University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 4, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 28, 1981 Page: 4 of 12
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page 4
University News
October 28, 1981
Dr. Wayne Ambler
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JUST DREAMING
There is a song which goes like this:
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Deacon Richard Cortese
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And if I could lead you in the ways of love,
I would.
But I cannot.
Only if I loved you still could I lead you.
And I could watch you grow as you once watched me.
But I have faced reality.
I have gone past the point of loving
into the realm of seeing
all on the plane of caring
And I can no longer enjoy pretending.
When we fell in love
You understood so much more than I.
Many days have come and gone.
Now you are the one unknowing.
Don’t tell me about crying.
Don’t tell me about enduring
Pain.
Don’t tell me about suffering loss
Or guilt.
Don’t tell me about loving and caring and
Liking and pretending.
Don’t tell me about facing reality.
Untitled
by Mia Carmen
“I have acquired a respect for it
(the school),” Ambler said. “I now
feel blessed to be part of it. I was
not at first thrilled to come to Irv-
ing, Texas, but I am now thrilled to
be here.”
Ambler does not believe there are
any attributes of personality that
make a good instructor.
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When from our exile God brings us home again,
we’ll think we’re dreaming.
When from our exile God brings us home again,
we’ll think we’re dreaming.
He also hopes to spend a future,
summer in New York, attending an
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as a young man, but now I have
come to enjoy it."
Besides improving his Greek, he
wants to improve his knowledge of
Plato and Aristotle.
‘‘Aristotle and Plato are very
hard to understand,” Ambler said.
“Such an understanding would be
the task of more than a lifetime. If
it could be well done, though, it
could help the modern world and
the modern university.”
advanced institute for Greek and
Latin. His Greek has gotten worse,
and he hopes to improve it.
“Thought is only expressed in
language,” Ambler said. “Recovery
of Greek thought is impossible
without knowing the language. The
modern reader carries so many pre-
judices of his own day into a study
(of Greek thought). Every effort to
eliminate these prejudices and to
recover the original thought in pure
form is necessary. Knowing the
language is one of these efforts.”
Ambler used the Greek word,
polls, as an example since it has a
different meaning than the modern
word, state.
“If you want to say anything cor-
rect about Aristotle’s views, you
have to understand his view on
polls,” Ambler said. “I had no in-
terest in language for its own sake
“I had two very good teachers in
graduate school,” Ambler said.
In the coming years, Ambler
hopes to be a better student of
theirs and to be a better conveyor
of this understanding. He believes
this will benefit both him and his
students.
“These views are not mine alone,
but can be expressed more power-
fully by others than myself,"
Ambler said. “(don’t see myself as
a leader to cause a return to their
ways, but only as a student of
theirs."
As he teaches more and studies
more, he feels that this understan-
ding is becoming more of a part of
him. He hopes that it will also
become part of his students.
“I would hate to think that the
time I spend in class has no
positive effect on the students,”
Ambler said. “Whenever I fear this,
I become depressed.”
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very attractive to me. I was not able
to go on until I spent more time
thinking about these things.”
After graduating from Cornell
University with his Bachelor’s
degree, Ambler taught high-school
geometry and second year algebra
for a year.
“During that time, my interest in
political philosophy grew,”-Ambler
said. “But I still felt like a barbarian
and felt that I needed more educa-
tion, especially in political
philosophy. It was only two years
later that I found a program that
had my interest included in it (at
Boston College).”
Ambler’s main interest involves
classical political philosophy. This
is inseparable from moral
philosophy.
“Every political order has a
moral effect on those who live in
it,” Ambler said. “This is the way a
political order is judged a success
or a failure, based upon these
moral values.”
A political system may pride
itself on being an open society,
where the individual is at the liber-
ty to make his own decisions,
either morally or otherwise. All of
these choices, though, are in-
fluenced by the political institu-
tion.
Ambler’s interest in the ancients
is that “they address questions
that are profoundly important for
our times,” Ambler said. “The
prevailing dogma in most univer-
sities, maybe not at UD, is that the
moral questions are to be left to
the individual. They offer no
definitive answers on moral ques-
tions.”
The ancients, though, attempt to
explain human excellence. They
also say that all values are not of
equal stature. Ambler believes a
study of the ancients is essential
for a society that rejects the
possibilities of moral philosophy.
Ambler came to the University of
Dallas in the fall of 1979. This
semester he begins his third year
at UD.
He first decided to come to UD
because “it was the only 10-year
tract job I was offered,” Ambler
said. “Jobs are very scarce in my
field, now.”
He knew little about the school,
yet he was excited about it being a
job for him.
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His first effort will be to improve
his dissertation, which is on
Aristotles’s understanding of the
naturalness of the city. Having
finished it last year, Ambler spent
this past summer trying to improve
it. He hopes to improve it to such
an extent that he can publish
something from it.
Imagine now that you are grown, what it would be like to see the world
through a child’s eyes. Things are simple, innocent, and exciting. Faith is
real, and life is a new experience free from care. There is great trust and
fear is a temptation scarcely know. Goodness flows naturally.
Why then do I proceed otherwise? And I pray I am not dreaming. And so I
read in Scripture: “What you have hidden from the learned and the clever*
you have revealed to the merest children (Lk. 10:21).” And again to me an
adult: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter
the kingdom of God (Mt. 18:3).”
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“Their personalities were com-
pletely opposed. One was loud, ag-
gressive and flamboyant. The other
was subdued, soft-spoken and
methodical in his approach. But
they both had one thing in com-
mon. They both had a mastery of
their subject matter.”
He says it is not necessary to
make the subject of political
philosophy interesting, because
the subject itself is interesting. It is
important, though, to understand
the subject and to be able to con-
very this understanding.
“The problem is that the subject
matter is difficult, but good
students will usually understand
it," Ambler said. ‘‘But good
students are not always as abun-
dant as one might wish, so you
don’t always have a good class. My
disappointment in a class is usual-
ly because of my own ignorance.”
“From teaching, I have learned
much more than I would have.
otherwise. This was a great sur-
prise for me,” Ambler. “Teaching is
much more difficult than I imagin-
ed. Trying to present ideas as
clearly as possible is a real
challenge, but it is a very profitaoie
challenge.”
Something else that has surpris-
ed Ambler about teaching is the
limited leisure time he has. He now
feels more confident about some
of his courses, though, and will
have to spend less time thinking
about each class before it meets.
Once he attains more leisure
time, he hopes to turn to writing.
“This is important to me both per-
sonally and professionally,” he
said.
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This daydream is at the heart of
Wayne Ambler’s professional ac-
tivity. Ambler, an assistant pro-
fessor in the Department of
Politics, hopes to better unders-
tand the political philosophy of
these two ancients and to convey
their philosophy to his students.
“I almost didn’t major in
politics,” Ambler said “I was main-
ly taking science courses (mostly
chemistry and math) as an
undergraduate. I finally graduated
as a government major. I took
almost all of my government
courses in my senior year.
“I never saw myself a a major in
government, but more as a major in
moral or political philosophy,” he
continued. “These are concerned
less with political institutions, but
more with what makes for human
happiness and human excellence.”
Ambler feels that he is very lucky
to have discovered this interest. At
the last minute he learned that
there was a connection between
his academic studies and his own
human being. He stumbled on
some people his junior year who
were addressing many of the same
moral concerns that he had as a
young man. Before this, he had
never thought about doing
anything with his own moral con-
cerns other than thinking them out
for himself.
‘‘This all was accidental,”
Ambler said. “At another time or at
another university, I may not have
turned toward the study of political
philosophy. I was lucky to walk in-
to a classroom where these very
issues were the subject matter of
the course."
“My own, unaided reflections on
the subject were not that im-
pressive,” he said. “It was good to
meet more intelligent people who
were addressing the things that I
was thinking about. This was all
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Last minute interest leads to lifelong study
By Tim Holder
“I often have this daydream,” Dr.
Wayne Ambler said. "Whenever I
talk of Aristotle or Plato in the
classroom, I feel as if they are in
my class. I feel embarrassed that
they may hear what I am saying
about them. What I say is always
wrong in one way or another. I
would like to have them be able to
recognize that I am talking about
them and that I am being faithful to
them.”
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University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 4, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 28, 1981, newspaper, October 28, 1981; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1218470/m1/4/: accessed June 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Dallas.