B) Explain in your own words what M.L. King means by both nonviolent resistance and agape.

c) To what extent do you agree with King’s concept? Can you illustrate the difference between eros, philia and agape by your own examples?

d) What allusions can you find in the text? Who was the Samaritan? Who was St. Paul? Who was Booker T. Washington?

e) What characteristics of King’s style reflect the fact that he was a minister?

XXXIII. Read the text, translate it into Russian.

Comment on the message of the extract. What stylistic devices help to understand the author’s viewpoint? What bell is mentioned in the extract?

State your reasons for the tremendous popularity of the last paragraph of the extract during the World War II and in the second half of the 20^th century. What new meaning can we attach to it today?

Compare the ideas of Metropolitan Anthony, M.L. King and J. Donne. What is the Christian approach to the problem “People and community”? Does it appeal to you? Why?

How is this problem solved by other world religions? Give examples.

Meditation 17

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and engrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one many dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to comе, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

No man is an island, entire of itself; everyman is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne*

XXXIV. Make up an outline of the extract from the lecture by Ch.H. Sommers; be ready to dwell on each point. Prove that this text sums up all the problems discussed in the unit. Translate the text into Russian.

Are We Living in a Moral Stone Age?

The problem is not that young people are ignorant, distrustful, cruel, or treacherous. And it is not that they are moral skeptics. They just talk that way. To put it bluntly, they are conceptually clueless. The problem I am speaking about is cognitive. Our students are suffering from “cognitive moral confusion.”

What is to be done? How can we improve their knowledge and understanding of moral history? How can we restore their confidence in the great moral ideals? How can we help them become morally articulate, morally literate, and morally self-confident? < … >

The Great Relearning is what has to happen whenever earnest reformers extirpate too much. When, “starting from zero, ” they jettison basic social practices and institutions, abandon common routines, defy common sense, reason, conventional wisdom − and, sometimes, sanity itself.

We saw this with the most politically extreme experiments of our century: Marxism, Maoism, and fascism. Each movement had its share of zealots and social engineers who believed in “starting from zero”. They had faith in a new order and ruthlessly cast aside traditional arrangements. Among the unforeseen consequences were mass suffering and genocide. Russians and Eastern Europeans are just beginning their own “Great Relearning”. They now realize, to their dismay, that starting from zero is a calamity and that the structural damage wrought by the political zealots has handicapped their societies for decades to come. They are also learning that it is far easier to tear apart a social fabric than it is to piece it together again.

America, too, has had its share of revolutionary developments − not so much political as moral. We are living through a great experiment in “moral deregulation, ” an experiment whose first principle seems to be: “Conventional morality is oppressive”. What is right is what works for us. We question everything. We casually, even gleefully, throw out old-fashioned customs and practices. Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist everything except temptation.” Many in the Sixties generation made succumbing to temptation and license their philosophy of life.

We now jokingly call looters “non-traditional shoppers.” Killers are described as “morally challenged” − again jokingly, but the truth behind the jokes is that moral deregulation is the order of the day. We poke fun at our own society for its lack of moral clarity.

We need our own Great Relearning. Here, I am going to propose a few ideas on how we might carry out this relearning. I am going to propose something that could be called “moral conservationism.” It is based on this premise: We are born into a moral environment just as we are born into a natural environment. Just as there are basic environmental necessities, like clean air, safe food, fresh water, there are basic moral necessities. What is a society without civility, honesty, consideration, self-discipline? Without a population educated to be civil, considerate, and respectful of one another, what will we end up with? Not much. For as long as philosophers and theologians have written about ethics, they have stressed the moral basics. We live in a moral environment. We must respect and protect it. We must acquaint our children with it. We must make them aware it is precious and fragile.

I have suggestions for specific reforms. They are far from revolutionary, and indeed some are pretty obvious. They are “common sense, ” but unfortunately, we live in an age when common sense is becoming increasingly hard to come by.

We must encourage and honor institutions like Hillsdale College, St. Johns College, and Providence College, to name a few, that accept the responsibility of providing a classical moral education for their students. The last few decades of the twentieth century have seen a steady erosion of knowledge and a steady increase in moral relativism. This is partly due to the diffidence of many teachers who are confused by all the talk about pluralism. Such teachers actually believe that it is wrong to “indoctrinate” our children in our own culture and moral tradition. Of course, there are pressing moral issues around which there is no consensus; as a modern pluralistic society we are arguing about all sorts of things. This is understandable. Moral dilemmas arise in every generation. But, long ago, we achieved consensus on many basic moral questions. Cheating, cowardice, and cruelty are wrong. As one pundit put it, “The Ten Commandments are not the Ten Highly Tentative Suggestions.”

While it is true that we must debate controversial issues, we must not forget there exists a core of noncontroversial ethical issues that were settled a long time ago. We must make students aware that there is a standard of ethical ideals that all civilizations worthy of the name have discovered. We must encourage them to read the Bible, Aristotle’s Ethics, Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Koran, and the Analects of Confucius. When they read almost any great work, they will encounter these basic moral values: integrity, respect for human life, self-control, honesty, courage, and self-sacrifice. All the world’s major religions proffer some version of the Golden Rule, if only in its negative form: Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

We must teach the literary classics. We must bring the great books and the great ideas back into the core of the curriculum. We must transmit the best of our political and cultural heritage. Franz Kafka once said that a great work of literature melts the “frozen sea within us.” There are also any number of works of art and works of philosophy that have the same effect.

This is not to say that a good literary, artistic, and philosophical education suffices to create ethical human beings; nor is it to suggest that teaching the classics is all we need to do to repair the moral ozone. What we know is that we cannot, in good conscience, allow our children to remain morally illiterate. All healthy societies pass along their moral and cultural traditions to their children.

And so I come to another basic reform: Teachers, professors, and other social critics should be encouraged to moderate their attacks on our culture and its institutions. They should be encouraged to treat great literary works as literature and not as reactionary political tracts. In many classrooms today, students only learn to “uncover” the allegedly racist, sexist, and elitist elements in the great books.

Meanwhile, pundits, social critics, radical feminists, and other intellectuals on the cultural left never seem to tire of running down our society and its institutions and traditions. We are a society overrun by determined advocacy groups that overstate the weaknesses of our society and show very little appreciation for its merits and strengths. I would urge those professors and teachers who use their classrooms to disparage America to consider the possibility that they are doing more harm than good. Their goal may be to create sensitive, critical citizens, but what they are actually doing is producing confusion and cynicism. Their goal may be to improve students' awareness of the plight of exploited peoples, but what they are actually doing is producing kids who are capable of doubting that the Holocaust took place and kids who are incapable of articulating moral objections to human sacrifice. We need to take an active stand against the divisive unlearning that is corrupting the integrity of our society.

We need to bring back the great books and the great ideas. We need to transmit the best of our political and cultural heritage. We need to refrain from cynical attacks against our traditions and institutions. We need to expose the folly of all the schemes for starting from zero. We need to teach our young people to understand, respect, and protect the institutions that pro­tect us and preserve our kindly, free, and democratic society.

This we can do. And when we engage in the Great Relearning that is so badly needed today, we will find that the lives of our morally enlightened children will be saner, safer, more dignified, and more humane.

Christina Hoff Sommers

XXXV Read the text, translate it into English. How are the ideas of the author interrelated with the problems under discussion?