In a world of ceaseless conflict, strife, and oppression, where even basic disagreements have descended into what Alasdair MacIntyre calls, “the interminability of public argument,” Professor Anthony Esolen claims to have found the problem.
In a lecture titled, “The Mighty Child: Visions of Youth in Dante and Shakespeare” during the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture’s annual fall conference, Prof. Esolen claimed that our world is engaged in what he calls “the ancient quarrel, the quarrel of age against child.”
Prof. Esolen, a professor of English at Providence College, argued that today’s materialist society is the result of eradicating Christ-like youthfulness and replacing it with the age of progress.
Prof. Esolen explained that after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lost the youthful innocence of man by giving in to the devil’s temptation of strength and maturity, the world became steeped in a conflict between the Christian idea of youth in Christ and the materialist notion of age and progress.
The materialist notion of age, Prof. Esolen claimed, is what led political philosophers like Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes “to see in pre-political man, nothing more than a war against all, and to prescribe as remedy for that war, not love or conversion of heart, but the artificial restraint upon enmity imposed by that hulking, ancient, inhuman God called Leviathan, or the State.”
Prof. Esolen explained that in a materialistic world, we long to shed the embarrassment of dependency, and we desire to be strong, autonomous, and self-thinking.
“In such a world,” he said, “it is necessary to be grown and strong, like a Machiavellian prince, and it is pitiable to be small and weak, as St. Teresa of Lesuix puts it, ‘to be an atom of Jesus.’”
According to Prof. Esolen, hope for the future lies in Christ-like childlikeness, “for the future belongs to the child, the child of Christ! And the hosts of children love him.”
Prof. Esolen pointed to scenes in Dante’s “Inferno,” Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” and William Shakespeare’s “Tempest,” where writers used notions of youth and innocence to display that “everlasting truth that unites us to God and to one another.” This youth and innocence counters the burden of materialism.
He focused particularly on the redemptive figure of Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” referencing the last part of Scrooge’s dream, where he witnesses the Cratchit family mourning their dead son Tim. “In this scene,” said Prof. Esolen, “Scrooge was made one in their love of a little child, his heart fairly broke with remorse, and all the old dismal wisdom of his world, his material mind, and his soul of an accounting house ledger book, fell away.” “
Drawing on his explanation of Dante’s childlikeness before God in “Paradiso,” Prof. Esolen explained, “When he [Scrooge] awoke from his dream, which was no dream but truth, he learned that it was still the day when the Christ child was born. Scrooge, in the joy of his new youth, blurted out his version of the words of Dante before the living God, ‘I don’t know anything at all! I am quite like a baby!’”
Prof. Esolen explained that God wants us to be like little children that we may be most dear to him and to one another, and therefore most like God himself in his true power and glory.
Prof. Esolen used the example of Christ, illustrating his claim that Christ-like childlikeness offers hope for the future. Christ “dwel[t] among us for love, [could] hardly move his little hand… sowed the heavens with stars as thick as grain, [could not] speak a word, who is word, and spoke the light into being.”
“Materialism,” Prof. Esolen offered, “looks upon the child and sees something less than a pig or dog, a contribution perhaps to our wellbeing or a consumer of resources, but nothing wondrous, nothing holy.”
Prof. Esolen concluded by quoting the gospel, thereby encouraging the audience to enter into the state of child-like wonder Christ says is necessary for eternal life. “Then let the words of our savior,” said Prof. Esolen, “who well knew the hearts of men, ring in our ears: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’ says he, looking to his disciples and to us now and always. ‘For such is the kindom of heaven.’ How can it be otherwise? For to us a child is born, unto us, a son is given.”
Andrew keeps it real over in Morrissey Manor. Send him crazy dance moves at alynch@nd.edu.
