What is a Johnnie?

{student reflection}

What Properly Constitutes a 'Johnnie'?

Drew Maglio, SJCA GI '22

“What constitutes a Johnnie”—or “what ought to constitute a Johnnie” is a perplexing question that pervades the halls of St. John’s and the coffee houses and pubs of Annapolis (or at least those of Maryland Ave.). In response to this enduring conundrum, many plausibilities have been postulated and it is generally held that Johnnies are a strange but distinct breed of weird, seldom found and duplicated elsewhere. While this exposition is by no means intended to be a rhetorical didactic, there are—I think—some general and overarching characteristics that pervade, denote, and differentiate Johnnies from other types of learners and it is now my business to describe these characteristics.

First and foremost, let it be known that by ‘Johnnie,’ I do not merely mean a student at St. John’s, but rather an ahistorical and contextually devoid, ‘truly liberal learner’— who possesses a certain essence and spirit that constitutes their essential being or form. Thus, while there may indeed be a proliferation of Johnnies at St. John’s, a singular institution cannot claim a monopoly of liberal education, or the only education suitable free and autonomous beings in possession of the capacity for reason. Hence while there is undoubtedly a higher concentration of Johnnies at St. John’s, i.e. America’s greatest liberal arts college which is wholly dedicated to liberal educational methodology and the Western (and Eastern) Canon, there are also ‘Johnnies in Spirit’ found elsewhere, many of whom I know personally.

But what is the spirit that these Johnnies share? To answer this, I will attempt to explicate and delineate the intrinsic and inherent spirit that denotes a genuine liberal learner, or colloquially: a ‘Johnnie.’ To this I postulate that the first and most requisite contingency is the possession of an insatiable curiosity and desire to not only learn, but learn all things humanly possible. Flowing from this premise, a proper Johnnie is universally interested and therefore seeks to learn as much as possible about a wide variety of disciplines simultaneously. Accordingly, Johnnies are in possession of a vast array of sometimes conflicting and paradoxical interests, intrigues, inclinations, hobbies, and extracurricular ventures. Augmenting our Johnnie’s curiosity, is an almost infinite creativity that compels us to produce things of immense beauty and value for its own sake. Thus, in pursuing sweeping interests, a proper Johnnie possesses no ulterior motive—economic or otherwise— and therefore,merely seeks mastery and learning for its own sake out of a genuine spirit of learning. For a genuine Johnnie, the activity of learning and exploring can only cease with death. Consequently, the Johnnie is the archetypal generalist—and though intellectually capable of ascending to the heights of mechanized and specialized academia— prefers being a competent jack of all trades, rather than a master of one.

Always an idealist at heart, the Johnnie seeks mastery of all things pursued, however due to the sheer difficultly of attaining mastery in any given field—not to mention all— it is likely he will fall short. And yet, the idealized Johnnie remains a ‘Renaissance Man: polymath who is able to synthesize and tie a common thread through the seemingly disparate disciplines of philology, philosophy, and physics for instance, which—as it turns out–are indeed, all interconnected and interdependent.

Still, and this may be the most contentious claim herein, the Johnnie acquiesces to the probability (or likely certainty) of Absolute Truth—even if it lies outside the bounds of human reason and faculty. A vital feature of a Johnnie then, is a humble prostration before what actually is. Therefore, a proper Johnnie is constantly refining, reordering, and redefining their moral and philosophical disposition as they gather more information through the activity of living. In other words: as their preconceived maxims are tested, Johnnies amen and recalibrate in light of new evidence, for life itself is an incessant pursuit of individual self-improvement.

Generally introspective and introverted into a world of their own making by nature, Johnnies have a propensity to watch from the sidelines. As a remedy for this, Johnnies must be prescribed—in terms of learning methodology— both experiential and theoretical means: the central idea here being that in order to truly learn and grasp the abstract, it must be put into demonstrably concrete terms through various experiments and proofs. And thus, in order to actualize potentiality, a distinctly phenomenological component must be invoked to provoke motion in those more philosophic and contemplative individuals who have a tendency to remain at rest. Although it may not seem so at first, a desire for phenomenological novelty and reasoned labor are vital components of the ideal Johnnie’s essential character. Make no mistake however, that reading books ripe with rich and diverse ideas remains the vital and nourishing lifeblood of the Johnnie.

Being far more interested in ideas and things, rather