{"id":7759,"date":"2014-08-19T13:14:16","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T13:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/19\/inheritance-and-appropriation-2\/"},"modified":"2014-08-19T13:14:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T13:14:16","slug":"inheritance-and-appropriation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/19\/inheritance-and-appropriation-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Inheritance and Appropriation"},"content":{"rendered":"
The high school I attended required each student to take two years of Latin.  Years later the requirement was dropped. When a fundraiser contacted me for a donation, I said, "You eliminated Latin, why should I give you a donation?"  He replied that the removal of Latin made room for Chinese.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
What I should have said at that point was something like the following.  "While the study of Asian languages and cultures and worldviews is wonderfully enriching, it must not come at the expense of the appropriation and transmission of our own culture<\/em> which is Judeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman."<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
And then I could have clinched my point by quoting a couple of famous lines from Goethe's Faust<\/em>, Part I, Night, lines 684-685:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
\n
Was du ererbt von deinen V\u00e4tern hast,<\/em><\/span>
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
What from your fathers you  received as heir,<\/span><\/div>\n
Acquire if  you would possess it. (tr. W. Kaufmann)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The idea is that what one has been lucky enough to inherit, one must actively appropriate, i.e., make one's own by hard work,  if one is really to possess it.  The German infinitive erwerben<\/a> has not merely the meaning of 'earn' or 'acquire' but also the meaning of aneignen<\/em>, appropriate, make one's own.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Unfortunately the schools and universities of today have become leftist seminaries more devoted to the eradication of the high culture of the West than its transmission and dissemination.  These leftist seed beds have become hot houses of political correctness.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
What can you do?  You might think of pulling your children out of the public schools and home-schooling them or else sending them to places like Great Hearts Academies.<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a>The Problem: Gun Culture or Liberal Culture?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The high school I attended required each student to take two years of Latin.  Years later the requirement was dropped. When a fundraiser contacted me for a donation, I said, "You eliminated Latin, why should I give you a donation?"  He replied that the removal of Latin made room for Chinese.   What I should … Continue reading “Inheritance and Appropriation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,92,180,299,531],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-autobiographical","category-decline-of-the-west","category-studiousness","category-translations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}