The
debt we owe our teachers and mentors
MICHAEL
HIGGINS
OPINION
Anyone who has ever studied in the academy, at
whatever level, knows the significant, indeed determinative, role that can be
played by a good teacher.
This is a point sanely argued by the firmly
conservative American Jesuit political scientist James Schall in his irritating
but wonderfully readable On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs (2001)
when he notes that the greatest shapers of civilization have been teachers:
Socrates and Jesus.
Few of us can claim tutors of such magnitude, but we
all know teachers, mentors, role models who have had a critical influence on
the making of our character, career choice, or life-long intellectual and
spiritual passions.
We treasure them because they are so few and their
impact so great. And enduring.
For me, the recent death of George Sanderson, a
professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at
Sanderson was more than a mentor; he was a friend of
many decades. He taught me a senior course in philosophy that dealt with
contemporary issues, that was Socratic rather than magisterial in its style and
approach, and that eschewed the timidity characteristic of most Thomistic
methodologies employed by philosophy departments in Catholic universities in
the 1960s by welcoming far-ranging discussions around epistemological and
metaphysical matters that weren't safely sifted through the sieve of
scholasticism.
Because of George, we read Henri Bergson and Marshall
McLuhan; we talked about Freud and Husserl; and we wrestled with
"being" and shifting human paradigms. In other words, he taught us to
think.
But running through all his intellectual questing — he
began as a geology student at McGill moved on to philosophy at STFX courtesy of
fellow Montrealer Warren Allmand and ended up with a doctorate from
He was an intellectual who took faith seriously, in
his research interests, in his writing and editing (he was for many years
editor of the award-winning literary and cultural periodical The Antigonish
Review), in his life as a faculty member and professor, and in his family
life.
He refused to be bifurcated: scholar versus man of
faith; each supported and defined the other. He was of a piece.
I last saw him in March of last year when I was giving
an invited lecture to the STFX community titled "Five Quirky Things: An
Enchirdion (handbook) for the Wise."
Afterwards, he pointedly reminded me that although he
enjoyed the lecture it was a bit longer than those he experienced when he was
my teacher. I got the point. He always made sure I got the point.
He suggested we co-edit a work that would compile a
selection of religious poetry of the highest order including Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, John Berryman and Thomas Merton, a work
he dubbed "a portable, puissant potpourri of pensées," a secular
breviary that would "appeal to believers who want to reflect and deepen
their religious sensibility and to secular seekers who are open to the
religious dimension."
I thought the project a splendid one and I welcomed
the opportunity to work with an esteemed teacher.
Death, however, intervened.
But the proposal was vintage Sanderson: open to the
world, non-judgmental, Catholic at its best. R.B. MacDonald, a former dean of
arts at STFX, and a priest-academic of impressive integrity, captured something
of the essential Sanderson in his funeral homily when he showcased not only
George's holy sagacity and communitarian instincts but his self-deprecating
sense of humour:
"George was, as would be said in ages past, a
`character.' Indeed, the occasional iconoclast is always welcomed. When the
Congregation in the
The perfect quip and so like George.
Michael Higgins
(STFX 1970) is president of