Freshman Studies is a discussion course; most of your class time will be occupied by a discussion of the work assigned for that day. Thus, being prepared for a class means having something useful to say about the works you have read. The most important and difficult word in the previous sentence is "useful." What follows is an attempt to define what it means.
JOINING IN THE ARGUMENT
Let us return to the notion that the history of thought is a history of disputes. Descartes, writing his Meditations, is, among other things, engaging Plato in an argument about the nature of knowledge; Picasso, painting his cubist works, is, similarly, engaging his pre-decessors in an argument about the nature of perception. To be educated, then, to read Descartes or contemplate a Picasso, is to join in the ancient and still unsettled arguments that have created their works and our world.
But before you can join in an argument and add something useful of your own to it, you have to know what the argument is about. A large part of your education at Lawrence will be devoted to finding out what the arguments are about in the various disciplines and what methods of arguing have been declared acceptable by the various sides in the disputes.
Class discussion in Freshman Studies is meant to serve as an introduction to the great arguments of intellectual life. That is, it will introduce you to the issues that are being disputed and the accepted rules for conducting the disputes.
The first step in joining in an argument, as we've said, is learning what the argument is about. In The Republic, for example, Plato sets forth a definition of justice, a vision of the ideal state, and 2 proposal for living a good life. You are likely to have opinions of your own on such topics, but unless you begin by discovering Plato's opinions, your own opinions won't count for much in the argument. If people are disputing the relative merits of apples and oranges, it does no good to insist that you like hamburgers. To insist on the virtues of hamburgers in such a situation is to miss the point.
Reading, then, close reading with the goal of understanding the Issues being raised and the means being offered for settling them, is your entry into the argument. Much of the class discussion, as you begin a work, will center on the attempt to understand the issues in the argument and the side the writer is taking. You should come to class prepared to talk about what Plato thinks is the good life, and the disputes that arise in class about what Plato thinks should lead you directly back to the details of the text. Only after you have a fairly good grasp of Plato's particular notion of the good life - that is, only after you have carefully read and understood him - can you begin to disagree with him in a useful way.
Thus, the most important way to prepare for a Freshman Studies class is to read, and to read well.
READING WELL
The first shock for many students when they begin their college careers is discovering that somehow they've gotten through high school without learning how to read well in the sense meant above. Of course, if you have been admitted to Lawrence, you are certainly literate in a fundamental way - that is, you know how to translate the print on the page into recognizable sounds - but many of you may experience some initial difficulty in using your basic literacy to make sense of Plato's arguments or to unravel the metaphoric intricacy of Shakespeare's poetry. Reading well, like writing well, is a skill that most freshmen have only begun to master.
Let us begin our discussion of reading well by asserting that any book worth reading is worth reading twice.
It is impossible to know, the first time you read The Republic, for example, that the opening chapters of the dialogue suggest, in a small way, an outline for the larger arguments that follow, or that Thrasymachus, who attacks Socrates like a "wild animal:' is a fine, ironic example of what Socrates means by the unjust man. Only a second reading, with a prior knowledge of the book's overall design, can lead you to an appreciation of Plato's passion for form or his acute sense of ordinary life, which somehow underlies even his most abstract propositions.
Therefore, if time allows, plan to read everything twice.
In practice, that should mean reading the whole work through before you begin discussing it in class, then re-reading it, a section at a time, as the class discussions proceed.
The first time through, concentrate on glimpsing the general argument and order of the work. Don't worry about understanding every little part of the whole- that can come later. Instead, seek to become familiar with the tone, the method, and the general sub-stance of the work. And don't be overly hasty in accepting or rejecting what you are reading. Think of it as something akin to meeting a new roommate: at first, you are mostly curious about the "type" of person you are dealing with; later, as you fill in the details, there will be time to come to a considered judgment of the actual individual. If the work confuses you, push on; things may well come clear as you proceed.
(Poetry presents a particular problem to some students: try reading it out loud, listening to it, instead of merely reading it as you would prose.)
Your second reading should be critical-by which is meant, you should now start paying attention to the smaller details of argument and language and to your own opinions about what is being said. But before you can read critically, you must be sure you are reading carefully, and here some perhaps overly obvious things need to be said.
Books are made of words, and so reading requires that you know the meanings of words. Therefore, always read with a good dictionary at your side, and use it to look up not only unfamiliar words, but also some of those ordinary words whose precise meanings might surprise you. Also, especially when reading literary works written in English, check the origins of the words being used- poets and novelists are generally attuned to the root meanings of their language, and use them to deepen the texture and sense of their work.
Writers use words (to continue our dis-cussion of the obvious) to make sentences. Particularly when reading a difficult work, learn how to deal with it sentence by sen-tence, acquiring the meaning one sentence at a time. When the gist of a long sentence eludes you, try parsing it. What is the main subject, the main verb, the main object? What parts of the sentence are subordinated to the main core? Such a process of analysis will tell you what the writer thought was central to his or her main thought, and is likely to clarify the overall meaning of the sentence.
Sentences come together in paragraphs. Ask yourself what the topic of the paragraph is and what sort of matter (detail, argument, expansion of the primary thought, etc.) the paragraph contains.
Consider, for example, this. rather densely written paragraph from Friedrich Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientiftc, which has often been used as a Freshman Studies text (we have numbered the sentences to facilitate discussion):
(1) At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. (2) only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. (3) And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. (4) In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. (5) It cannot see the wood for the trees (Engels, 47).
This paragraph happens to occur near the center of Engels' book, and may seem rather meaningless out of context. Nonetheless, it will serve as an example of how to read well.
Note, to begin with, that the paragraph is tied to what preceded it by the phrase "this mode of thinking" in the ftrst sentence. Which mode of thinking? the reader must immediately ask. "This mode' happens to refer back to what Engels has just been discussing at great length in the previous paragraphs - what he has defined as the "metaphysical mode of reasoning." Let us not worry here about Engels' definition of "metaphysical." But if you had arrived at this paragraph and were uncertain about the antecedent for "this mode" or Engels' definition of metaphysical, you were already lost. The only thing to do would be to go back and find your way again.
Note, next, that the opening sentence of the paragraph suggests (primarily by the words "at first sight") that the metaphysical mode of reasoning is now going to be criticized, and that the criticism begins with an assertion about why metaphysical reasoning has been successful (that is, accepted by many previous thinkers) -- because, in short, it is based on common sense. Thus, to criticize metaphysical reasoning, Engels is going to criticize common sense.
Sentence (2) begins the denunciation of metaphysical reasoning through an attack on common sense. The mode of attack is ironic personification. Engels mockingly shows us common sense as a "respectable fellow" who has "wonderful adventures" beyond his own safe, and presumably quite limiting, "four walls." Here tone is important; if you do not hear Engels' derision of common sense, if you do not realize he has created in his personification the fundamental basis for his attack upon it (mere common sense is useless in confronting the larger world that exists beyond the domestic bounds of conventional society), you are not reading well.
The third sentence is far more abstract and difficult, but a parsing of it clarifies it considerably. The main subject of sentence (3) is "metaphysical mode of thought"; the main verb is "reaches"; and the main object is "limit." The metaphysical mode of thought, Engels is saying, reaches a limit. That is the crux of the matter, the center of the paragraph, the center of the thought, and, as it turns out, the central transition point of the whole of Engels' chapter, which begins by defining metaphysical thought and then goes on to show why it fails. Every other part of that long sentence merely adds some detail and refinement to the crucial central thought, and the rest of the paragraph will expand upon it. Sentence (4) tells us what sorts of things metaphysical thinking "forgets" (in the sense of "ignores"); and sentence (5) con-cludes that metaphysical thinking fails, finally, because, in the familiar metaphor of forest and trees, it sees only details, not the whole.
Of course, not every paragraph you encounter will be as meaty or important to the author's entire argument as this one. But it is precisely the important paragraph that is likely to be the difficult one, and if you approach it ready to look up the meanings of its words, to find the antecedents for its pro- nouns, to parse its sentences, to listen to its tone, to ask the right questions about its place in the whole flow of the argument, you will soon find the murky text clarifying itself, revealing beneath the ooze of ink a bright, thoughtful bottom.
Finally, to read successfully is more than reading sentences and paragraphs: one must finally read whole works. That is, as you read through a work, you should start asking yourself some questions about its overall structure. Why does Plato start his Republic at a religious festival and end it with a vision of the afterlife? Why does Engels organize the body of his text into three main chapters? What principles of design relate the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice to the story as a whole? Until you have grappled with such questions, you have not really read the book well, and until you have read a book well, you are not fully qualified to comment on it or judge it - that is, to join in the argument of which it is a part.
One should add here that different sorts of books demand different arts of reading, and that the best books demand readings of different sorts. Plato appeals primarily to your rational intellect - it is the logic of his argu- ments that ought most to engage your mind. Jane Austen, on the other hand, appeals more directly to your emotions and your sense of irony -- it is in appreciation of her wit, her economy of style, and her insights into human behavior that will most engage your mind. At some point, however, it should occur to you that Plato, too, can be drolly ironic and witty, and that Jane Austen is a writer of formidable rationality - which is why, with the best books, even reading them twice is not enough; there is, in fact, no end of reading them.
One last thought: it is important to learn how to read well if for no other reason than good reading leads to good writing. Readers who are aware of the quality of the prose, of an interesting or elegant choice of words, of the logical connections between sentences, of the useful ordering of paragraphs, of the relationship between tone and context, and so on, are able to use that awareness in their own writing. Begin to read critically in this sense, then; let it become your habit to pay attention not just to what is being said but to the way in which it is said. No other single exertion will have a more beneficial effect on your own prose.
