12 - 18 July 2001
Issue No.542
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 12 - 18 July 2001 Issue No.542 |
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Plain talk
We have a saying in Arabic that there are seven benefits in travelling. There is, too, and somewhat sadly, an eighth, the purchase of books not available in one's own country. My air captain friend, Atef Zaki, has become a regular supplier of newly published books. Thanks to him my book acquisitions have increased. He flies everywhere but, according to him, the best place to buy books, especially paperback editions, is Singapore.
His latest present is What is Man?: 3000 Years of Wisdom on the Art of Manly Virtue, a collection of essays by a wide selection of writers, from Plato, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius to Francis Bacon, John Locke and Wordsworth. Even the Indian classic The Bhagavad-Gita is included.
The book is edited by Walter R Newell, professor of political science and philosophy at Carleton University, Ottowa. In his introduction he explains that he has embarked on this exhausting project -- the abridged edition being a 532 page tome -- because he believes that as America heads into the 21st century there is an increasingly widespread feeling that the meaning of manliness has been forgotten. He believes that there is a huge vacuum in the moral vocabulary about the whole subject of the manly virtues. One feels manly passions and impulses, but one does not know how to articulate them. The aim of the anthology, Newell asserts, is to help fill this vacuum and to restore a sense of the positive meaning of manliness.
What are the tenets of manly pride and honour that we need to impart to young men, he asks. How might we recover an understanding of what it means to be a man in the positive sense: brave, self-restrained, dignified, zealous on behalf of a good cause, imbued with sentiments of delicacy and respect for one's loved ones?
One might ask, at this point, whether or not exactly the same questions are also applicable with regards to women? Further on, Newell seems to answer my query.
"Real and responsible friendships between men and women can only be lost in the pursuit of a sectarian and rejectionist 'gender identity.' Instead, we need to return to the highest fulfilment of which all people are capable -- moral and intellectual virtues that are the same for men and women at their peaks -- while recognising the diverse qualities that men and women contribute to the common endeavour for excellence."
Drawing on his 18 year experience as a university-level educator and on the pool of students who came his way, Newell analyses the feelings of "boys and girls." Young men in his university classes, he felt, seemed especially lost, shy, confused, afraid to assert themselves, their trepidation broken only by occasional bursts of pointless cockiness and attitudinising -- this in spite of their also being openly competitive, attention-grabbing and eager to impress.
Female students, by contrast, seemed more self- sufficient, less prone to grab the spotlight, more quietly competent and less in need of constant reassurance. Both young men and women, he adds, faced a similar problem -- the lack of an adequate vocabulary to express love-related problems.
What, Newell's anthology asks, did past ages have to say about manliness? What might we learn from history? Would it offer any consistent lessons? What is Man? -- the tip of the iceberg of hundreds of ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, early modern and modern texts through which Newell burrowed -- provides the answer. The anthology is a real feast of reading, a literary journey covering a wide range of "manliness"-related topics, from the chivalrous man, the manly lover and manliness towards women to the well-bred, accomplished gentleman and the statesman as American hero.
While the book addresses the American man, I feel what it is saying concerns every man. An anthology compiling so many writers, philosophers and poets is a gift for which we should all be rightly thankful.
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