A fine addition to the essays on the good life already published. The university in my city just recently finished a thorough renovation of it central library and light-filled, high-ceilinged rooms of all types are magnificent places for quiet reading and conversation, as well as silent contemplation of any one of its vast stores of knowledge. I completely agree that both solitary reflection and silence are crucial to the development of the good life, but I do wonder if it also needs to be said that they are also the building blocks of another all-important part of the good life—the sharing of the truths and other benefits gained from these building blocks with friends in conversation. Growth together is critical to the life well-lived.
I appreciate Professor Kimmage's emphasis on particular kinds of physical spaces -- gardens, quads, library stacks, and library reading rooms with long tables. These are indeed necessary to the cultivation of silence and hence to education, and I suspect non-Western cultures know this too. I once visited Peking University in Beijing and there, in the middle of a city of 20 million, is a lovely quiet garden with a pond, one that invites slow walking, quiet conversation, and contemplation.
The problem is that that which the the quiet spaces enable (seeing with the eyes of those with a different view, mulling over great ideas, moral clarity) is no longer valued in our culture. We no longer see the need for quiet places. And that is a very great loss. And perhaps irretrievable.
An interesting argument for the role of silence in the particular kind of *place* and *learning* that universities (should) seek to cultivate. I wonder what Dr. Kimmage thinks of the habit of many college students (myself included) of studying, and even traversing campus, with headphones in. How can universities and universities professors encourage students to step away from the constantly available stream of tunes and podcasts and enter into silence? Is it even their role to do so?
A fine addition to the essays on the good life already published. The university in my city just recently finished a thorough renovation of it central library and light-filled, high-ceilinged rooms of all types are magnificent places for quiet reading and conversation, as well as silent contemplation of any one of its vast stores of knowledge. I completely agree that both solitary reflection and silence are crucial to the development of the good life, but I do wonder if it also needs to be said that they are also the building blocks of another all-important part of the good life—the sharing of the truths and other benefits gained from these building blocks with friends in conversation. Growth together is critical to the life well-lived.
I appreciate Professor Kimmage's emphasis on particular kinds of physical spaces -- gardens, quads, library stacks, and library reading rooms with long tables. These are indeed necessary to the cultivation of silence and hence to education, and I suspect non-Western cultures know this too. I once visited Peking University in Beijing and there, in the middle of a city of 20 million, is a lovely quiet garden with a pond, one that invites slow walking, quiet conversation, and contemplation.
The problem is that that which the the quiet spaces enable (seeing with the eyes of those with a different view, mulling over great ideas, moral clarity) is no longer valued in our culture. We no longer see the need for quiet places. And that is a very great loss. And perhaps irretrievable.
An interesting argument for the role of silence in the particular kind of *place* and *learning* that universities (should) seek to cultivate. I wonder what Dr. Kimmage thinks of the habit of many college students (myself included) of studying, and even traversing campus, with headphones in. How can universities and universities professors encourage students to step away from the constantly available stream of tunes and podcasts and enter into silence? Is it even their role to do so?