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DIVIDED

                                            July 16, 2012

                                      SCIALABBA
 McLemee, in his review of
 Scialabba's "Divided Mind",
 August 9, 2006,  http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee165
 points to a quotation central
 to Scialabba's thought:


 From José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses, 1930:

   "The most radical division it is possible
   to make of humanity,' Ortega y Gasset
   declares, 'is that which splits it into
   two classes of creatures: those who make
   great demands on themselves, piling up
   difficulties and duties; and those who
   demand nothing special of themselves, but
   for whom to live is to be every moment
   what they already are, without imposing on            DRUM_BEAT
   themselves any effort toward perfection;
   mere buoys that float on the waves."


  Scilabba comments, in "The Divided Mind":

    "Ortega's mistake-- what made him a
    conservative-- was his assumption that
    this distinction between high-quality
    and low-quality human beings, between
    creative and critical people on the one
    hand and passive consumers and
    conformists on the other, was a
    metaphysical distinction, was just a
    fact of human nature.  He never
    considered that increasing the number          And there we are:
    of the responsible, the cultivated, the        the best and brightest
    noble from generation to generation            conclude we just have
    might be possible through a supreme            to increase the numbers
    effort of democratic pedagogy."                of the best and brightest.

  Scialabba references William Morris
  and Oscar Wilde here as thinkers who
  did better.

  McLemee

  "Something in Ortega y Gasset's statement must
  have struck a chord with Scialabba. He quotes it
  in two essays. 'Is this a valid distinction?' he
  asks. 'Yes, I believe it is....' But the idea
  bothers him; it stimulates none of the usual
  self-congratulatory pleasures of snobbery. The
  division of humanity into two categories-- the
  noble and 'the masses'-- lends itself to
  anti-democratic sentiments, if not the most
  violently reactionary sort of politics."

  "At the very least, it undermines the will to
  make egalitarian changes. Yet it is also very
  hard to gainsay the truth of it. How, then, to
  resolve the tension?  Divided Mind is a series
  of efforts-- provisional, personal, and
  ultimately unfinished-- to work out an answer."

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