Tutor Spotlight

{tutor interview}

Tutor Spotlight

An Interview with Ms. Dougherty

interview by Craig Koch '23, photo by Liz Dowdy '23

How did you become interested in philosophy?

I grew up during the Cold War, and that certainly had an effect. I withdrew from my church at 14. Not much later, I read a lot of Marx and concluded he didn’t understand human nature. I read a good deal of Solzhenitsyn too. The opposition between liberal democracy and communism, and the claims and the flaws of both, were thought provoking for me, and I had questions about what was true more broadly. I read a lot but unsystematically, many novels and some philosophical works, including bad translations of Platonic dialogues. As a freshman in College I had a professor who assigned me (it was a one on one reading class) large portions of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. I don’t know what the professor was thinking but I guess I did imagine that a comprehensive account of the truth was possible. I read enough of the Phenomenology to think “Yes, this may be the truth.” But since I couldn’t tell whether or not it was the truth until I read all the thinkers Hegel had read, I had to keep reading and studying. I somehow thought I could ultimately judge for myself.

As you began to take an interest in philosophy, how was it that you hoped to pursue the subject? What factors were you looking at for continuing your education?

I had no plans. I was on a full scholarship so I figured I had four years to learn everything important. I was a philosophy major because I assumed philosophical texts would include the important things, but I approached classes in other disciplines hopefully, too. I didn’t know anything about graduate schools, probably until I was a junior, when I discovered that my professors expected me to go to graduate school. I applied because I wanted to keep studying. I didn’t have a clear idea of how one went about becoming an academic.

In your time as an undergraduate, what were some moments that were especially influential on your intellectual development?

One semester I took a class on Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. I talked to the professor after class one time and started to make comparisons (or draw contrasts) between Descartes and Aristotle. My professor dismissed my suggestions, saying that Descartes hadn’t read Aristotle. The implication was I should absorb what the professor said in his lectures and ask only for clarifications of his views. Dead end. That was a memorable moment because I knew the comparison was worth making despite the rebuff. I took classes on Kant with an extremely careful reader who ran his classes like SJC classes. He taught a class called “Kant’s Copernican Revolution,” which was on Kant’s First Critique. He asked an opening question and we went at it. He said almost nothing. I remember approaching him with some big claim after class and he just said “I’d like to see that.” It was up to me either to ditch the idea (after all, Mr. O didn’t see it and there was probably good reason for that), or to develop and support it and come back with something persuasive. If I became a more cautious reader and thinker it was due to that professor’s example. My department was stronger on Descartes through Heidegger than on the ancients so a few friends and I took theory classes in the political science department. Why was Socrates put to death? What is human wisdom? These were questions I hadn’t heard anyone address before. In general, reading Platonic dialogues with professors who weren’t preoccupied with scholarly questions but with human concerns was very compelling. I still wanted to know the truth and how humans could know it, but I recognized that when those questions arose in the context of human experience they could more easily be grasped and addressed.

After your time as an undergraduate, you went on to graduate school at Harvard to study government, and, after graduating with your doctorate from there, you went on to teach at Stonehill College for a few years before becoming a tutor at St. John’s in 1982. What was it about St. John’s that drew you to the college? How did you expect the College would help you to achieve your philosophical aspirations?

I knew about the College from when I was a senior in high school and considered coming here as a student. The Program was both compelling and (I have to admit) intimidating. I didn’t think much about the phrase Great Books but I definitely had some sense that there were books that were coherent works that conveyed thought of a high order. When I was in grad school I met some Johnnies. They liked to talk. They could even talk about politics when they thoroughly disagreed. I started reading old copies of The College and learned a bit about Klein. I was impressed that Klein thought the books could form the basis for the education not just of an elite but of human beings who choose to open their minds to them. I took the position at Stonehill before I finished my dissertation (on Montesquieu) and didn’t intend to stay there permanently. My dissertation advisor told me to “be a Montesquieu scholar” and I realized I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to come teach at the College because I didn’t feel compelled to profess. I was more likely to perish than publish because I didn’t know what to write that would be worth publishing. Besides, I’d read Kant and Hegel but I’d never looked at, for example, Newton. I wanted to do math again. I still was somewhat under the spell of Hegel but at that point I was trying to discern why I suspected he didn’t know the whole truth. Most of all I wanted to study the ancients. In general, I was confident the Program would give me a chance to continue inquiring without having to pretend to an expertise I didn’t possess.

Have you found St. John’s to meet those expectations?

I love the College. I am extremely grateful to the opportunities teaching here affords me to rethink convictions I have formed at one time or another and begin anew with the many questions that I have never fully addressed. Since I never aspired to be a scholar, after writing my dissertation I had the exaggerated (and absurd) reaction that I never wanted to read secondary literature again if I could avoid it.

It is a bit frustrating sometimes at the College to read so much so quickly. I didn’t realize as a grad student what a luxury it is to read something over and over, and let it lead you to another work which you then read with similar care before moving on. Having the time to write and rewrite something with care is precious, too. But the interconnections between different works on the Program, the opportunity to discuss great books with interested and thoughtful students and colleagues is well worth the disadvantages of life at the College. I can’t quite imagine life apart from the sort of conversations I have taken part in here (i.e., both in Annapolis and in Santa Fe).

Has anything about St. John’s surprised you during your time here?

Like any student here, I think, I have been impressed, not necessarily surprised, over and over again at how difficult material becomes accessible when you work at it, breaking it down into small steps.

Your preceptorial this year was on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Anabasis, and you are also a great admirer of Plato and the other ancients. What about the work of the ancients drives you to a consideration of their work, and how has thinking about them helped you to think about philosophy and human life?

It seems to me the ancients pose fundamental questions in a more direct way than later thinkers in the western tradition. I don’t deny that they are sometimes responding to earlier thinkers – Aristotle explicitly refers to them, for example. Still, his account of what a polis is seems like an account of political activity in general, unencumbered by theoretical commitments and historical accretions. Platonic dialogues illuminate not only fundamental questions but the human hopes and yearnings out of which they arise and which inform how they are posed. The concerns of Plato’s interlocutors are at the very least recognizable to contemporary readers. I’m tempted to say that they are finally indistinguishable from our own.

What does the study of Xenophon allow us to realize that perhaps isn’t as evident in the work of other ancients like Plato or Aristotle?

In his Socratic writings Xenophon presents a Socrates more thoroughly immersed in the city, and Xenophon defends him not only as just but as a teacher of gentlemanliness. Xenophon himself is a political and military leader as well as a student of Socrates. I don’t mean to suggest I see a conflict between Plato’s and Xenophon’s representation of Socrates. Rather, reading Xenophon is an opportunity to think again about who Socrates is.

If there was an opening question you could ask the college community to begin thinking about an author, topic, or work dear to you, what would it be?

How can we maintain our commitment to the reading of great books in the current climate in which greatness is often considered elitist and the commitment to truth-seeking inquiry is confused with ideology?