From a book I didn’t read but of which I went to a discussion:
We are intrinsically social beings. The life of a hermit is less than human. Yet some tend to shun community by losing themselves in the anonymity of a large university, and some by noninvolvement in the religious, political, or social life of the campus. Some do so by closing their minds to other people’s ideas. The person who treats the liberal arts as largely irrelevant chooses the life of an intellectual hermit. The person who regards the past as unrelated to his own life is a historical hermit, living in isolation from others. The person who values doing his own thing without regard for more universal and lasting values is an ethical hermit.
—from Holmes’s (1975) The Idea of a Christian College, p. 78.
Not that it adds much, but the genesis of the taxonomy is Hannah Arendt. Curious that it would show up in a book on Christian colleges; curiouser still—or, maybe, how Protestant for a book on Christian colleges to so thoroughly disavow the value of hermitage.
by greg—Oct 4, 09:21 PM
I don’t think the claim is so much that large universities are anonymous, but is more that a person may make to lose herself in anonymity in a large university. Sure, there’s a implication that the community of a large university isn’t necessarily cohesive or necessarily there, but it seems focus is less on the university than it is on how one approaches it.
In that sense, anonymity is certainly easy to accomplish if one wants it. There’s 30K+ students/faculty in this town; the communities that develop can and do overlook those who want to be overlooked.
by greg—Oct 5, 06:42 AM
i read enough of the book not to recommend it except as a discussion starter. (not that this passage is intended as a discussion starter.)
by chris—Oct 5, 08:00 AM