Episode 13 The Necessity of Being Familiar with the Great Books of Western Thought Part II

Mr. Bianchet and Mr. Mullins continue their discussion on the necessity of reading and engaging with the Great Books or Classical Literature in the Western Canon. Both consider the notion that there are not only a reflective and propositional elements to master but experiential, non-propositional elements to be engaged with that have a seeming neurological/psychological as well as philosophical effects on a student's psyche. Therefore, making literature a holistic and transformative endeavor, not just an exercise in entertainment and escapism from reality.   CS Lewis echoes this, "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." An Experiment in Criticism pg. 141 (1961).  Lewis again hammers this home in his essay, "Myth Becomes Fact",   “Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact, The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other….Those who do not know that this great myth became fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied. But Christians also need to be reminded—we may thank Corineus for reminding us—that what became fact was a myth, that it carries with it into the world of fact all the properties of a myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less...What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is.)"  So, where will you go? What adventures will you begin? Who will you become in reality but assuming and immersing yourselves in their fictional reality?