To Learn Is Beautiful, But Who Gets To? Katherine Starting Out

Katherine (left) riding on a double-decker bus to somewhere, looking out and thinking.  “When I think back to my time in theater, the practice of putting yourself into someone’s else’s shoes was great for me.  At such a young age I hadn’t yet developed [consistent and far-reaching] empathy.

“In theater, paying attention to people is important (decisions, intentions, and all of that).  I see that practice as adjacent to philosophy, in that philosophy can be the normative intervention that comes after observing how people act – from how do people act to how should people act.  In the theater class I’ve been doing lately, we would be talking about a scene and I would want to say:  Oh my gosh! They shouldn’t be doing that!“

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With this post, Katherine Cassese’s new mini-series as part of Into Philosophy begins.  It’s called Starting Out In Philosophy. 

As Sidra & Jeremy discussed with Heidi in October of 2020, this mini-series was meant to follow the slogan, “How we became part of the debate.”  It was originally meant to ask: “How did philosophers in the thick of active scholarly exchanges find themselves there?”  But almost a year of “Genealogies of Philosophy” and “Philosophy as a Way of Life” led Sidra and Jeremy to shift their focus.  What it would be to follow an in-coming freshperson interested in philosophy as that person makes their way in college?

Jeremy thought of Katherine, with whom he’d worked during a summer internship from her school.  Sidra liked the idea.

Katherine came up with the new title of her series, replacing the old one that had been projected.  She will be providing quarterly updates on her educational experience at Harvard College in long-form posts, often with guests.

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Jeremy: In the spirit of Plato’s Phaedrus, where do you come from?

And how do you think of philosophy?

Katherine’s friend Jenna; Katherine and friends; Katherine and her brother.

Katherine: Hello everyone!

My conventional answer is that I spent much of my young life in a theater that was my daycare from kindergarten until fifth grade. The theater was wonderful and fun – an environment allowing me to develop a lot of empathy at a young age by virtue of imaginatively having to put myself into another person’s shoes.

Just about the time I aged out of that theater, I arrived at Laurel School, a private institution that is marketed as an “all-girls” school, although that does not reflect the gender identity of the people who go there.  I graduated from Laurel last month.

Both my theater daycare and Laurel are often contrasted with what “the real world”  is. In theater, you’re playing out scenarios that are contrary to reality in some way.  And our school was unusual because of its all-female aspect.

At school, for instance, we were intentionally shielded from misogyny.  Growing up away from it has felt so great. And yet as my friends and I have increasingly come to see, our school’s space also shielded us from problems that we would have been better off recognizing and knowing more about, rather than having them obscured.

Now there’s a more philosophical answer to the question from the Phaedrus that goes back to my family. I would always argue with my father about politics and at such a young age that it is weird, looking back, for me to have been thinking about many of the political issues we discussed then!  I think kids have what I might call “arrogance” but is probably better rendered as a curious innocence. They are willing to question and say when things don’t make sense.

Sometimes I would use my arguing powers some in a positive way. For instance, I decided at a young age that it didn’t make sense to eat animals, and I wasn’t going to do that anymore – and I’ve held to that!

But I’ve also used my ability to argue, well, for bad purposes too: to dominate others in a conversation or to prove to others that I was smarter. A lot of the ways interacting with philosophy has played out with me can be seen in my getting a little bit closer to the positive ways you can use reason and contemplation.

An important event on my way to philosophy was attending the School for Ethics and Global Leadership in Washington, D.C. for a semester.  The students took reasoning together to another level.  We labored over little things. This may seem trivial, but it’s an example of how into the minutiae of life we got: we wondered, for instance, if we should complement the young female teacher’s sparkly shoes.  Or is that sexist? Perhaps we shouldn’t be paying attention to the teacher’s outfit? Because our questions were about what is mundane, reasoning became real and powerful.

Then, last summer, I had the philosophy internship you mentioned. We talked about philosophy a lot, and I got to attend conferences and other philosophy meetings.  I learned from talking about how to pursue, maybe, a full, good life, and I saw how, among other things, philosophy could play more of a role in that.  

I come from Cleveland, a colonized place with a history of violence that continues to this day.  Yet especially as I start to get in the mindset of leaving for Cambridge, Massachusetts, I find myself weirdly nostalgic for Cleveland and more appreciative of everything here.

Those are strange things to hold simultaneously – that love for a place and that recognition of its problems. But I think that out of the love comes the wanting it to be better. And that reminded me of Stanley Cavell and perfectionism:  Wanting something to be better.

I think philosophy is a good way to make things better. I believe in the power of reason to make our communities better. However, some background conditions to reason have to exist, like trust between people, and a lot of trust doesn’t exist in my society right now.

When I think of Harvard, I think of people in my community who are critical of “Marxist intellectuals.” They feel that I am about to go off to be propagandized!

Sidra:  I’m struck by your comments about trust as a condition on reason. There’s a mode of argumentation in Kantian philosophy called “transcendental argument.” A transcendental argument starts basically from something we take for granted, like reasoning between people, and asks after its enabling conditions – as you said, its “background conditions.” You gave a transcendental argument. 

I picture you arguing politics with your dad. I wonder how trust was operative there.  What conditions allowed reasoning to flourish in your life?

Also, what does it mean for reason not to be dominating, what does that specifically look like?

"Kids assume that things should make sense."  Katherine and her dad; Katherine with neighborhood kids, 2008

Katherine:  When I argued with my dad, it never factored into my mind at all – or probably not much – what would happen if I said something he didn’t view as true.  There weren’t really consequences when I was wrong.  I think that was important for me to be able to share in reasoning.  There was care between people even when you’re wrong or when you disagree. 

It’s important to trust that someone has good intentions.  Knowing this of my parents, I viewed them as believable, epistemic sources.

Within my community at Laurel and in the program in D.C., being personally close to people was conducive to a good learning environment.  I could say something in good faith that I believed and, when I was wrong (or when they thought I was wrong), they were able to tell me in a way that I was never really thinking, “oh do they hate me now?” or “do they think something terrible of me?”

We had already affirmed our respect for each other.  So I was more able, when they were correcting me, to focus on the substance of the idea and on its impact. If people can say what they think, knowing they can trust the situation, and their interlocuters can tell them that they’re wrong, people can also be open to changing their minds.

What I worry about with reason being dominating is the case when someone is smart and wrong. I worry that being smarter, or more clever, or using more logical points, can convince people about the wrong things.

But if people enter a conversation with some sort of equality, in the sense that each views the other as a legitimate source of information, good things can happen. We can learn stuff from each other.

Knowing a little bit of philosophy, I think I have become a much better person for my friends to talk to. I ask better questions, listen better, and I give better suggestions for which things might matter more to the person I am talking to.  It is comforting that reason doesn’t have to be dominating but can also be freeing!

There’s also the matter of having the right practices.  We have to get to know a person to know how to talk to them, what they are receptive to, and so on, in order to know if you are making them feel listened to and heard. Even if you know you’re not going to scream at them if they say something wrong, you still also have to indicate that and build up a relationship with them.  It’s not just the theory; it’s the practices, too, that matter.

Obviously, screaming facts at someone, even if they’re true, is not a good model of reasoning.  Attending to relationships, knowing how to talk with a person, and getting to know their own thinking are good ways to have people come closer to the truth.

A graduation card that Katherine’s friend, Valerie, made for her, 2021; the Laurel crew team.  “We row on the windy Cuyahoga River, next to busy parts of the city, old industrial areas, and often alongside an always-annoying crowd on the Floating Tiki Bar. One dark morning, a passing freighter sucked lots of river trash up, forming an island in the middle of the river. I rowed right onto it, literally, and needed someone to pull the boat off of it.”

Jeremy:  I asked you where you come from, and now I’d like to ask you where you’re going.

When you look ahead and imagine the philosophical community at Harvard, what is it that you hope to find in that community? What qualities are you seeking, and which do you seek to avoid, and why?

What is “the community,” too? Is it a bunch of majors or something more diffuse: philosophy done in dining halls between people who aren’t philosophy majors, or out rowing crew, … or running?  

How do you envision those communities in relationship to the college, to its environs, and to the wider city of Cambridge, and to the wider Boston metro region?

I’d ask that you be critical of the word “community” too, and not just assume that because people share a society, they share a community (or because they share a college, they have a community).

Katherine:  I didn’t do as much research as my friends did about schools. I saw many of my peers stressing about schools, putting so much weight into where they got accepted.  I don’t want to presume to know what is going on in their lives, because maybe that was justified for them, but from my vantage point the pressure seemed to be harming them.  I didn’t want to do that myself.  My solution was not to spend too much time on the websites.

Where I did figure out information about schools was in talking to people who go there, or got accepted and are going – and also talking to the school interviewers. I asked them all a lot about the social environment there.  I took what they said to heart.

I could imagine myself being friends with a lot of the people at Harvard – wanting to listen to how they think and to spend time with them.  They seemed like thoughtful, conscientious people who care about the world.  I’m hoping to find peers I want to learn from.

Here in Ohio, I have a group of friends who read the same books and follow the same stuff on social media.  In our conversations, we take too much for granted.  Having others in on the conversation would be beneficial.  I don’t think the communities I want to be part of making should all be philosophy majors.  

Sharing a society does not necessarily mean that people share a community, I agree. Obviously, there is conflict in communities, but I wonder what it means to choose that community during conflict, and to commit to grow together for what you see as a long period of time, binding yourself to those people.  I love being in groups of people who are very committed to living well, being self-aware and reflective.  

Now, I find it terrible that Harvard is richer than most countries and its endowment is not taxed.  That’s wrong.  It’s also wrong that the university does not pay local taxes.  The communities around it don’t get to benefit.

Some people have said to me, “Oh, go to these ‘great’ places like Harvard, and that’ll put you in a better position to change things.”  Mason Pesek from the Northeast Ohio Workers’ Center told me about the organizing of the graduate student union and the union of employees at Harvard.  Then, I read this article from a woman talking about her experience there with organizing and resisting what’s wrong about the college.

I once asked my Latin teacher how he feels about working at a private school.  He told me that he loves it, and yet he wishes everyone could have it. I think that is a good way to think about things.  I want to broaden access at Harvard, broaden access to their opportunities, and (re)distribute them. You have to resist what’s problematic and wrong that the university is doing. 

Sidra:  Katherine, I really liked your response to Jeremy’s question.  It reminded me of what Sara Ahmed says about the university.  She says we are not just supposed to work at the university but also on the university,  that we ought to hold ourselves and our institutions accountable, and to think responsibly about how we relate to each other while at the university and beyond.

You’ve already answered Jeremy’s question from the Phaedrus, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” from a particular angle: as a person entering college and hoping to find community there.  I’d like to put the question to you slightly differently. Where have you come from philosophically – what kinds of philosophical themes and topics have you been reading about – and where are you hoping to take them as a student?  

I’d also like to conclude our interview by asking you a somewhat far out question, which I imagine might be interesting for you to look back to in four years:  How do you see your life after Harvard?

Katherine:  I found out that universities operate like businesses only in the past year or so.  That was really disturbing to me, because I’d always hoped it would be different, or maybe assumed that it’d be different – that market logic would not infiltrate the “sacred space” of learning.  

But then, I’ve experienced “the business” at Laurel already.  A lot of our time was spent doing the moral equivalent of posing for photos for the admissions website!

Still, this past year, my English class was about prisons and criminal justice in the United States of America.  The texts we read for it were urgent, both because of the amount of people incarcerated in this country and because most of the writers were incarcerated as they wrote what we were reading.  It’s a good position to have when you’re writing about something, when you’re the affected person.  Even when my classmates disagreed with what the authors said, which was often, we took them seriously.

I got to engage with a lot of Black radical thought last year.  My debate topic was also about criminal justice reform, and that’s what we focused on in a club I help run for students who are critical of capitalism.  But while both of those communities – yes, debate too – were self-selecting for people predisposed to accept certain ideas, my English class was less so. You got to engage with people, who, well, from my perspective, didn’t agree with a lot of the claims the authors made.  I had to try to convince people who didn’t see things my way.  

Doing that reminded me of something Ibram X. Kendi said.  He has been criticized for not being radical enough, but he suggested that the radicalness of our ideas should be measured by how much they transform open-minded people who are not otherwise involved in, let us say, the movement. I don’t totally agree with that, but it is something worthwhile to consider.  My English class stuck with me.

Books stuck with me too.  One was Brett Story’s Prison Land – a book of critical geography mapping spaces of incarceration outside of the prison.  It shows the kind of common sense that exists in the United States surrounding incarceration and punishment.  Story does a good job of historicizing and calling out our ideas of criminality and crime as like a delusion that serves particular interests. That book was a gift from my English teacher.

Another book was Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster.  I loved the way that this book was written. It actually affected how I experienced my final year in high school.

The next book (there aren’t too many I promise!) was Afropessimism by Frank Wilderson.  It combined autobiography and theory – a good way for theory to emerge out of lived experience.  Frank Wilderson has an interesting story, and he is also, from my perspective, such a kind person.  He emailed a high schooler back when I had a question!

The last book I’ll name is Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.  It had an impact on me about two years ago.  It was my first sustained brush with philosophy.  That book was readable.  It gave me the sense that, if I tried, philosophy was something I could actually learn.  For that reason, I think I have become one of the few people to cry when finishing Bertrand Russell’s book!  The experience of being able to learn was just so beautiful.

And then finally (I was mistaken, there was one more!) Nicomachean Ethics was also a beautiful book from which to learn. It’s like a textbook for life.

Now what I should have been doing is reading more older books.  I pretend that I’m tired of reading old white men from Rome or Greece or, more recently, France or England – and that’s true to a large extent! But also true is that books can be more challenging when they are less recent, especially excellent older books from other traditions that I need to stop avoiding!

In this spirit, I’d love to take the kind of courses that focus on a close reading of one or a few texts.  That is a skill I haven’t fully developed yet, or, more accurately, something that I haven’t yet tried hard enough to do.

I also want to read more books and take more classes that combine social justice work in the actual world with theory, like classes that have you get involved and make change – or classes that bring in people who are involved.  I want to learn about pressing social problems, like racial capitalism.

After Harvard, I hope to get to do things that I can’t imagine right now.  Sure, I can imagine myself doing more school.  It’s crazy to me that you can get a job writing and teaching.  But I wonder what it would mean to do this thing that I love, philosophy, and ‘monetize’ it – i.e., make a living from it in a capitalist economy.  I wonder if that would change the way I do philosophy or change the way I view philosophy.

I want to do socially engaged work.  But then – I say this because I know I can slip into this easily – I don’t want to be too obsessed with work.

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At this point, it seemed apropos to share Katherine’s favorite Catullus poem (the first three stanzas of which are taken from Sappho!). Here it is, translated by her:

That man seems to me to be equal to the gods, 
That man, if it is right to say, seems to surpass the gods,
who, reclining opposite to you, again and again 
gazes at you and hears 

your sweet laughter, which takes from miserable me 
each sensation. For as soon as I look at you, 
Lesbia, for me,
nothing remains. 

My tongue is stupefied, through my limbs 
a narrow fire descends, the ears reverberate 
with a sound of their own, my eyes are shrouded 
with a twin darkness. 

Leisure, Catullus, is troublesome for you:
You exalt leisure and you wish for it too much.  
Leisure has earlier spelled the end for both kings and 
their once-delightful cities.

~ Catullus, “Catullus 51.” 

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This is an installment of Into Philosophy.