耶鲁大学公开课: 早期中世纪史，284-1000

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If you look at fourth century artifacts, things like mosaics on the floors of dining rooms, people often put mottos there. And their mottos are things like "Joyful times everywhere." or "A world restored." The fourth century is interpretable as an era of increasing gloom, because we know that in the fifth century things are going to collapse.

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It is the ancient idea of what's called “leisure with dignity”. And indeed, that's what being a professor was supposed to be when I signed up for it. Otium cum dignitate, leisure with dignity. "Leisure" meaning not wasting time leisure, but not responding to clients, or not responding to urgent scheduling phone calls, deals. You've got to show up to your classes, but that's not really onerous. At least, that was the idea. And I won't go into the frustrations of being a professor or the dissatisfactions. But the classical idea is otium cum dignitate, "dignity" meaning not being naked in the desert, not having to eat locusts and figure out how to-- "OK, I had curried locusts last night. Tonight, I think I'll have locust casserole." No, no, no. Something nicer than that.

Are people perfectible? People who believe in education tend to believe that they are. On the other hand, very well-educated people have been bad. Hitler loved classical music. So did Stalin. Just because you are a connoisseur of art doesn't make you a good person.

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Well, that world is over. That world is over. I don't pretend to be part of that world, either. And that's a world that would have existed in the time of Horace, or the years after Horace, who lives at the time of Augustus. This would have existed in 300 A D. It would have existed, at least, in a few monasteries in 800 AD. It would have flourished in the Britain of the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.