Me
An interview with
Henry Teloh
Professor of Philosophy and Classics
Ginger Justus: What are your scholarly interests and why?
Henry Teloh: My scholarly interest is ancient philosophy. Why? Originally it was a reaction to other forms of philosophy that I disliked rather intensely. I probably should have gone into English. But I was already well along into philosophy and had put a lot of time and effort into it, and I had to finish it up, right? So that led to the question, "Where can one study great literature in philosophy?"
Justus: Ancient philosophy.
Teloh: Yes. Since then what I have come to find is that most of the stuff is defensible. I mean, think for a moment. What really is right? Well, Socratic methods of education, right?
Justus: Right.
Teloh: The primary educational system of the Republic, right?
Justus: Right.
Teloh: Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, right?
Justus: Yes.
Teloh: Nothing better ever done.
Justus: Never.
Teloh: Does Mill succeed? No. Does Kant succeed? No. And that is why I continue to stay in ancient philosophy. And because daily, new things occur to me.
Justus: Is there a valuable distinction to be made between "philosophy" and "the history of philosophy"?
Teloh: Yes and no. Yes, one can study the history of philosophy as an antiquated object. But if you study the history of philosophy as a way to learn alternative ways of thinking and conceiving, then there is not much of a distinction. One might be tempted to say there is such a thing as "problem-oriented" philosophy that is not historically oriented. But in problem-oriented philosophy, you still have to respond to what was said before, and you still have to come out of a historical context. For example, if you are dealing with the mind-body problem, it is pretty clear that you are dealing with a legacy of Cartesianism, and one could work out of contexts where the mind-body problem is not a problem, e.g., scholasticism, or classical philosophy. I am inclined to think that basically, the history of philosophy is philosophy.
Justus: Would you agree then that insofar as one could distinguish between the history of philosophy and philosophy, what would count as "history of philosophy" would not be very valuable?
Teloh: Yes, I think so. That would be just the study of texts with no interest in what they have to teach us.
Justus: In what ways is Plato our contemporary?
Teloh: Plato is our contemporary mainly because he is so wonderfully opposed to our present ways of conceiving and doing things. Let me give you one rather large example. Nineteenth-century liberalism, and its emphasis on negative rights, is virtually unknown to Plato. For liberalism, rights are the things that separate us, and they form our modern conception of individuality--a notion, by the way, that Plato pays no attention to whatsoever. It is also the case that this notion of negative rights makes it difficult for us to educate anybody. We do not want, in the educational process, to violate people's negative rights. We seem not to want to teach ethics or how to be a good citizen. Education in the modern world has shrunk. The notion of a well-rounded person has been replaced by the notion of a leader. Plato does not value freedom in the sense of non-interference. Instead, he is concerned with a "maximal city," and he is really concerned with educating people, teaching them how to be good. How is this valuable to us? I am not suggesting that we ought to accept all of Plato's views, but I am suggesting that we need to examine the downsides of what we suppose education is about, and look at some of the upsides of how Plato would have us educate our souls. I am interested in producing in people minimal notions of virtue.
There are other things of grave importance in Plato as well. One is the notion of Socratic dialectic which Alisdair MacIntyre applies to the entire notion tradition. The value of Socratic dialectic is that it can shoot the gap between relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other through its willingness to always test theories and its openness to revision. Second, the early dialogues paint marvelous character portraits. If you look at these people, and follow how they behave while learning, and how they behave in groups, then you can learn for yourself how to behave and not to behave. And to that extent, Plato is enduring literature. Take Nicias, for example, from the Laches. He is always consulting someone. Everything he knows he has learned from someone else, from experts. As a character, then, he serves as a wonderful warning.
Justus: Scholars rarely have the chance to talk about those who shaped their academic aspirations. Tell me of two such people and how they influenced your growth.
Teloh: The first person who impacted my career was Stanford Cashdollar, my teaching assistant in Latin when I was a freshman at the University of Illinois. He was doing a dissertation on Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and I just thought he was wonderful. He was the teaching assistant in ancient philosophy in the philosophy department because no one else wanted to--because it was an analytic department and nobody wanted to fool with that stuff, so they had to bring in some Classics graduate students to do it.
When I went on to graduate school, I already had an interest in ancient philosophy. I found at Wisconsin a number of older men who were more benign and had a tremendous interest in ancient philosophy. During my second year of graduate work, I worked with Friedrich Solmsen, an émigré from Germany, one of the great names in this field.
It was really quite a lifestyle. I would take his clothes to be laundered; I gathered the dandelions out of his yard; I would get dressed up in a white or black coat to serve at his parties; I would have to carry books from the library up to where he was. And "where he was" was really neat: It was this sandstone observatory at the very top of the University of Wisconsin campus. It was built around 1830. It looked down on the lake below, and at the top of the rotunda sat our classical scholar. I said, "Hey, if this is what scholarship gets you, I like this." He was very autocratic and reserved and this is what I liked about him. I have since come to repudiate this character; but as a young person I thought this was the cat's meow--I mean one had not seen it at public universities that much. But the ambiance of it up there--you have to understand: there is this beautiful lake down below, and this observatory up above and in the top of this observatory is a classical scholar. Down at the very bottom of the hill stood the state capitol. The symbolism was wonderful.
Justus: Pushkin: "Better the illusions that exalt us than 10,000 truths." Any comment?
Teloh: What am I supposed to do with that? I will say this much: The illusions that exalt us certainly can be a great comfort. They can make one very happy. There is a problem with this though, and it is that the illusions--to put this into Greek terms--tend to be temporally finite; they change. They tend to break down, and usually just at the point at which you do not want them to break down.
Now, on the other hand, the truth tends to be very, very hard, even disheartening--but truths never break down. They will guide you all the way through.
Justus: Wisdom, temperance, courage. These are classical virtues. Today, what are the virtues?
Teloh: What once was a virtue has now become a vice. For example, I am reading a book in which the author is willing to say that we ought to tolerate, in the end, just about anything. It is a fairly virulent form of relativism, and I do not agree with that. I think that there are some people, even if they do not impact negatively on me, who ought to be condemned. I think, for example, of drunkards, intellectual morons, and of other such people. So, the excessiveness of tolerance in our society has turned it into a vice.
Justus: How do we counter that?
Teloh: By teaching judgment. And also teaching that there may be some instances where we cannot render judgment because we do not know enough, and that produces a certain humility in us. But there are instances in which we ought to render judgment and once we have we ought to act on it--there are some people who deserve to be shunned and others who deserve to be embraced.
Justus: The education of undergraduates is clearly important to you. What do you, particularly as a philosopher, hope to impart to them?
Teloh: Well, we can return to the answers I gave regarding Plato's value: virtues, character, the ability to examine issues dialectically, etc. And that focuses my ancient philosophy course. In my social and political course, I expose them to the different options available concerning their political associations. I must confess that I am a very strong proponent of Rawlsian views of justice. The importance of fairness should be made very clear to students. In a logic course, one usually tries to produce fast, accurate thinkers, people who will make good lawyers, and I do try to teach these skills. But as I have found more and more, it is more important to help students deal with interesting and compelling problems such as the regulation of drugs. Basically, like all of us, undergraduates have blinders--that is, they come from certain caves as we come from certain caves, and we should help them remove these blinders and adjudicate between caves, between different ways of leading and thinking about their lives.
Justus: Are there certain authors or traditions particularly well suited to these ends? You have already mentioned certain classical authors. Are there others?
Teloh: Oh, there are literally thousands of good authors. I would have reservations about teaching Nietzsche to undergraduates without teaching MacIntyre, however. That is like giving people a loaded hand grenade. People like Dewey, on the other hand, I am much enamored with, for he is concerned with how to educate people, and he is concerned with the conflict between individuals and society. Justus: Cornel West writes of professional philosophy's vocational crisis. Would you agree that the "profession" is mired in crisis?
Teloh: I am hampered in addressing this question insofar as I have never quite thought about myself as a professor of "philosophy." The reason for this is that academic philosophy, as it is practiced, has never coincided with how I view philosophy. I view philosophy in more of an ancient context, where a philosopher is simply a thinker, someone who loves wisdom.
Justus: Is this in part what lurks behind your distrust of academic conferences?
Teloh: Yes. I do not care about the sort of prominence that is garnered there. The downside, though, is that that is precisely the sort of prominence that helps place students. So I regret a certain loss of efficacy there.
Justus: Back to the vocation of the "philosopher." If you refuse a professional name tag, what are your thoughts about the several professional tags that litter the University?
Teloh: I have never been too worried about the collapse of departmental distinctions. I am comfortable working across distinctions between philosophy and literature, philosophy and classics, philosophy and linguistics, etc. In fact, if we were to do away with the departmental form of the University, I would not have much of a problem with it. We would have to change things managerially, but that does not bother me either. We could teach a much broader, more interesting range of courses, and have a broader, more interesting range of colleagues. And I would welcome this.
Justus: What about the University as a whole? Is it in crisis?
Teloh: I have two worries about the University. One, we have not thought through the advent of computers and what they mean for thinkers. I am troubled when we hear from administrators that professors need five books to achieve this point, and ten books to achieve that point, and so on. We have a situation where we have enabled people to engage in overproduction. It used to be that one great article could get you your Ph.D. and almost get you tenure at the same time. And that seemed okay as long as the article was really interesting. After all, does anyone read this overproduction? I do not think so.
Justus: Begrudgingly, perhaps.
Teloh: Yes, begrudgingly. Regardless, it seems our administrators have adopted a quantitative measure of professorial success, and this goes along with an increasing de-emphasis on teaching undergraduates. It seems everyone is belly-up to their computers in order to play the rat game they have been asked to play. Second, we have come to a crisis in that managerial schools are destroying our finest institutions. We have to start putting managers "in their place" by hiring educators to hire managers, educators who are concerned with what an educated person is and the possibilities open to education. These educators should lead our universities.
Justus: Let me play two authors into that final worry. MacIntyre is terribly concerned with managerial character types and their inability to address substantive questions about what has and does not have value. Dewey likewise has no love for managers, but believes that individuals must be able to self-consciously choose the ends of their action. And yet, MacIntyre has no love for Dewey.
Teloh: Oddly, I would add.
Justus: Which author would you lean more towards? MacIntyre seems more interested in preserving the unity of tradition than in creating able and creative individuals. Dewey, on the other hand, esteems integrated individuals over integral traditions.
Teloh: For all of my deep esteem for Professor MacIntyre, I would love a Deweyean analysis of his work. His work is too backward looking. Our standards do come from prior practitioners, but we need, and here Dewey's sense of balance comes in handy, to improve, modify, change, and develop various practices. I had not noticed, however, that two of my fondest authors are both critical of managers. I am not sure that is where I got it from. I got it from lived experience.
