Naked Wrestling

Education in general, and in every subject, should “draw heavily on direct and vicarious experience that engages and awakens the senses”—poetry, music, “naked wrestling”((James Taylor, in his book, Poetic Knowledge, references Michael Faraday’s remarkable lecture series, The Chemical History of a Candle, and likens “his class closely observing a burning candle before any experiments” to the Ancient Greek concept of gymnasium (from γυμνός meaning naked) in which part of a young man’s education included naked wrestling. He says, “The term gymnastic can be understood in its broader and poetic sense to include how Faraday began his lecture; that is, as a ‘naked wrestling’ with reality, unencumbered by microscopes, textbooks, or tests” (Taylor, 23).))—and move toward higher knowledge, that which Aristotle calls metaphysics, or wisdom.

Wisdom in Aristotelian terms means the knowledge of principles and causes. First knowledge is taking delight in our senses; yet, such knowledge, though both satisfying for its own sake and instructive in teaching us “what the desire is desire for,” it naturally compels us to discover its causes and principles. This is a higher knowledge. It is not for any utilitarian purpose that we seek to know it, for then it ceases to be desirous for its own sake, but simply to satisfy our desire to know its principles and causes. Only then is it possible to analyze its implications without dehumanizing effects.