Anti-Climacus

I have been kicking around the 'why aren't there more conservatives in academia?' question on and off. Very broadly, I have in mind the idea that there are two main approaches to higher education, which can look similar but often expect vastly different things from students. One of these cultures opens students to research and the other doesn't. But--and this is key--I think they're both more than acceptable, and would be recognized as such by academics (even if not their thing, they'd recognize it as a valid goal for education).

I'm going to pursue this because I think it would make for a more elegant lead-in to my Auden paper (and some of my other literature and politics interests). However, I should note I have no certain ideas--just a bunch of impressions that seem as though they should fit together.

In some drafted thoughts on conservatism and academia, I made the following differentiation, which is something of a first cut:

Canonical figures are interesting, for research purposes, when they are complex; when some of their work has not been integrated with the rest of their work; when someone of previous substantial importance has fallen out of favor for inexplicable reasons (Grotius!); when someone has been unjustly neglected, or influential in ways not understood; when their ideas are applied to contexts they had not anticipated.

Canonical figures are interesting for teaching purposes when they eloquently summarize or exemplify points of view; appeal to a disinterested reader but retain interest for those who have encountered the text before; pose interesting questions (but not necessarily answer them); propose answers that are obviously right; propose answers that are obviously wrong, but wrong in an illuminating way; and bear the instructor reading and re-reading them over many years.