Review: On Being Civilized

Tracy Lee Simmons. On Being Civilized: A Few Lines Amid the Breakage. Memoria College Press, 2023. 

In 2002 Mr. Simmons published Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. Climbing Parnassus is an elegantly laid out argument for a return to learning the classical languages of Greek and Latin and the ancient stories that were once the bedrock of western humanistic education.  Learning these languages at any age will only enrich a person’s life. However, it is essential that they return as a core component of children’s education. Learning these languages forms the mind in myriad ways that enables a person to perform admirably in any vocation. 

Twenty-one years later, Mr. Simmons provides another book worthy of our attention and contemplation. The focus of On Being Civilized is his concern that a higher-minded civil culture is rapidly diminishing in America. He is discouraged by the multiple harms of social media and the national decline of standards in education, writing, thinking, dress, and behavior. 

In his Prologue, he offers a meditation on the idea of civilization.  He chooses not to give us a tidy definition of what civilization is or is not. Instead, he indicates that civilized culture involves, amongst other things, an expectation of a certain quality and appreciation of good music, proper use of words, orderly thinking, education (formal or informal), manners, a priority of family over the state, and friendships.  These components of civilized culture shine in sharp relief of our American culture.  He succinctly diagnoses our current situation.  To bolster his diagnosis, Simmons explicates on a 2013 National Association of Scholars study of the curriculum and culture of Bowdoin College in Maine. That study is not encouraging for anyone seeking signs of civilization or a higher-minded culture in our present age or our immediate future. In. Pages 10-13, offer “Tracy’s Whimsical Signposts of Civilized Life.”  Here are but a few from the list.  “We know we’re civilized: When we realize both consciously and instinctively that human beings are improvable but not perfectible. …When the family, not the state, is acknowledged as the basic and essential unit of society. …When we realize that there are no rights in a civil society without responsibilities. …When we recognize that the core purpose of education is to transmit values and virtues, not to transform society.  And when educating is about forming-and not deforming-souls, not just filling minds. … When people read good books and talk about them as avidly as they do the latest TV or internet series.  … When prevailing opinion is not engineered by social media and other cesspits of human activity. … When we demand that our political candidates actually like the country they seek to lead. … When we ask those same political candidates: How unpopular are you willing to be to carry out your duties and initiatives? …. When history is not rewritten with the manifest purpose of inviting our contemporaries to feel superior to all people who have lived before them. … When we commit to cherishing the past and adorning the present. …” 

His list of signposts are a glaring indictment upon our present life as a civilized people.  

What follows the Prologue are essays drawn from his previous publications in the following periodicals or newspapers over a 25-year span: University Bookman, The Weekly Standard (I sure do miss that one!), National Review, New Criterion, New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Crisis Magazine, City Journal, Sewanee Review, and The American Enterprise. The essays are organized under the headings of Biography, History, Language, Literature, and Culture. 

Most of the essays are book reviews.  All the reviews are even handed treatments of the literature at hand.  If he disagrees with the author, we soon learn why in non-inflammatory language. There are no ad hominem attacks in his reviews. We always learn the basic purpose of the book and why it will be useful to the reader to read. 

His essays also include two encomiums: A Tribute to Jacques Barzun on His Centennial and The Classicist.  The Classicist was written after the death of Robert Fagles. 

Three essays are Simmons’ opinions about language and education: Getting the Words Right; Greek Ruins; and The Transcendental Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. 

Getting the Words Right is about the need to write well.  In order to learn to write well, we need to be taught well.  There are rules that need to be learned and followed. Prescriptive teaching is NOT a crime. Good teaching, will return us to “linguistic sanity.”    

Greek Ruins highlights what our American education and broader culture is losing by stepping away from classical learning: classical texts as well as the Greek and Latin languages.  

The piece about Aurelius’ Meditation is not really about the book.  He focuses on his college student’s response to ancient texts in general and to the Meditations in particular. His students connected with Meditations in ways that often (pleasantly) surprised him.  Perhaps the best thing that can be said is what he says at the conclusion of his essay.  He learned that at the college bookstore when books were sold back for the next years’ crop of students, no one ever sold back their copy of Meditations.  Now that is a statement of praise that any teacher of the Great Books ought to cherish. 

While the Prologue stirs up concern for our current American civilization and culture, the essays are a bright light amid the darkness.  These essays lift up the necessity of good and compelling Words, Ideas, and the wide scope of the Humanities. The Epilogue reminds us that civilization promotes the possibility of friendships.  Friendship is more than familiarity or companionship.  Friends have core values, ideas, and experiences in common.  The Epilogue contains a beautiful story of a group of friends that formed around a used bookstore in Cincinnati. The Epilogue is the perfect conclusion to an enjoyable and intellectually enriching book. I will read these essays several more times over the coming years.