The Infinite, Living and Inclusive Classical Tradition

The classical tradition really has nothing to do with race. To understand this, you have to go back to before the color line was created. This is before the Middle Passage, before slavery, before Jim Crow, before the Civil Rights Movement or the Black Panther, before Europe began to colonize Black and Brown spaces, before humanity was divided by skin color and false Christian theology. We have to go back to a time where humanity, the world, wisdom and knowledge were “raceless.”

To understand what is true, I have always had to go back to the beginning, because once the color line was created, almost everything rested on the foundation of White supremacy. Even though my parents faithfully taught me about the contributions of African Americans and Africa, my understanding of this still seemed disjointed. My history always has felt separate from anyone else’s, as separate as the 7 continents are from one another. What I failed to realize is that my story was stitched to everyone else’s through a tradition that was shared with every continent. My epiphany about this happened one day as I was reading Euclid’s ELEMENTS. It was a small reference, where he acknowledge the understanding the Egyptians had about geometry. This one phrase somehow gave me the eyes to see what once was invisible, scribbled over by the color line that says all knowledge and wisdom comes from Europe.

Once my eyes were opened, I did not regret eating from this tree of knowledge of what is so GOOD. I discovered that wisdom and greatness has been brought into the human story by all people and we all are interconnected. We all build upon one another. This takes nothing away from what Rome or Kush has created. We are not in a competition of greatness and discovery. At least I am not, anyway. I merely seek to show all people that the human traditions, canonized by people groups, often teach us more about ourselves and our ancestry. When I read about the classical tradition, I learn more about myself and my ancestors, because they were part of the conversation. Socrates, Pythagoras, Homer, Plutarch and Herodotus tell us so. They knew nothing about White supremacy or Jim Crow. In Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris, we learn so much about Egyptian faith and culture and how it connects to Roman mythology. From reading this, we can see how mythology evolves as stories are shared throughout the world.

So on this journey into studying the classical tradition with new eyes, eyes that are opened to seeing the equal value and greatness of all the story tellers that engaged in the Great Conversation during the ancient times and beyond, I recognize that the Classical tradition is neither Black, White, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, African, or any such thing. It is simply there for us to bring into conversation with whoever we are. When people become offended that I say that the Classical Tradition isn’t Christian, then that reveals a lack of understanding the origins of the tradition. Many of the ancients had no idea who Jesus was, and many were polytheistic. However, it feels Christian because there came a time where the Christian community (St. Augustine masterfully wove in the classical tradition with Christian theology) began to engage in conversation with it and those conversations were documented, then integrated into the classical canon. The canon is not a definitive finite thing. It is infinite and living, ever growing, ever pulling our human experiences into conversation with it. We all can claim it. So just as those of European descent can posture it as being about the West, people of African descent can posture it as being about our human experiences too. Just as Christians frame it as part of our faith journey, Muslims and Jews can too. Instead of being frustrated or offended about the diverse people who have brought their human experience into conversation with the tradition, as if by doing that, we are somehow “messing it up,” take a look at history and notice how that is what every person has done with it. This is how we even have a Western Canon, because of the collection of writings from those who have been in conversation with the tradition. So why can’t others who have wondered about Aristotle, also be respected as part of the tradition? Dare we say this is something only those of European descent can do? I encourage you to free yourself from the spirit of Jim Crow and rethink what the classical tradition really is.

When Mortimer Adler created the formula for the classical tradition, as being any text that reveals a conversation with the tradition, he provided us a way to continue the work of growing the canon. Not changing it, but growing it to show how all of our ancestors have been engaged in a conversation with it. Adler did not want his work to die with him. He did not spend thousands of hours developing his blue print for the work to die with him! In continuing his work, we begin to erase the color line. We develop the courage of Herodotus who was not afraid to leave Greece to explore Africa, Asia and the Middle East to learn more about humanity. We rise above the Veil to SEE one another as our human brother and sister, and the classical tradition is our common literacy to help us understand and appreciate our common human experiences. Mortimer Adler was taking us back to the times of the Scipionic Circle where all types of people gathered together to talk about classics and classical philosophy in ancient Rome. Terence the African playwright and Scipio were there, along with many other leading philosophers, artists, politicians, and leaders joined together by a common literacy. We have all been plagued with eyes that can only see the classical world thought the lens of White supremacy, but that is a lie. The books tell us of how we all were part of the conversation. Mortimer was not creating something new, but he was RESURRECTING something that the color line almost destroyed or caused us to forget. He wanted us to understand something and he ran out of time before we could understand his full message:

The classical tradition is not YOUR faith, YOUR race, YOUR anything, but it is OURS.