Reading as contemplation

Ref: William Shakespeare, First Folio Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories & tragedies, printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623,

Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-C1936

Today, more than ever, reading is an act of contemplation, theoria, in a manner similar to what Aristotle had in mind. He writes:

And contemplation seems to be the only activity loved for its own sake, for nothing comes from it beyond the contemplating, while from things involving action we gain something for ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent, beyond the action. And happiness seems to be present in leisure, for we engage in unleisured pursuits in order that we may be at leisure, and we make war in order that we may stay at peace. (1177b tr. Sachs)

Literacy had a good run. The decline of reading in the USA and elsewhere is concerning for many reasons, not the least of which is that it demands sustained attention in an age when it seems that our attention spans are declining.

So why the worry? The practical answer is that multitasking is bad for our brains. Neurologist Richard Cytowic illustrates:

During bedside rounds on the pediatric cancer ward, the story goes, the whoosh of an incoming text distracted the resident physician, who was entering medication orders and updating the electronic chart. She was a digital native; the message was about a friend’s upcoming party, nothing crucial in the context of the moment. But it momentarily seized her attention long enough to flush her working memory. (When you are interrupted you don’t have a chance to flush your working memory completely; a remnant of attention always remains behind, hooked onto the previous task. The larger the residue you hang on to, the higher the switching costs will be.) The clinical team at the bedside was discussing changing the dose of an intravenous drug, and she failed to enter the change. By the time the omission was discovered, the four-year-old patient had developed kidney failure and gone into shock. In a different setting of 257 nurses and 3,308 pediatric intensive care patients, medication errors occurred when a text or phone call came in on a nurse’s assigned institutional phone “in the 10 minutes leading up to a medication administration attempt.” (excerpted from Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age)

Beyond the practical answer there is a more philosophical one. Contemplation as end-in-itself answers the question "what do we live for?", and human beings must generate their answer in one of two ways. They must either imitate others or they must generate new answers themselves, and both options involve discernment (or what Aristotle calls deliberation or judgment (krinein). Recommended reading: Patrick Byrne, Ethics of Discernment, especially Introduction.)

Discernment is the alternative to guessing. Discernment is responsible choosing; guessing is irresponsible choosing. Reading--especially reading those whose opinions matter (endoxa)--facilitates discernment.

Accordingly, as I begin teaching in this new semester, I will be working closely with students during class time on "restarting" their reading. Here is my point-of-departure. What do you think?

Reading is a contemplative act. It is about giving our undivided attention to another person’s (or group’s) carefully discerned ideas presented in written form. Writing is thinking: and it is a particularly refined form of thinking that demands clarity and precision. Reading, then, is an act of love.

As such, it requires attention. More specifically, it requires that form of attention that we are describing in this course as discernment: the careful sifting of ideas and underlying motives that the author presents in the text. The act of reading is profoundly more nuanced than any AI summary. It is an extended conversation with another person or group, an experience of dwelling with them for a time. Reading well may change our ideas and affect our emotions. It may call to mind our past experiences, or elicit our future hopes. It may cause confusion, joy, or anger.

It is, of course, important to seek to understand what an author writes: the object. But it is also important to pay attention to our own subjectivity when we read, to become aware of the “I” that is doing the reading and being affected by it.