What Gary Saul Morson Taught Me About Free Speech, Understanding Others, and What Makes a Good Life

How my father models curiosity, open inquiry, empathy, and a joyful meaningful life to thousands of students...and me

This weekend, I attended a conference in honor of my father, Gary Saul Morson, and his new book, Wonder Confronts Certainty. 

Hosted by the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature & Religious Thought (RPLRT), it was a unique semi-academic mini-conference. Speakers included not only literature and philosophy students and professors, but also doctors, lawyers, a person working at Microsoft, friends, family, and others.

I presented a speech yesterday about the significance of my father’s life and work.

I’m posting most of it here for 2 reasons:

First, to share it with all those who wanted to attend, but were unable. (An mp3 of the full recording is available on request).

Second, to express what he’s taught me about questions like these: 

1. How do we understand and respond to noxious or offensive ideas, without rejecting or betraying ourselves (a necessary foundation for free speech to survive)? 

2. How can we teach people to better take others’ perspectives?  

3. Why is it beneficial to approach everything around us as if it were animate, with feelings and motivations – as some cultures do, to this day?

What ties these questions together? Read on and find out.

Note: the text below contains subtitles. These didn’t exist in the original speech – I added them here for clarity.

The speech begins below.

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My father, Gary Saul Morson…lives the lessons he teaches: critical thinking, empathy for other points of view, speaking your mind, and most of all, infusing life as much as possible with a spirit of curiosity and play.

Those who have taken his Intro to Russian Lit class know he “does the voices” of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s characters, and sometimes the writers themselves. He projects their entire being – word choice, tone of voice, pitch, body language, and all. His sleazy Stiva from Anna Karenina especially stuck with me as he crows, “it’s all my fault, all my fault…but I’m not to blame!” 

It’s made his class a “must-take” for over 20 years, and it’s also brilliant teaching. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky show you what ideas mean by describing characters who live them. My father takes that a step further by embodying how characters living these ideas would move and speak.  

To enact a person this way, you have to understand them thoroughly, both inside and out. So, in addition to explaining these characters, he’s modeling how to understand people in real life (albeit, taken to a dramatic extreme).

“Acting” an Idea: A Way to Engage With Offensive Ideas Spoken Freely

Watching him adopt characters I knew he found loathsome, and explain ideas I knew he disagreed with, I learned an invaluable lesson: one can entertain a perspective, however noxious, without giving up or betraying one’s self. 

I think that’s the fear behind many students’ refusal to engage with points of view they find uncomfortable or offensive. They think that requires them to temporarily like or agree with beliefs that insult, or deny, parts of their identity. In my case – do I, a Jewish person, have to agree with Nazism and its antisemitism to understand why Germans voted for Hitler, so I can help prevent such a thing from ever happening again? 

My father modeled the answer for me. I don’t have to hold beliefs to understand what they mean and what it would feel like to hold them. The answer is to inhabit them like a character in a play. As he would put it, I can “bracket myself,” set myself aside temporarily, and return, unscathed, and hopefully better informed.

Observing him, I saw that understanding ideas you vehemently oppose does not weaken your own convictions, but can even strengthen them. My father is an expert on the Russian intelligentsia (among whom terrorism was literally a profession), and Russian antisemitism. Yet, that has only strengthened his conviction that individual human lives matter.

What “Voices” Mean

My father doesn’t just act out characters in class. Everything around him has a voice. Many people talk to their computers; he says what he imagines his computer would say if it could talk to him. (It’s often mischievous or spiteful). 

Of course, he doesn’t literally believe his computer annoys him for fun. I think he’s invoking what Thomas Moore calls an “enchanted” view of the world – in other words, adding a little “sparkle” and fun to everyday life.

My father is known for his philosophy of “prosaics," that life is made of apparently small, unpredictable everyday moments, or as a character in War and Peace says, “art [and life] begins where the tiny bit begins.”  Morson’s literary theory explains how realist novels demonstrate these ideas. Typically, he focuses on the joyous, meaningful small moments we overlook at the time and later forget, including, In War and Peace, a moment a character doesn’t know is the happiest moment of his life. 

By contrast, we’re used to thinking of “prosaics” as boring or irritating. And, indeed, life is full of waiting in line, dealing with malfunctioning printers, and battling health insurance companies. (My father used to say something like, "when I die, I’ll be glad I never have to deal with Express Scripts again”). By “doing voices” in everyday life, he is transforming the not-so-pleasant prosaic moments. 

Plus, he’s so much in the habit of perspective taking and “doing voices” that it’s transcended pedagogical technique or a way to entertain loved ones: it just comes out occasionally.

In my favorite book of his, And Quiet Flows the Vodka, my father writes through 2 different characters: the “author” on the cover, Alicia Chudo, and a hapless, idealistic optimist who we are invited to believe is the “author behind the scenes.” In fact, he is another character – though I think he contains a bit of my father.

Teaching Critical Thinking Through Dialogue

To this day, my father helps me think through philosophical ideas and life problems by listening and asking thoughtful questions. He’s modeled these skills my whole life, and I use them constantly today. He recently helped me figure out how to approach a work challenge in an industry he knew almost nothing about, while believing he had nothing helpful to say. I know he does the same for students – helping them go from vague, broad topics to a specific, arguable thesis. 

I debate with him ideas I hear in my university classes, from friends, on the internet, and among my colleagues in disability advocacy. I know he’ll test these ideas by demonstrating intelligent arguments against them. Sometimes he convinces me, sometimes he doesn’t, but it always helps me make informed choices about what to believe.

Not only does he help me, and students, develop our ideas, he also encourages us to share them. Although he talks a lot about teaching the value of listening, his encouragement of speaking has probably shaped me more. 

Our culture is preoccupied with the (emotional) safety of listeners and readers. Unfortunately, that often comes at the expense of making speakers and writers feel unsafe. Even over 10 years ago, when I was in college, most students felt uncomfortable speaking in class. (Even when topics weren’t controversial). Yet, in his classes, my father clearly communicated that it was safe to say or write things that disagreed with the ideas he presented. 

Ironically, he helps students feel safe developing and sharing our beliefs because he keeps his own private. As he puts it, stating his own beliefs would “defeat the purpose of teaching critical thinking,” because of the position of power he holds. I wish more teachers made that choice!

In short, my father teaches critical thinking both explicitly and by example. Anyone who’s taken his classes or talked with him about writing will tell you that.

What everyone won’t tell you is the spirit of curiosity and playfulness with which he approaches life.

Curiosity and Play as a Way of Life

You’ve probably noticed he loves his work so much that he hopes never to retire. He’s often said he feels lucky to be able to think and write for a living. He loves teaching, is proud of inspiring students, and has remained in touch with some for decades. 

I saw growing up that it’s possible (though not necessarily easy) to do what you love for a living, and aspired to do the same.

My father knows, and shows by example, that you don’t have to make learning fun; it already is fun. 

(In fact, ironically, the attempt to add fun – like rewarding reading books with pizza – takes away the fun, by communicating that it wasn’t there to begin with).

Whatever I loved as a child, he shared it and delighted in it, too. When I was obsessed with the Oz books, he got them for me and read them to me. When I adored dinosaurs, he told me silly stories about characters living among dinosaurs, drinking tea with Tyrannosauruses who held their teacups in their tiny claws. 

My father encouraged my interests in a way that developed my confidence and voice. He was delighted when I taught him new words for the first time. (One was “lollop” from the Beatrix Potter books, which means the unique way rabbits move. The other was “lagomorph,” from a children’s encyclopedia about the history of life on Earth – rabbits are actually “lagomorphs,” not rodents).

My father encouraged me to play games and pretend. He never dismissed what I said or did because it was “silly” or “immature.” Indeed, he himself turns boring chores into games – such as timing how fast he can put away clean dishes. He hoped I, too, would stay playful when I grew up.

I’ve been talking about my father’s own sense of humor, but he also sprinkles his conversation with quotations from comedic greats, like Monty Python and Mark Twain. He loves humorous quotations so much that they feature prominently in 2 of his books (The Words of Others and The Long and Short of It).

Every day, my father models curiosity, humor, and play as a way of life. Fun is a motivator, a source of energy and joy. Most of all, fun is inextricably connected to meaning. What makes us jump out of bed in the morning is always fun.

Outside my father’s door hangs a flag with an ostrich on it. Here’s what it means: in our family, ostriches are a shorthand for all things nonsensical, playful, a little awkward, and zany. It takes vulnerability to laugh and enjoy things in front of other people. In many places, it’s not “cool” to smile too much – so I was told in high school – but my father makes it safe. The flag welcomes everyone, no matter how quirky or awkward, to learn, ask the big questions of life, and play. And so does he.

Thank you for reading.

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The Northwestern RPLRT Initiative runs a Forum where experts and students of Russian thought discuss their ideas with each other and the world. It’s a space created for learning through conversation – my favorite way to learn. (This way of learning was also beloved by the Ancient Greeks, with their Symposia; the Rabbis creating the Talmud; and intellectuals meeting in coffee houses and salons).

If you’ve enjoyed these themes, consider visiting the forum.

Also, as always, I invite you to share your own answers to these questions! Or, if there are other “big questions of life” you favor, you’re welcome to pose them here!

What has your experience with intellectual dialogue been? How do you entertain, without adopting, obnoxious points of view? What do you think of play and curiosity as a way of life? Hit the button below to join the conversation.