Fish's sense of intellectual wonder

This year marks four centuries since the birth of John Milton, writer of Paradise Lost (synopsis; entire), and Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University and one of the most highly regarded Milton scholars in the world, still can't get enough of the poet whose work has been a constant source of intellectual wonder.

All of this was predicted in 1674 by Samuel Barrow who said to the future readers of the poem, “You who read “Paradise Lost”… what do you read but everything? This book contains all things and the origins of all things, and their destinies and final ends.” How did the world begin? Why were men and women created in the first place? How did evil come into the world? What were the causes of Adam’s and Eve’s Fall? If they could fall, were they not already fallen and isn’t God the cause? If God is the cause, and we are the heirs of the original sin, are we not absolved of the responsibility for the sins we commit? Can there be free will in a world presided over by an omniscient creator? Is the moral deck stacked? Is Satan a hero? A rebel? An apostate? An instrument of a Machiavellian and manipulative deity? Are women weaker and more vulnerable than men? Is Adam right to prefer Eve to God? What would you have done in his place? Wherever you step in the poetry, you will meet with something that asks you to take a stand, and when you do (you can’t help it) you will be enmeshed in the issues that are being dramatized.

In an academic world that is often driven by political posturing, rampant tenure-track careerism, and cynicism, Fish reminds us that wonder should be driving the pursuit of knowledge and higher education. Scholarship isn't about answers. It's about questions, questions that constantly ask us to see and hear in new ways.