It might surprise Program of Liberal Studies (PLS) Professor Walter Nicgorski to learn that, despite his impressive background in political philosophy and for all our conversations on Socratic irony and education for citizenship, Dante’s INFERNO is the text that will bring the fondest memories of him to my mind and heart.

The INFERNO was one of the last books I read with Professor Nicgorski. My first reading of Dante’s epic produced a paper reflecting on the relationship between Dante the pilgrim and his guide, Virgil, a relationship which resembles my own with Nicgorski.

I first met Professor Nicgorksi in the fall of my sophomore year.  I had just begun in the Program of Liberal Studies, and at times I felt my learning had a hellish quality worthy of Dante’s imagination. Just as those in the fourth circle of hell must eternally push weights back and forth, I was damned to flip forever though pages of Homer or Sophocles.

As I grew in my classes and began to know my teachers, however, I realized how important my education was to me and how important my teachers, my guides, would become. Professor Nicgorski, now ending his 48 years of teaching at Notre Dame, has been a guide for many students, helping them to understand, just as Virgil did Dante, their nature, their reason, and their souls.

For his undergraduate education Nicgorski enrolled at Georgetown University with his sights set on law school. After “entering the world of ideas,” however, Nicgorski says his attention redirected toward “teaching texts with a love for them and their ideas, especially those that dealt with moral and political experience.”

Seeing on occasion through a classroom door at Georgetown the inquiring faces of college-age students helped inspire Nicgorski to pursue an MA and PhD in political philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Seeking an academic environment where “a life of faith and the presence of the Church had a key role,” Nicgorski selected Notre Dame as his first choice for employment after late in the hiring season an offer came his way. Though hired as a member of the political science department, he taught on their behalf a yearlong core course covering such classics as Dante, Montaigne, and Cervantes.

These texts do not constitute the bread and butter of a political philosopher, but they mattered to Nicgorski.  When a spot opened up to teach politics in the Program of Liberal Studies (then the General Program), he joined the program and has continued to teach there ever since.

A testament to Nicgorski’s character is the consistency with which his peers and his students describe him. PLS Professor Emeritus Phillip Sloan describes Nicgorski as “a person of sterling integrity; I cannot imagine a better colleague.”

His virtues became even more apparent during Professor Nicgorski’s tenure as chair of PLS from 1979 to 1985. PLS Professor Emeritus M. Katherine Tillman described Professor Nicgorski’s years as chair.

“Professor Nicgorki, whether you disagreed with him or not, was always judicious, fair, prepared, and reasonable,” she said.

The consensus among the faculty members points to Nicgorski’s deep concern with the great books and learning in general, a sentiment shared by his students.

“I always felt I had to be prepared for his political theory class,” PLS senior Dan Collins remembers. “He gave you the feeling that if you didn’t read carefully you were going to miss out on something important, something great.”

The sense of duty to learning inculcated in his students is appropriate, considering Nicgorski’s recent scholarly efforts. They have focused on Cicero, a political philosopher who explicitly addresses the importance of duty. Nicgorski has just finished editing a collection of essays, entitled CICERO’S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY, which has been published by University of Notre Dame Press.

In his retirement, Nicgorski plans to explore Cicero and his works further, especially now that he can spend more time in his study “full of plenty of sun.” Retirement, in that way, he says, will be very nice, with “more time to read and write.”

Nicgorski laments, however, the loss of the classroom experience so integral to his past 48 years.

Nicgorski’s hallmarks as teacher have been character education and education for citizenship. He calls education “the key contributor to human development.” Nicgorski has been committed to higher education because it trains the leaders of tomorrow, teaching them the constitutional inheritance of our country and equipping them to protect it.

He is not interested in producing liberals or conservatives, but encouraging a philosophical habit of mind in each of his students and creating intelligent liberals and intelligent conservatives.

Just as Dante needed Virgil to escape from hell, I could not have achieved what I have or become who I am without Nicgorski as my guide. In the paper I handed Nicgorski on Dante and Virgil, I noted the fleetingness of our teachers. Dante moves from Virgil to Beatrice to St. Bernard as the DIVINE COMEDY evolves. Each teaches him new things that he may draw closer to God.

Nicgorski commented that my observation saddened him if I meant that a person forgets his teachers. Impossible. Nicgorski has done the thing that all teachers strive to do: lit the fire within the student, stirred his soul.

Once a teacher has done this, the real relationship of learning can begin. I said I read books WITH Nicgorski, never FOR him. The latter implies I labored, the former that I journeyed. Virgil forced Dante to look inside his soul, to better understand the ways of the world and the ways of God, all the while leaping though the fire of hell. Though my obstacles were instead philosophers and poets, they also led me to a better understanding of self.

With graduation only weeks away, I feel myself preparing for the next steps of life. As I do so, I am eternally grateful to have had someone guide me with such humility as to say he learned with me. For that reason I hope Professor Nicgorski knows how thankful I to have journeyed with so wonderful a guide and, if I may, lifelong friend.

Contact Luke Lennon at llennon@nd.edu to advise him about teaching America.