The Connection Between Beauty and Learning
Season 2, Episode 2
In episode 2 of the Conversatio podcast, Dr. Joseph Wysocki joins Jeremy Tait, CEO of the Classic Learning Test, and discusses the connection between beautiful architecture and learning, and how our surroundings help to elevate us to God. Listen Now!
SPEAKERS
Dr. Joseph Wysocki, Jeremy Tate
Welcome to Conversatio from Belmont Abbey College. This podcast focuses on the way of formation and transformation so that each of us reflects God’s image in an evermore palpable and transparent way. Today, Dr. Joseph Wysocki, dean of our Honors College, discusses the connection between beauty and learning with our friends at the Classical Learning Test. Visit them at cltxam.com.
Jeremy Tate 00:39
Welcome back to the Anchor podcast, the official podcast of the Classic Learning Test. We have today the Dean of the Honors College at Belmont Abbey, Dr. Joseph Wysocki. Dr. Wysocki, thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 00:52
Thank you so much for having me, Jeremy. It’s a pleasure.
Jeremy Tate 00:54
So, Dr. Wysocki, I think that the Honors College of Belmont Abbey, it may be the most popular Honors College among CLT students and parents. I’ve heard a ton of great things about it, so it’s a joy to be with you this morning. Can you tell us a little bit about your own journey academically, personally, into this current role as Dean of the Honors College?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 01:4
Sure. I’ve been at Belmont Abbey for eleven years. I taught in the government department for most of that time, and that sort of was my gateway into the great books. I’m also a Belmont Abbey undergraduate alum, and so I studied political science and economics back here from 2000 to 2004, and that was the beginning there. I came into college with the mindset of definitely somebody who was interested in the active life. As you might know, the medievals will often talk about the active life and the contemplative life, and I was active life all the way. I was going to study political science. I was going to be pre-twofaced Harvey Dent. I was going to go out and I was going to fight injustice as a lawyer. And so I started taking my political science courses here. And then I met my mentor, Dr. Jean ??, through it, who studied at the University of Chicago, studied political philosophy. And I had a course, we had to take a course in political philosophy. At that time, I wasn’t really interested in that. I was constitutional law. Tell me what’s right, tell me what’s wrong so I can go and do it. And I took a course on Plato’s Republic with him. I was a good student, but not an intellectually curious student until I read that text and I kind of got bitten by a bug and just went, wow, this guy, my professor has dedicated his life to teaching a book like this. I didn’t even know that was something you could do, but it seems pretty darn amazing. And so by the end of undergraduate school, I started thinking, yeah, maybe I’d like to do this. I wound up going to Baylor University, where I studied under the Nichols, Mary and David Nichols. Okay. They’re two great political philosophers, American politics professors, and they studied politics in the broadest Aristotelian, Platonic way of understanding politics, which is that it’s about all human matters. In that program, we did politics and literature. We did courses on Shakespeare in politics, on the American novel in politics. We read many of the great books in the canon. And so I fell in love with it more there, came back to the Abbey and three years ago, after teaching in the government department, I had the opportunity to be a co-founder of this new Honors college which, to me, the most exciting part of getting to be the dean of that is that over the next 20-30 years, if God blesses me with that much more life, then I’ll get to teach more and more of these courses, including texts that I haven’t read or studied before. And that is a pretty darn good job to have.
Jeremy Tait 04:03
What was it about Plato’s Republic that was just kind of so life changing for you?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 04:08
Yeah, I think it was that it reopened a question that I thought was answered. That seems to me so much of the problem with so much of modern education today is that we’ve moved towards a promotion of activism. And I’m not anti-activism, but I don’t think promoting activism is the end of an undergraduate education, because activism assumes that you have answers to the questions, that the questions are closed in some way, or at least that you have these pretty sure tenuous answers to these questions. In Plato’s Republic, right, this was me coming in. I want to live the active life. I want to fight for justice. And then we have book one. It hits you right in the face. What is justice? And there are a number of insufficient answers, and then you spend ten books, and even by the end, as with so many Platonic dialogues here, you feel like you’ve progressed a bit. But to this day, I don’t have a perfect picture of justice. I have some things that I know it’s not and some things that I am pretty sure that it is. I think that’s what it was. It was just this wake-up call, a real dose of humility. And I was challenged for the first time, right, in a real way, by reading great books. It could be challenging to memorize a lot of things. Right. That’s a challenge in a certain sense, but to really be faced with the fact that you don’t know what you thought, you know, that’s a bit scary and exciting.
Jeremy Tait 05:48
Well, I want to talk about this program. I put on my dad hat here for a minute because I’ve got a rising sophomore in high school, the Schola program for the Honors College in the summer. Our chief operating officer sent her daughter to this this past year. Keeps talking about it all the time. I’ve heard a buzz about it from a lot of parents and students as well. So this is like a one week program for high school students. Can you tell us a bit about this?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 06:13
Sure, yeah. I’ll start with the definition because I think the definition of schola of that word really gets to the heart of what that week is. So it’s a week long program. It’s focused on the Great Books, but schola the definition. There’s are a number of definitions, but one of them is leisure for learning or schooling. And that’s really the sort of animating principle behind Schola, is that it is a leisurely approach to a high school college program, precollege program. What does that mean in the way it’s manifested in our program? It’s really that it’s focused on three problems. One is Great Book Seminars, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. That’s the major component five days of Great Book Seminars, time for prayer. So we’re at a Benediction college, and that means we have monks on campus, and there’s daily Mass, daily Confessions, and five other times a day the monks are getting together to pray the Divine Office that is the Psalms. And so we work that into the schedule every day for students who want to attend. So it’s Great Book Seminars, time for prayer with our monks, and then just a whole lot of fun and recreation. We know that we do need to recharge ourselves. We go to the Whitewater Center. We go hiking in the mountains. We go to an art museum in Charlotte. But I guess I’ll come back to the Great Books part of it, and that’s what is a lot of fun. What we try to do in that one week is allow students the time to examine one or two really important questions. And we have a three-year rotating cycle so that students can do it three years in a row after they finish freshman year of high school. And it’s a different theme every year, and the readings are tied to that theme.
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 08:02
This past year was justice and Mercy, and so we want to give students time. By the end of this week, we’re not guaranteeing that you’re going to learn certain skills, that you’re going to check off any competencies or student learning outcomes, except that you’ll have spent some time thinking about justice and Mercy. And so, yes, this year was wonderful. We began we try to every year, no matter what the theme, we incorporate two important parts of the Honors College curriculum. One is that it integrates the ancient Christian and modern perspective on a given question, and that’s the way that our curriculum is laid out in the Honors College as a whole, over four years. You get this mini microcosm of ancient Christian modern approaches to a question. And then the other, going back to Plato’s Republic, is that at a certain point, Socrates talks about the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy and so that’s something that’s sort of big in our program as well. And you get that in Schola every year. There are poetic accounts of justice and mercy and there are philosophic accounts, and I guess I should have said that the final component is that we always are examining how both faith and reason can provide us with answers to these questions. This year we began with Prometheus bound by Escalus an incredible Greek tragedy that presents a really complex cosmos where justice is tricky and you’re sort of left unsatisfied. We move on to book one of Plato’s Republic where we really just get the question, what is justice? We go on to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and we look at a number of ways that Aristotle understands justice. Justice as complete virtue, justice as the lawful, and then also justice as fairness in transactions and criminal law. We then move on to the Christians and we turn to the Book of Jonah, which it’s really important that students read this fresh. It’s such a short book, and so many of us know the VeggieTales version. I’m ashamed to say that I know the VeggieTales version myself, but we all like to think, hey, I would never be Jonah. Boy, what a jerk. And then you realize, you go back and you go, hey, the story of Jonah is basically like a Jew during World War II being told to go into Berlin and ask them to repent and God will give them forgiveness. You need to really go back and think through what that means. So we do that. We move on to Dante. We look at the moderns Machiavelli, the quote unquote bad guy, but he’s important to understand. He says, “justice and mercy are things to be used well to secure your rule.” Those students are shocked a little bit when we have Machiavelli and then we do Shakespeare. We get that beautiful speech by Portia in The Merchant of Venice about mercy, and we finish with some Flannery O’Connor. At the end, we do Revelation. So, yeah, it’s just a wonderful week. And by the end we’re just kind of going, hey, I hope that by the time you’re done, you’re excited to go think more about justice and mercy.
Jeremy Tate 11:13
This is great. And so Rising sophomores, juniors, and rising seniors can go to this. Is that right?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 11:17
That’s right. Yeah. Next year is love, and friendship is the theme.
Aruba 11:24
So, Dr. Wysocki, I’m a university student myself, and what I’m noticing with my university and modern universities in general is that the architecture is just really bland. They’re just like tall glass buildings, and there’s no wonder or beauty to it, But Belmont Abbey College. The campus is beautiful. I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit about the connection between beauty, architecture and learning? And how that affects students and why that has changed and why we went from having traditional beautiful buildings to just like tall, glass buildings?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 12:03
Yeah, well, let me begin by saying I am not competent to address that big philosophic question. I think there are so many others who are probably associated with CLT who can talk about beauty and the transcendentals and architecture far more competently. I will say this. I know a little bit about the rule of St. Benedict. This is something that all of our incoming freshmen read because we’re a Benedictine institution. And boy, it’s just a wonderful work about Christian community and about how to live a good life. It’s very practical and sensible and not harsh and beautiful.
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 12:45
I am getting to your Question. I promise. I’m not an architecture guy, so I’m going to spend a little time on the Rule. But the most important officer, if you would call it in the monastery, treated in the Rule, is the Abbott. There’s a whole lot about the Abbot. But the second most important that the rule spends a lot of time on is the cellarer. The Cellarer. And the cellarer is the monk who’s in charge of distributing the stuff of the monastery. It’s kind of the monastic quartermaster. And in the chapter on the cellarer, it talks about the care of the monastery’s goods. And one thing it says is that all the goods of the monastery, all the goods from the cups used at dinner to the gardening tools, should be seen as the vessels of the altar. The tools of the monastery should be understood as like the vessels of the altar, which means, right, the beautiful things for a Catholic the chalice and the patents and what would be used to hold the body of Christ. And that’s a pretty crazy thing to say when you read that. You go. Really? Like a shovel or a hoe is supposed to be just like the vessels of the Altar.? And so I think this gives a partial, this gives us sort of the end, to at least why Belmont Abbey has decided to have these beautiful buildings. Our basilica, our classroom buildings, is that we see the Benedictines here, even though they’re called to a contemplative life, their apostle is the college. That is their work, outside of work of prayer. One of their mottos is ora et labora prayer and work. So they’re praying in the basilica. Their work is the college. And so the tools of their work are the classroom buildings, are the places where students meet together with professors. I think because they’re supposed to be like the vessels of the altar, which that is, they help to elevate us to God. I think the fact that we see ourselves as being centered in Christ and that everything on this campus, what’s going on in the basilica and in the classroom, are ultimately tied to Christ, that’s really a big part of it.
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 15:03
Why has it changed? Again, I’m not a historian of architecture, but I will I’ll make one observation based on one of my favorite authors that I’ll be teaching this semester, Alexis de Tocqueville in volume two of Democracy in America. He treats almost every aspect of American life, our intellectual life, our artistic life, our theological life, and questions why do democracies? I mean, in a sense, your question is why do democracies have bad architecture? And he has this great chapter on poetry, which I think we can use as a bit of an analogy for architecture. And he says the ancient poets focused on the great, great individuals, great deeds and presented those for imitation to us so that we could mold our lives to those things. He says, well, that democracies have poetry, too. It’s not the Iliad. We have poetry, too. So what does our poetry look like? He says, well, we dabble. We’ll dabble a little bit with poetry about nature. But then he says our poetry will be about ourselves, but not us as great individuals, but like us as sort of just this sort of mass and sort of broad general ideas and just humanity in general, without pointing to these sort of pinnacles, if you will. When I was reflecting on your question, I was thinking this might have something to do with it, right? That we think of… What do human beings not seen in the light of divine, not seen in light of the greatest deeds, but just for the masses of humanity, what do we need? Well, we need space. We need space that’s useful. We need to make sure that it’s air conditioned, that the lights work, that your technology is working, and that it doesn’t cost a lot of money because small liberal arts colleges have tight budgets. I think there might be sort of an analogy there that is right. We think about human beings and their needs, and that’s not wrong, that’s not bad. But without that extra understanding of your activity and your architecture being seen in the light of the divine, why would you? Why would you have architecture that’s elevated instead of useful? You could probably have certain psychological reasons, I suppose, but I don’t think they quite hold water if it costs a lot of money, unless you really believe…
Jeremy Tait 17:45
Dr. Wysocki, yeah, I did not put this question in the outline, but I’ve been thinking about it. So comment and then a question here. So we meet with more than 100 colleges on a pretty regular basis, and it seems like there is kind of explosive growth happening right now at colleges like Belmont Abbey, like Benedictine, University of Dallas, Thomas Aquinas College in ways that it doesn’t seem that it was the case maybe even four or five years ago. Has something shifted culturally where parents and students are really looking at colleges that are offering kind of the genuine article and are not ashamed of their Catholic identity?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 18:29
Yeah, well, I have so many thoughts about that, so I’m trying to narrow it down. One is, I think that my earlier point about activism versus exploring questions I think is really important. I think we’re starting to see that so many colleges now, certainly I am very much an advocate of liberal education. I think that’s obvious. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. I think liberal education at so many colleges is being done really badly. I mean, for a number of reasons. If liberal education’s definition is that it’s an education for its own sake, that it forms the soul towards the true, the good, and the beautiful, most colleges aren’t doing that. Without getting too political, it winds up being ideological. Ideological training and preparation for activism, right? You use poetry to inspire activism for certain causes, and that’s not liberal education. It’s not. The platitude about liberal education, which is true, but it’s sort of the platitude that liberal education promotes critical thinking. Now, that’s not the purpose of a liberal education. It’s a secondary effect that John Henry Newman talks about in the idea of the university, these habits of the mind. But at most colleges, that’s not happening. So even if you want to look at liberal education as this thing that’s also useful, that implicates these habits of the mind, it’s simply not doing that. And so I think the classically minded Christian colleges that are saying, “hey, look, you’re going to read Aristotle’s Organon.” Do you want to actually understand how to argue well? Well, struggle through the Organon, work through these works of logic, read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and learn how to reason well, so I think that’s part of it. Sorry, such a big question. Thoughts will continue to come to me, but if you have other questions.
Aruba 20:58
Yeah, so we usually like to end the podcast by talking about books. So we were going to ask you, what do you like to teach most at the Honors College? Or what is a book that has impacted you the most throughout your life?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 21:13
Yeah, for me, liberal education and great books education. The reason I love it so much is that it helps to provide for me, for students, self-knowledge. And that’s something that Socrates and Plato’s Phaedrus says. There’s a really interesting conversation at the beginning. Phaedrus is asking Socrates about various myths, and he says, “Do you think these myths are true about the gods, or are there naturalistic causes for some of these things?” There’s this story about the wind sweeping away this goddess, and Socrates says, “Well, I don’t really know.” He says, “The smart people would say that the myths are false and there are these naturalistic causes. But that doesn’t matter to me. I’m interested in one kind of knowledge. That’s all I care about, and that’s self-knowledge. I care about self-knowledge.” And I think that’s absolutely right. It’s self-knowledge that can help us to find happiness. Because if we’re not doing that, then what’s the point? And for me, so when it comes to the books that you can read, I mean, all of the books in the Western canon can help someone to discover self-knowledge. But for me, I think there are three big ones that I like. I’m sure that anybody could debate with me and tell me that my list is wrong. But for me, the top three are Aristotle’s Ethics, Saint Augustin’s Confessions besides the Bible, Aristotle’s Ethics, Saint Augustine’s Confessions and Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. And I’m sure that is the most controversial one on that list. And the reason is, for me, if I want to know myself naturally, I want to understand my soul naturally, if I’m not looking at revelation and grace. The best book to help me work through that, in my experience, has been Aristotle’s Ethics because it begins with that question, what is happiness? What is happiness? It’s not about rules. When we hear ethics, we normally think of business ethics class or bioethics. And he starts off, no, it’s about happiness. That’s what ethics is about. And his treatment there is so comprehensive and so probing that I’m still learning from it, new things from it every time I read it. As a belief in Christian, revelation and grace come into the question. And so to understand myself and what keeps me from happiness and what helps me to move toward happiness, I need St. Augustine’s Confessions. Now, those first two are really much higher in terms of what they have access to. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is not as high. But the reason I put it in there is that I think if one needs to make a journey towards self-knowledge and you want to get to point B, it’s really important to understand point A. That is, to have a pretty accurate diagnosis of where you are. And I don’t think there is anyone better for the entire world, it’s not just in America, that understands point A. That is, our souls right now in these democratic times, and what the idea of democracy has done to our souls, to our sentiments, how we think about religion, how we think about poetry. I don’t think there’s anybody who has a more probing analysis than Tocqueville. And what that does for my students is you get to go, I have all these prejudices. I think that their knowledge, Tocqueville is going to show you why you think these things and why some of those things might be okay. I’m very sentimentally at Toe Pavilion, which is sort of moderate in the sense of democracy is better and worse than aristocracy. There’s some really great things, some really bad things, too. But for a guide and trying to figure that out, what might be good about moving away from a very unequal society? There might be something more just about that. On the other hand, there are fewer Mr. Darcy’s. Are we willing to have fewer Mr. Darcy’s? Yes. So those are the three books that for me, have been really impactful. One last one that has been a joy for me. I had never taught Aristotle’s Rhetoric until I came to the Abbey, and in sophomore year, we do a course called Trivium Two. We do Aristotle’s, Poetics and his Rhetoric. And boy, what an incredible book. And I think for anyone who has the care of souls, for anyone who has the care of souls in any way. And I got to teach it to the Charlotte seminarians, which was awesome. The seminarians the Diocese of Charlotte take this class, and I thought, you know, it’s good to have a strong Thomistic education where you know your philosophy, but when you’re in the pulpit, syllogisms just aren’t going to work. And when you’re in the confessional working with somebody who has an anger problem or something like this, syllogisms aren’t going to work. But Aristotle’s Rhetoric and its treatment of the passions and the soul is just so darn incredible because he starts with what most people tend to think. What do most people think is the good? It’s not this precise philosophic account, but it’s one where it says here’s about 20 different things that people think is good. There’s probably some partial truth to all of those. So if you’re talking with them and they’re starting with this, that’s your way in. And you could say, “Okay, yeah, that does seem to be good, but maybe we can say, are there limits and are there other goods?” So, to me, in terms of practical, and this is not just for politicians, right? But for Dads and for Moms and for priests. Aristotle’s Rhetoric, I think, is indispensable for pastoral, just broadly understood, pastoral care.
Jeremy Tait 27:00
Final question for you parents of students listening to this. When do the applications open up for the Honors College? Can they already apply for incoming 2022?
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 27:10
Yes, we open them up, I think, in July, June, or July. So we’re starting to get applications in now.
Jeremy Tait 27:20
Fantastic. I’ve heard great things. Dr. Wysocki, it’s always a joy to chat with you this morning. Aruba as well. Thanks for being here, and we look forward to being with you soon.
Dr. Joseph Wysocki 27:32
All right. God bless you. Thank you.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Conversatio from Belmont Abbey College. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and share with your friends. Until next time, God bless.