{"id":9413,"date":"2021-06-14T17:14:13","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T17:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/06\/14\/a-modern-restlessness-with-renaissance-roots\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:41:27","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:41:27","slug":"a-modern-restlessness-with-renaissance-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/a-modern-restlessness-with-renaissance-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"A modern restlessness with Renaissance roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many before her, the senior had come to her professors to talk about her future.<\/p>\n

She had spent her undergraduate years strengthening her portfolio with internships, study away, Phi Beta Kappa and other impressive achievements. Her plan was to go to law school \u2013 or maybe get a Ph.D.<\/p>\n

Or maybe, as she told Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, a seemingly infinite number of other options. Teaching? Politics? Farming? Travel abroad? Returning home?<\/p>\n

\""Why

“Why We Are Restless” by Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey<\/p><\/div>\n

The senior looked \u201cless like a very fortunate person choosing from the bountiful banquet she has earned the right to enjoy than a terminally ill patient choosing from a grim variety of palliatives,\u201d recall the Storeys in the introduction to \u201cWhy We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment<\/a>,\u201d published in April by Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a kind of frenetic paralysis,\u201d says Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs Jenna Silber Storey in her office in Johns Hall. \u201cIt\u2019s activity without distinctive purpose, when you\u2019re full of motion but you\u2019re not necessarily going anywhere. We chose to call this \u2018restlessness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That restlessness, the Storeys say, roils up from our modern conception of what happiness should be.<\/p>\n

They first observed it among students, but during the years spent in research and writing, the professors saw restlessness all around them. And while it might seem like a uniquely 21st<\/sup>-century problem, the authors found its roots stretching back to the 16th<\/sup> century, in the works of French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne.<\/p>\n

Montaigne was addressing the idea of the \u201csummum bonum\u201d \u2013 humankind\u2019s highest good, what makes life worth living, says Benjamin Storey, the Jane Gage Hipp Professor of Politics and International Affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople had been arguing about this for thousands of years, and they hadn\u2019t come up with any consensus answers,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat Montaigne says is, \u2018We\u2019re not going to find an answer to this question. We don\u2019t need to. We can just dabble our way to happiness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of finding a single transcendent ideal, Montaigne argued, humankind should focus on \u201cimmanent contentment,\u201d finding pleasure and purpose in a variety of tangible worldly pursuits, making oneself happy here and now.<\/p>\n

Montaigne\u2019s essays were hugely influential, digested and debated by writers such as Descartes, Freud, Emerson, Darwin and Nietzsche. In \u201cWhy We Are Restless,\u201d the Storeys probe in detail the way the ideal of human purpose was discussed over the centuries by three other French philosophers: Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rosseau and Alexis de Tocqueville, who was renowned for his 19th<\/sup>-century observations of American society.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Tocqueville sees when he comes to America is the Montaignean quest for happiness writ large,\u201d says Benjamin Storey. \u201cAmericans are trying to dabble their way to happiness. These people are more prosperous, freer, more enlightened than any people the world has produced up to this moment. And nevertheless, they are restless in the midst of their prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which leads to the modern-day dilemma faced by the Storeys\u2019 future law student (or Ph.D. candidate, teacher or farmer). How can people deal with their excess of options, resist distraction and anxiety, and channel their frenetic dabbling into a purposeful intent?<\/p>\n

One answer is in what the Storeys call \u201ca genuine liberal education, which is really an education in the art of choosing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has to begin with taking seriously this question of what a worthy life is<\/em>,\u201d Jenna Silber Storey says.<\/p>\n

When they pose that question to their liberal arts and sciences students at Furman, \u201cwe do it in part because we know it makes them jittery,\u201d she says. \u201cThey don\u2019t like to rank things. We\u2019re pressing them to think about the various things to which human beings can devote their lives and try to discern among them \u2013 what distinct satisfactions and shortcomings each of those kinds of lives has, and which are more choiceworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their university is well suited to help students make those discernments, say the professors, who also serve as directors of Furman\u2019s Tocqueville Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurman is insistent on its identity as an institution that offers a liberal arts education,\u201d says Jenna Silber Storey. \u201cThe purpose of the liberal arts is to help you ask the question of what is good, what is worth doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart of The Furman Advantage is being able to sit in small classes with excellent students,\u201d says Benjamin Storey.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd faculty who want to help you figure things out,\u201d adds Jenna Silber Storey. \u201cWe like being faculty at Furman, because you don\u2019t get the chance to work with students as closely at many other colleges.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy We Are Restless\u201d would probably not exist at all if it weren\u2019t for the scholarly environment at Furman, the book\u2019s authors add.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt allowed us to see a problem that we came to believe is endemic to the modern West right now,\u201d says Jenna Silber Storey. \u201cAnd it was being here that allowed us to reflect on it \u2013 and also to reflect on it with our students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many before her, the senior had come to her professors to talk about her future. She had spent her undergraduate years strengthening her portfolio with internships, study away, Phi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-politics-and-international-affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}