended to express itself in terms of the glories of domesticity and the dignity of raising one's children. Edith Stein seems to look at both from an outside perspective, since she was an eminent academic who also, as a Carmelite nun, thought of her primary vocation as a spiritual mother and teacher. That is one reason I am interested in reading her books; another is that she was very interested in education and wrote about it perceptively; another is that she was a unique person living at a unique time; and another is that her birth month is the same as mine. Haha.
I am dragging all that in so that I can express the kind of unease I feel mixed with delight when I am doing this kind of over-reading. When I look back at these times of Reading Intensive in my life, I see they made a huge difference in my thinking. On the other hand, when I'm in them, I started feeling uncomfortable because other things which seem more connected to the "duties of my state in life" seem to go by the board a bit. And if I try to justify philosophical excursions pragmatically, I simply can't. I am not going to be a philosophy professor. I am not going to be a pastor or writer who might need some philosophical rigor in order not to make a fool of himself. I could easily function as a holy, orderly homeschooling mother WITHOUT any of this kind of speculative reading; in fact, in some ways I am taking time away from single-minded focus on my duties, by this kind of thinking and reading. It is physically tiring, for one thing, to study hard. Ask anyone who is in finals week, if they don't eat more and sleep more while they are using such a large part of their brains.
This is getting too long. I just wanted to lay out my ongoing struggle with this question. The only thing I have to oppose to the weight against continuing self-education is that of course, you can find all sorts of appeals for learning as a deeply human pursuit, from Mortimer Adler to some popes to CS Lewis in his "Learning in Wartime." And then my absolute craving. Cravings are not to be uncritically accepted; I could crave heroin deeply and honestly, after all. But craving something good, like a sudden intense desire for spinach, is usually something I would tend to trust somewhat. The question would be whether philosophical reading is good: for me, that is. Am I doing it in a good way. Am I just reading to escape, or contrarily, to wake myself up. .... reading as sedative or reading as stimulant. What is the best way to order reading, considering that I do have duties. Immersion at intervals, as I presently do it? or a steady course of time daily or regularly?
No answers for now. Time to take my morning walk! I think I can justify philosophy podcasts, at least, because I get my much-needed cardiovascular workout at the same time, and get to be out in our beautiful National Forest -- a combination of worthwhile things!
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