Holding On Through a Thought

The word seems to be out that we could benefit, as persons and as a nation, of a little more critical thinking. But what does that mean? Emphatically, learning to think critically does not mean learning what to think; that is propaganda or ideology, which are forms of mental slavery and beneath the dignity of what we sense about ourselves as human beings. To think critically is the very opposite of these debasements: to ask questions and look for reasons. Those efforts get us moving in the direction of truth, what is common to all of us sharing an existence together.

One of the reasons the study of language and literature has held its importance in traditional education is that the written word is an artifact, a representation, of an author’s thinking. The words we read—their choice, their combination, their interlacing into sentences and paragraphs—reproduce a writer’s thinking, and that thinking in language can stay before us for however long we might wish until we’re sure we understand it both extrinsically and intrinsically. Grammar and logic and rhetoric worry about the extrinsic; our own experience and the maturity resulting from it depend on this outer understanding of the language, but then press on through it to meaning, wide and deep and consequential.

This primary importance of grammatical and rhetorical structure is why writers and thinkers care about language and work to use it well—and why we should be patient with ourselves in confronting a difficult sentence: it may make no sense to us because it is nonsense; but it may also not make sense to us at first reading because the thought it is expressing demands a more critical attention. And that can be all to the good, because working through a difficult passage will produce a habit of mind which we can apply to every sentence we read or hear, guarding against the easy, uncritical acceptance of thoughts we just want to believe, not thoughts which make sense in and of themselves. So there is much to learn from looking closely at a model of good, clear thinking.

Here’s an example of that, a short passage from a literary critic (Douglas Bush in his collection of essays entitled Engaged and Disengaged, 1966) writing about the humanities, what they are and why we should care to study them. Here he is contrasting the way in which science produces definitive conclusions with the varying judgments the humanities yield reader by reader. The study of Shakespeare gives him an example:

In the nature of the case there can be no final interpretation of the more complex works of art; as the history of Shakespearian criticism makes amply clear, some ages see and emphasize some elements, other ages other elements. Still, with all the cross-currents and eddies and occasional waterfalls, there is a general movement along or toward a central channel; as Shakespeare’s name again makes clear, peripheral fluctuations do not affect the stability of the general pattern.

That’s beautifully crafted, and its craftsmanship, if we read closely, can help us sail over some deep literary waters. Let’s recognize first that the passage comprises two sentences. The opening sentence states the argument: a work of art, say Shakespeare’s, can mean many things to many people. Now left unqualified, one could read that first thought to be asserting that there is, therefore, no objective meaning in any work of art, that since some see one element and others other elements, no central, perduring element exists and all is left to the solipsistic relativity of every ego that engages the work.

To preclude that erroneous conclusion, however, the writer begins the second sentence with the conjunction still. That sends up a flare, telling us to stop if we’re about to wander off in the direction of that relativity. Still is a stronger form of but, and what follows is the clarification: the fact that many may read many meanings in a work of art does not negate the fact that all those meanings still tend “toward a central channel.” Relativism has no central channel, but the writer has first skillfully enlivened his meaning with concrete images: cross-currents, eddies, waterfalls, and a channel, all consistent with the metaphor of river and tributaries which comprises the overarching, though unnamed, metaphor.

But images can have sharp edges, and if they’re not handled well, if they interestingly connote an idea but don’t clearly denote it, then those edges can shred the meaning of a metaphor apart. To prevent that—and this is one reason I judge this passage so well crafted—the writer quickly in the next clause ties the images in strict parallel back to their references: the cross-currents and eddies and occasional waterfalls are peripheral fluctuations, and the all-important central channel is the general pattern, whose importance lies in its stability, its constant truth, no matter time or place or person.

And the upshot of all this? That watching language keeps a guard on our coming to false conclusions. Without that qualifying second sentence, the writer would have risked the reader’s settling with a relativistic idea about the arts which he did not intend to hold. And likewise, without a reader who understands how the language works structurally—that essential conjunction still, the metaphoric images, the layout of the second sentence—another risk obtains: that we’re convinced we understand something we’ve read or heard when in fact we didn’t. We read tendentiously, finding only what we wanted to find.

So much depends on remembering that language is a common medium, one which writer or speaker shares with reader or listener. Propagandists and ideologues do not believe that. They shout to preclude questions and our asking for reasons. The antidote to all that nonsense is to be skilled in seeing how thoughts refine or disfigure themselves in language. There we can watch them, question them, and then say yes or no to them, dispassionately and more temperately, after comprehending their inner meaning by understanding their outer form. And that might just be a very good argument for the study of the humanities, the language and literature of our own priceless human awareness.

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