I have just seen the email but if John will defend the teaching of Great Books and happily showed us his contribution to Antigone Journal on Twitter then he is not as skeptical about the deep past as he thinks. Almost everyone has inherited a set of commitments from premodernity and investigating the African past can help to say that you have chosen your commitments instead of a set of Western commitments being chosen for you because you didn't know.
I have just seen the email but if John will defend the teaching of Great Books and happily showed us his contribution to Antigone Journal on Twitter then he is not as skeptical about the deep past as he thinks. Almost everyone has inherited a set of commitments from premodernity and investigating the African past can help to say that you have chosen your commitments instead of a set of Western commitments being chosen for you because you didn't know.