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Page 25 text:
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One of the few exceptions to the unmerciful and irrevocable judgments which students pass upon ' the faculty ' , is Gerhart Spiegler, whom few students think they know well enough to praise or damn. Unlike those faculty whom we know well, and those for whom we have no hope what- ever. Mr. Spiegler meets us in class and out with an unmistakable honesty and yet remains a mys- tery. This disturbing man brings to Haverford an intriguing history which has clearly left its marks. After a fundamentalist upbringing and an un- doubtedly dashing undergraduate career in Ger- many, he came to the University of Chicago to study history and philosophy of religions ; then, for some reason, he was induced to become Haverford ' s religion department. Here, where student and faculty walk shoulder to shoulder, alike distin- guished and often indistinguishable, was an un- avoidable challenge to the traditional European ways, and this challenge has been met with a willingness and success notable even in this little paradise. In his involvement with us, Mr. Spiegler has brought us to a closer involvement with the ques- tions and decisions of man as an intellectual. In his classes, we must always decide whether to be quarrelsome (That ' s absurd!) or accepting (That is Absurd), much as he seems to be deciding whether to try to convince, or to ask acceptance. He clothes himself in the thoughts and feelings of the thinkers he teaches, becoming a real disciple of each in turn, yet always prepared to criticize later from his own unique position. There is in this method a gentle seduction: he would like to make us too disciples of each philosophy, giving us the EXPERIENCE of an ideology, not just its mere arms ' -length knowledge, so that our defense of it against his critique might be the believer ' s defense, not the skeptic ' s detached quibbling; for much of what he teaches has its meaning only when be- lieved. Gerhart Spiegler appeals always to the whole student, not conventionally to the intellect when in the classroom, to the residual man when in the ' informal places ' : it is not enough merely to think in the classroom, or merely to be amiable elsewhere. It is understood that the effort to understand, to participate in meanings, is inseparable from the serious student ' s life as a whole : only in so far as we understand what we are and how we have come upon the pr esent are we truly men. His aim, then, is surely not to teach us THINGS, but rather to teach us ways of meeting others, our history, ourselves. In his classroom, the intellect must itself stand up against, and not merely criticize, life: we ask whether the idea does justice to experience, and often whether our experience does justice to our possibilities as men. Each individual participates in each class from his unique vantage point, for the individual in his unique awareness is the only beginning, and the only end. we can grasp. And in looking back upon a class, one can see that Mr. Spiegler has 21
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Page 26 text:
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elicited from each the kind of insight each is best prepared to give, has coaxed from some a first statement of a vague intuition, and has somehow skillfully woven a precarious unity at the last moment. Beneath these doings there is an understanding between student and teacher, subtly pointed to only in the breach, that work will be assigned and done because of its potential value to the stu- dent as man, and that it will be done. If class is to be a dialogue, in which the crucial things hap- pen between students and teacher, then we too must know at very least the language of the day, I and Thou, the Encompassing: ultimately empty or not, these are the frames for our speech, and we must have them at hand. Above, we wondered why G e r h a r t Spiegler came to Haverford; guessing that he might very well have come just to see what it was all about, we wonder why he has stayed. The answer can only be that he sees here one of the increasingly few opportunities to teach ways, not things. Only the continuing honest response of the whole stu- dent can justify his staying here, for if it is things that are to be taught, they can be taught far more easily at a cosmopolitan graduate school: his being here is a faith in us, as ours is a faith in him. To those who have taken courses in religion, Gerhart has been an unusually competent teacher; in some of us, he has stirred a new ambition, too, or revived one nearly dead, for his involvement, knowledge, and impressive articulateness in our foreign language have shown us an enviable stand- ard of scholarship. But what is most remarkable is that we have seen ourselves and our indecisions in this tense man who lives his indecisions day by day. Perennially suspended between college and university, he weighs with us the academic career, and seeks its true rewards : a religious man study- ing religion, he asks us what relation we would have between what we think and what we are; a European in America, he views us critically, yet he is one of us. And we think of him, as of our- selves, not as someone who IS somewhere, but as someone GOING somewhere : his tremendous en- ergy, and the possibilities to which his thoughts point, convince us that despite his sincerity we know but a part of him. We begin to realize that if he remains who he is, we will never know Gerhart Spiegler as we know those who have yielded to the contradictions in themselves, and have become simple monophony. Nor, we realize, will we ever know ourselves in that way unless we too give in. But we also begin to see a greater knowledge of a more human self emerge in the meeting of people who dare to in- volve themselves totally. And we remember Gerhart as one who better than most makes Haverford what it uniquely should be, and shows us the excitement and joy of living dangerously with ourselves. Eric Lob 22
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