A Conversation Between Friends

I was reading this essay for a conference I recently attended on the definition of conservatism. (The conference was great, but nothing which follows is in any way related to the conference.) There I was merrily reading along, thinking about politics and culture and the conservative sensibility, when that sentence caused my brain to come to a screeching halt. Epiphany!

Over the years (now, I suppose that should be “decades”), I have had many students stop by to argue about politics. There is a certain type of student who wants to talk about politics, both theoretical and practical, with someone who disagrees with her. (Alas, not all students are like this.) At Mount Holyoke, it is not easy to find people with different political views. Lots of groupthink at Mount Holyoke.

Now I have a rather curious two-fold reputation on campus: 1) I am a conservative, and 2) I am an iconoclast, so I am happy to while away many hours defending the opposite of any position someone wants to stake out. So, students who want to debate some political idea or other stop by.

There is one part of this, though, that has always puzzled me. More often than I can count, students will hit the end of the discussion thinking about who won or lost the debate. At first, I thought the students were joking, but over the years, I have realized they aren’t. They really do think about who won or lost.

I have never been able to figure out what to make of this winning or losing. I didn’t even know we were in a debate. I just thought we were having an enjoyable conversation. There are no winners and losers in a conversation; there is just a pleasant trying out of ideas and wandering all over the intellectual landscape.

That is why the passage above from Oakeshott halted me in my tracks. He is perfectly describing my life as a professor. I talk with students in my office because of the enjoyment of the conversation itself. The conversation is the aim. If you want an education, then the best way to get one is to simply pause and enjoy discovering whatever turns up in the wandering, serendipitous act of conversation. Learning is its own reward.

This is also exactly why I am constantly assigning books in classes other than the textbook and why I run reading groups and independent studies all the time. Reading books is another form of conversation; you are talking with an author, wandering along a new way of thinking and pausing to consider whether the argument is insightful or not. Reading is its own reward.

I had never before connected this idea that being a teacher means having conversations in my office about every topic under the sun with the idea that I have a conservative sensibility. When students discover I am a conservative, they always think first about national politics, but truth be told, I am not nearly as invested in national politics as I was when I was young. It’s vastly more enjoyable simply to have a conversation with a student for nothing other than the goal of having a conversation.

So, I paused at Oakeshott’s sentence above, realizing that my whole approach to being a teacher may be the product of my conservative sensibilities. If so, this explained another long-standing puzzle: why don’t all the other faculty on campus enjoy endless meandering conversations with students?

After pleasantly ruminating a bit, I got back to the essay, and suddenly, in the next couple of pages, I had another jarring sensation.

But there are relationships of another kind in which no result is sought and which are engaged in for their own sake and enjoyed for what they are and not for what they provide. This is so of friendship. Here, attachment springs from an intimation of familiarity and subsists in a mutual sharing of personalities.

That was a really interesting definition of friendship. But even more so, one page later: a friend “is somebody who engages the imagination, who excites contemplation, who provokes interest, sympathy, delight and loyalty simply on account of the relationship entered into.”

And there, in Oakeshotts’ definition of “friendship,” I discovered the most perfect description of the relationship I have with all those students who stop by to have those marvelous conversations.

Many students have asked me why I spend so much time talking with them.  They wonder what I am possibly getting out of the conversation.  They never believe me when I tell them that I enjoy the conversation.  They never seem to understand that I really am happy to talk with them about anything at all, about politics or science or poetry or their own personal struggles in life.  It makes no difference to me whether the conversation is hysterically funny and lively or deeply serious.  This conversation between friends is its own reward.