Reflections and an Oath

I have had the time to think on many matters these past few months, or this semester in general as it were. The prevailing thought that occupies my mind appears to be the passage of time.

Barely fifteen days hence, I will graduate from college. What a milestone – I will no longer have any license, any excuse to act as an uncouth and foolish youngster. This day will mark that formal partition. And in these fleeting, few moments before the passing of the last remnants of my youth, I will mull the significance of the marker, and set in granite the means of adulthood.

I know I am late. Men and women of old have reached where I now stand, countlessly and infinitely before me. Theirs was a different time, though mine may be even more alien. They pondered their passing with a more decisive mind than I, for in this age such lines have been hopelessly blurred. They knew their duties, and prepared to meet them with every ounce of every fiber in their being. I. I search for such duties in a world that has none, but because of this, I and every member of my generation have already had the opportunity to touch and taste wealth, fame, and endless prosperity. Who am I to beg discontent?

I sit now, alone in a field of Ceres, feeling the effects of the slow ebb of time. The corn is almost as tall as I am now. When I last visited these fields, the crops barely adorned the Earth as shrubbery. How magnificent is this testament to unrelenting Chronos?

Looking back upon our activities, the progression of all western thought and philosophy is revealed with clarity before me. The pre-Socratics – Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander – offered to us the basis. Wrong and misguided they may have been, but such is the glory and the folly of being first. Socrates, ever-inquisitive, brought us the advocation of critical thought over mere memory and repetition. He undauntedly stripped away the foolish trappings of tradition and mindless acceptance of precepts left by his predecessors, but his greatest contributions to the world at large may have been his pupils Plato and Xenophon.

They were both brilliant and prolific, I must admit, though I may not agree with all of their written word. Plato’s criticisms of Gorgias and the sophists stand without my challenge. Speech, like any other power or tool, can certainly be wielded to do harm. It is however, by no means innately unjust. My challenge regards his tendency to force dichotomies and split what should have remained whole: reality and appearances, truth and practicality, techne and “knacks”. Here, I stand inveterately with Isocrates and Aristotle. Such things do not oppose each other, but instead complement each other. Without one, the other cannot function properly.

Isocrates’ accomplishments are largely unacknowledged in modernity, and this perturbs me. For one who is considered the father of liberal arts education and the progenitor of many educational precepts that endure to this day, I find his fate to be deplorable.  This becomes even more pronounced when examining his efforts at uniting all Hellas and spurring his fellow citizens to engage in civic affairs. Even today, we attempt to sustain institutions like NATO, the Arab League, the UN, et cetera and et alii, in the hope that multinational interests can stave off unilateralism and world war. Even today, the majority of our citizens make no effort to participate in their hard-won civic duties.

Time passes, and the world moves on. Cicero, Quintilian, and Longinus all offered fresh perspectives and in many instances improved upon the works of the previous names. And finally, we arrive at Augustine. Augustine towers above them all; he reached the pinnacle and zenith, incorporating all aspects of his predecessors into his own thought. Neo-Platonism and Christianity, rhetoric and philosophy, reclusion and civic duty; these distinctions matter not, because to achieve transcendence, it is necessary to reconcile these seemingly disjointed factions into a harmonious whole.

Of course, numerous writers lie still ahead, but most of them will owe their works to this pipeline.

I am not religious, and I can say with as much certainty as the universe allows that I will never be. However, as demonstrated so elegantly in class, neither is my appreciation of these things strictly secular. All of these people contributed greatly to who I am and who I will be, and I shall always share in their motivations and convictions.

The grand question remains – Augustine was right yet again, for such questions remain long after they have been answered. Why have we studied this? Why read the texts of antiquity, the origins of which have long crumbled to dust?  Why were they so keen to leave behind precepts and construct “ladders” to wisdom? What significance do their words hold for us, and what do they compel us to do? Should we listen?

The answer to these inquiries presents the greatest lesson I have received in college.

Fear not fear, fear not death. Fear apathy and ignorance of the past. The future is full of possibilities, but the past is final.

As children, we are fascinated by fire and reach for the embrace of its brilliant, dancing, flickering arms. Pain ensues, and a scar forever marks the encounter. Do we attempt to touch the flames again? Do we readily forget? Let the past serve as a similar reminder for our future endeavors.

Unless we heed those that have preceded us, we will repeat their mistakes until all of humanity lie in ruin and decay. The stakes are much higher than momentary discomfort of the physical nature; so momentous are the works humanity can put forth. We have but one opportunity to set things right before they fall into the realm of the immutable, and let us not leave it to chance.

My time here has almost come to an end, and it will not be for nothing. It was a good four years. Lessons fade, their magnitude diminished by the ebb of time. This one, I swear, shall not suffer that fate. We are not born for ourselves alone; by now, these sentiments are innate in my being. I shall always hold vigil over our progenitors, in solemn remembrance of their efforts, and in observance of our sacred duty.