30  Philosophy

My religious training made me sensitive to issues of meaning and the wider world generally, but my interest became super-charged when I discovered a set of books in the high school library: the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Works. A shelf full of classics of philosophy, I saw for the first time names like Plato, Descartes, Hume, Marx, with the first volume an introduction that described eloquently the point of it all: how the books here were part of a “conversation” through the ages, from one great mind to another, and how I the dear reader could participate in that conversation. I was hooked.

Around that time, my father was working with other clergy in Neillsville to sponsor a community-based program to show a series of short documentary films by a Swiss-based philosopher named Francis Schaeffer. The well-made films attempted to explain the roots of Western culture from a Christian point of view, discussing key philosophers and their contributions, but then making the claim that the modern world has drifted away from the key insights of these great philosophers, forgetting what has made the West so great.

This documentary was co-produced by Dr. C. Everett Coop, the man who would later become much more well-known as the United States Surgeon General in the Reagan Administration. One of its more vivid scenes – a segment including a large pile of dolls with heads removed, to depict abortions – became a source of controversy for Dr. Coop later and he downplayed his role in the film, but at the time it struck all of us as an unusually sharp and vivid portrayal of our core, small town, Christian values. To me it was also a fascinating introduction to ideas, to ways of thinking about history, ethics, metaphysics, in much more depth than I had seen before. I also realized that these subjects had been much-studied by the larger world around me, not just the Christians I had been exposed to so far, and I learned that such subjects could be learned in a way that was entirely consistent with my Christian education. Indeed, the film and accompanying study guides suggested that our approach to philosophy was the real one, the one most consistent with the original intent of these great heroes throughout history.

My brother attended the same events, of course, but showed little interest. It just wasn’t practical, he thought. But I drank it all up.

Soon I was looking for the original sources of the works mentioned by Schaeffer, which led me back to the Britannica Great Works. I started with John Locke and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which I read after hearing that this was one of the key Enlightenment books that influenced the American Revolution. Although I won’t claim that my teenage, Neillsville-trained mind was up to the powerful ideas contained in that book, I certainly wanted to understand. On a nearby library shelf, I also found Bertrand Russell’s History of Philosophy, which I devoured even more intensely, including the chapters on modern philosophy, which had been referenced negatively by Schaeffer, but which I felt inspired to tackle head-on. My faith was strong enough, I felt, to withstand some of the deceptive ideas that Satan had put into these philosophers, and I saw my reading as a way to improve my faith.

Similarly, my father had come into possession of a book about the history of America, The Light and the Glory, by a Christian minister/historian named Peter Marshall. Published in 1977, its ideas had become popular after the American Bicentennial celebrations because, to us Christians, Marshall presented a view of history that placed American religious tradition at the center of what made our country great. Although I’ve since studied far more history, and would today probably find that book not very satisfying, at the time it was illuminating to me because, first, with all its footnotes and careful reading of history became an example to me of the importance of first-rate research, and second, the contrast it struck with what I learned in my high school history texts helped me see – and seek out – variants of history that are not today considered “mainstream”. Like the philosophy books I was reading, I felt like this was opening to me a new world, a secret and hidden set of truths that were unknown and special.