Swarthmore College Bulletin (June 1998) - ITS

’81, now an Episcopal priest in NewJersey, recalls running into Richiewhen she was test-driving a car. “Hetold me, ‘The only way to lose tenureat Swarthmore is to buy a large American-madestation wagon,’” she says.Noah Efron remembers his first day ofphilosophy class his freshman year.“Some guy in the class started spoutingoff—‘Dialectical’ this, ‘dialectical’that—and Richie said, ‘Dialectical?You can’t use that word any more thissemester. I’ve been studying philosophyfor 20 years, and I don’t knowexactly what that word means, so youcan’t possibly understand it enoughto use it.’”Even now, when Weston and herSwarthmore friends get together, theytalk Richie-isms. Richie on television:“Television is caged fire, and we’resupposed to sit around and watch thefire.” Richie on capitalism: “Sara Leepound cake and Wishbone dressingare the greatest accomplishments ofcapitalism.”“I always tell about the time Richiethrew an Alasdair MacIntyre bookacross the room at me. I’m sure he’sstopped beating his students,” Westonjokes. “He has to have calmeddown some.”These days Richie doesn’t feel theneed to inject such enthusiasm orenergy into his classes artificially.That doesn’t mean he’s stopped beingenthusiastic or energetic; he’s just notas apt to throw a copy of Plato at thewall. “When I started teaching Plato, Ithought his arguments were so weak,so uninteresting, that I started beefinghim up. ‘Maybe he means this.’‘Maybe he means that.’ Then one day Irealized that all this stuff I thought I’dinvented was actually there. It was somuch more complicated than I everimagined, and it did things that Ididn’t know you could do in philosophy.”Richie is comfortable with Platonow, comfortable with all of the theorieshe teaches. And, because of it, heenjoys philosophy more—so much sothat he thinks this past semester washis best in 30 years.“He’s not all angst anymore,” saysEfron, who’s kept in close contactwith Richie over the years. “But thepyrotechnics weren’t what was important.There was something profoundbehind it all. He may scream less andthrow things less, but I’m sure hiseffect is quite the same.”The effect may be, but Richie himselfis clearly not the same personhe was in 1966. He’s married now toHelen Plotkin ’77. He has 7- and 11-year-old daughters. At 56, he’s morerespectful of traditions, of family, ofreligion. And he’s more conservative.In that sense the new Richiedoesn’t quite fit in with the schoolthat Swarthmore is today. But then,he didn’t entirely fit in back in 1966either. “I thought that I was pretty instep with ’60s politics when I got toMarxism inthe killingfields had lost itsmoral compass,and Schuldenfreistarted lookingfor boundaries.He found Judaism.Swarthmore, and the College wasn’t.But then those politics became themainstream and ‘won’ over the College.You could smell the egalitarianismin the air.” As the institution grewmore liberal, Richie started movingaway from what he calls the “radicaledge.”“Later came this frenzy of politicalcorrectness,” he says. “I’d seen it coming,but I wasn’t prepared for howextreme it became. Deconstructionism.Multiculturalism—it was so exaggerated.But that energy is sort ofgone now. The extreme has passed.”In effect Richie and Swarthmoreswitched places. “We’ve both changeda lot.”But in one fundamental way, RichieSchuldenfrei is Swarthmore. AndSwarthmore is Richie Schuldenfrei.Both believe in liberal education. Bothexist to challenge students to think oflife in all of its moral dimensions. Bothwant young people to see the connectionsbetween what they learn andwho they are and how they act in theworld.“In class yesterday a student askedme what he should write when he’swriting about Hume—‘Hume argued’or ‘Hume argues?’ I said, ‘Humeargues.’ I want the kids to think ofHume as sort of there to argue withthem. I want Hume to represent aposition with which they can actuallyhave a discussion in their own heads.After they leave here, when they haveto ask themselves questions, whenthey make decisions in their lives, Iwant them to ask themselves, ‘Whatwould Kant say about this?’ ‘Whatwould Hume say about this?’ ‘Whatwould Aristotle say?’ I want to givethem the vocabulary to ask thesequestions.”“Richie gave me a set of gnawing,serious, fundamental questions—neuroses,more—that has moved me eversince,” says Efron. “What does it meanto live a good life? How do you knowwhat sorts of things you’re supposedto know? I think of those questionsevery day when I open The New YorkTimes or look at my daughter or findmyself at synagogue.”However, Richie sees the dark sideof the personal nature of his teaching.He once read a letter from a studentthat said, “My whole education waswrecked by that asshole Schuldenfreiwho let his personal problems interferewith his teaching.”“There are some people out therewho I didn’t do well by because Icouldn’t take a detached academicstance. I don’t disapprove of that kindof teaching, I just can’t do it. And I feellike I owe apologies to all the studentsI’ve taught who have been hurt by mypersonal style.” Most often, Richiesays, he can’t live up to the high standardshe teaches in class. “Personally,I’m more like Woody Allen than JohnWayne.”Either way, Richie doesn’t give hiskids rules or instructions. He doesn’tgive them complete scholarship orscientific theory. He doesn’t give themsolutions to particular moral dilemmas.He certainly doesn’t give themanswers. What they leave with aretheories, mirrors, means to isolatedimensions of moral life and holdtheir lives up to them. He gives hisstudents something that’s going tomake a difference in their lives.Today, on this rainy Thursday afternoonin 324 Papazian, the subjectis vices, Ordinary Vices, a book by contemporaryphilosopher Judith Shklarwhich offers a new approach to beingmoral. Already, the class has flushedout Shklar’s theory—that people must12 SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN