Intellectualism, the Only Thing More Foolish than a Lover (Love’s Labors Lost)

Last updated on: April 29, 2016 at 11:12 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Intellectualism, the Only Thing More Foolish than a Lover (Love’s Labors Lost) 2016-04-29T23:12:15-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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The_comedies,_histories,tragedies,and_poems_of_William_Shakspere(1851)(14803305833)_opt If only fools fall in love, then only greater fools miss love for intellectualism.

Intellectualism is the pursuit of intellectual pleasure without the balance of a total life. We are not just brains, but beings with hearts and bodies and so need more than intellectual pursuits to be whole. This is a lesson schools forget when they cancel recess for more time in the classroom as if their young students could possibly cram more into their heads with ten extra minutes. The cheated body will have revenge on the school, because the overly energetic student will learn less.

We are meant for love of God, for each other, and life in families. Most humankind will find a mate so that we can have children and the rites of romance that leads to fecundity are rightly celebrated.

To be blunt: many humans should fall in love and have children or the race is doomed.

To be blunter: a certain kind of bookishness makes this necessary event less likely.

Why? Not because it is bad to be a nerd, anybody for whom intellect is not attractive is not worth pursuing, but because intellectualism has no more to do with the true intellectual activity than porn does with romance. Intellectualism is an attempt to make a good thing an only thing and that never works. It does not work when we try to make money making the only thing or romance the only thing or the Green Bay Packers the only thing.

Shakespeare lampooned intellectualism all his life . . . an example of this is when he deflates the pompous mood in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Of course, Shakespeare’s humor is more Biblical than the 1960’s censors would allow, but the point is the same. Shakespeare has a King and four foolish men swear off the pleasures of the flesh (eating, drinking, and love) for three years in order to study. Yet these are no men called to holy, monastic vows, but to the folly of believing that the pleasures of the mind are incompatible with the pleasures of the body.

Predictably all four fall in love and just as predictably being unprepared for the force of love make more than usual fools of themselves. Every college professor sees this . . . yet another reason a good college (try The Saint Constantine School if you are in Houston or The King’s College) will not forswear the joys of heart and body. As Shakespeare has one of his young men say: “Have at you, then, affections men-at-arms! Consider what first you did swear unto: To fast, to study, and to see no woman- Flat treason ‘gainst the kingly state of youth.”

God calls a few to abstain for a lifetime or for long periods of time, but for the rest of us . . . Saint Paul is right, better to marry than to burn.

Of course, today many a party school consists only of the erotic pleasures and students leave untainted by any intellectual activity. The answer to this folly is not an equivalent error in the opposite direction: intellectualism. The student who never has time for physical activity or friendship is as unbalanced as the student never sober for classes and both will be punished in this life with particular folly. The sins of the flesh, with their punishments, are so obvious and so many sermons are preached about them that no more need by said. Sadly, most sermons against intellectualism are preached by dullards, anti-intellectuals, too dense to know the allure of the flesh. It is generally unwise to send someone naturally prudish to speak against physical vice, better to send someone who knows the victory over this particular temptation. In the same way, to send a person guilty of the opposite vice (anti-intellectualism) to rant against intellectualism is to undercut the argument by the example. The speaker is the message.

William Shakespeare is the perfect person to warn against both. He understood the temptations of the flesh (note the date of his wedding and the date of his first child’s birth) and the intellect. As one of the creators of modern English, he was no lack wit, but he was merciless on the pretensions of the “educated” . . . both of those who had a too much education and had become useless and those who merely aped their betters. The characters of Holofernes and Armado in the play are a wonderful picture of much learning (or the pretense of the same) making a man mad.

So as we design The Saint Constantine School (k-college!) we are striving for a balance between learning proper recreation (a lady or gentleman’s art!) and proper work. We are preparing students for the workplace and for the parts of their life that are not work. How best to use our time? We strive for a balance.

You can too.

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William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost.

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