Page 14 - Integrity Seminars - Special Report

One helpful perspective on this mystery and orphanages, and Richard Henry Dana's Two
emphasizes the invention of printing and the Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of
democratization of reading. By the 18th century Life at Sea (1840) and Herman Melville's White
more people were reading books that allowed Jacket helped end the flogging of sailors.
them to imagine the emotional experience of
others, especially the poor and exploited: When our students question the value of the
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written liberal arts, we might suggest that literature--as
in this regard that: one part of the liberal arts tradition-- has
helped shape and energize the social
commitment many of them now exhibit.
Reading is a technology for perspective-taking.
When someone else's thoughts are in your head,
Whatever their content, the liberal arts also
you are observing the world from that person's
foster certain ways of thinking, typically
vantage point. Not only are you taking in sights
grounded on attributes like curiosity,
and sounds that you could not experience truth-seeking and truth-telling, reason, respect
firsthand, but you have stepped inside that for intellectual freedom, religious tolerance,
person's mind and are temporarily sharing his or empiricism, self-criticism, and scientific inquiry.
her attitudes and reactions. As we shall see, Listing these characteristics and associated
"empathy" in the sense of adopting someone's intellectual virtues in the early 21st century

viewpoint is not the same as "empathy" in the highlights both their immense influence and
sense of feeling compassion toward the person, increasing vulnerability. No one can be sure they
but the first can lead to the second by a natural will define human social life in the 22nd century.
route . . . Slipping even for a moment into the
perspective of someone who is turning black in a
The liberal arts--specifically including the
pillory or desperately pushing burning faggots
sciences--start with imagination and curiosity.
away from her body or convulsing under the two
Douglass learned early in life that those traits
hundredth stroke of the lash may give a person
could be a form of rebellion in themselves.
second thoughts as to whether these cruelties
Here's one aspect of Douglass’s early childhood
should ever be visited upon anyone . . .
described in his "Life and Times of Frederick
technological advances in publishing, the mass
Douglass":
production of books, the expansion of literacy,
and the popularity of the novel all preceded the I never met with a slave in that part of the
major humanitarian reforms of the 18th century. country [on the eastern shore of Maryland] who
And in some cases a bestselling novel or memoir could tell me with any certainty how old he was.
demonstrably exposed a wide range of readers Few at that time knew anything of the months of
to the suffering of a forgotten class of victims and the year or of the days of the month. They
led to a change in policy. Around the same time measured the ages of their children by

that Uncle Tom's Cabin mobilized abolitionist spring-time, winter-time, harvest-time,
sentiment in the United States, Nicholas Nickleby planting-time, and the like. Masters allowed no
(1839) Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838) and questions concerning their ages to be put to
opened people's eyes to the mistreatment of them by slaves. Such questions were regarded by
children in British workhouses the masters as evidence of an impudent
curiosity.

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