“Many students now seem desperately concerned with money and status.”
Many of them want to study law and medicine, not because they care
for justice or believe they have a vocation for healing, but for the money and therefore the status they bring, he believes.
“Socrates said that ‘the unexamined life is unworthy of a human being’. I think he was right this far: a life lived without a concern to be lucid about its meaning is a diminished life and one that dishonours our humanity. I do think it’s a terrible thing to go through life without any understanding of what it is to be human. When I think of how privileged I was to have a really good university education in which values were deeply embedded in university life and education, and what an inspiration that was to me and many others, it makes me almost weep bitter tears to think to what degree my generation, so privileged, has betrayed future generations, even our own children.
“From many fine young people at university I keep hearing that their experience has been, for the most part, bereft of inspiration. Very few tell stories of how inspiring their university years have been. But I think in Australia people are realising that money doesn’t necessarily make you happy.”
He cautions against what he calls “popular philosophy” which he feels can trivialise a discipline with an otherwise noble history. “It is good to be excited by ideas, but what matters most is to care for the truth. But to really care for it one must be intellectually serious. I know that may sound puritanical. It is important to read the great philosophers, because in them you see what it really is to care for the truth. You see that philosophy is not merely a distinctive set of problems,
but also a distinctive orientation to truth and truthfulness. I would call it a spiritual orientation.”
Professor Gaita works part of the year as Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London. He spends part of each year in Australia with ACU National.
Many of them want to study law and medicine, not because they care
for justice or believe they have a vocation for healing, but for the money and therefore the status they bring, he believes.
“Socrates said that ‘the unexamined life is unworthy of a human being’. I think he was right this far: a life lived without a concern to be lucid about its meaning is a diminished life and one that dishonours our humanity. I do think it’s a terrible thing to go through life without any understanding of what it is to be human. When I think of how privileged I was to have a really good university education in which values were deeply embedded in university life and education, and what an inspiration that was to me and many others, it makes me almost weep bitter tears to think to what degree my generation, so privileged, has betrayed future generations, even our own children.
“From many fine young people at university I keep hearing that their experience has been, for the most part, bereft of inspiration. Very few tell stories of how inspiring their university years have been. But I think in Australia people are realising that money doesn’t necessarily make you happy.”
He cautions against what he calls “popular philosophy” which he feels can trivialise a discipline with an otherwise noble history. “It is good to be excited by ideas, but what matters most is to care for the truth. But to really care for it one must be intellectually serious. I know that may sound puritanical. It is important to read the great philosophers, because in them you see what it really is to care for the truth. You see that philosophy is not merely a distinctive set of problems,
but also a distinctive orientation to truth and truthfulness. I would call it a spiritual orientation.”
Professor Gaita works part of the year as Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London. He spends part of each year in Australia with ACU National.