My Debt to Professor Sugrue

Not counting what I learned in humanities and social sciences in high school and science and engineering college days, my somewhat serious effort to learn social sciences at the adult age began with studying economics. There is perhaps a simple logic to my gravitating first toward economics in all fields of social sciences. To me, economics, with its foundation on rational thinking is closer to comprehending that field of study to my technical mind. If I could accept a few basic tenets and axioms of human behavior like rational thinking and self-preservation, then everything in the subject lent itself to scientific analysis with mathematical equations. Even where human behavior is considered nonrational, like in behavioral economics, I found certain logic with derivable conclusions. I therefore cherished what I learned in economics.

But then I realized that the study of economics is largely restricted to the subject area mostly of mankind’s biological needs. Thus, the emphasis is on understanding the demands of food and shelter in the dismal science of Thomas Carlyle in a Malthusian Resource-constrained environment. In other words, the subject matter caters to the bottommost layers of human needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in the category of basic needs.

I was therefore left high and dry in want of psychological and self-fulfillment needs. In short, I found myself still searching for the answers to philosophical questions like the meaning of life and my personal “tryst with destiny” (the use of the phrase from Nehru’s speech is purposeful, but in a different context).

I have been watching YouTube videos on philosophy by different thinkers and academic scholars during my employment years and later as and when time permitted. I also augment it with occasionally reading Wikipedia articles. I watched many of the video lectures delivered by Professor Michael Sugrue that were part of his Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, from his 1992 series.

In recent times, I stumbled upon his additional new videos on the YouTube channel and started watching them as well. But I must confess that I did not realize that the older professor doing video presentations from behind the desk and the younger professor I saw earlier doing presentations, pacing back and both on the podium are the same people. My faux pas certainly had to do with my relative disinterest in who the lecturer is vis a vis the content of the lecture. But it was also because Professor Sugrue looked quite different in the latest videos than the younger Professor Sugrue I had seen before. His voice also had become coarse and frail. One could tell that he was going through some health issues though it also reflected on his endearing commitment in delivering lectures in that state. There were a few tell-tale signs in delivering style that still manifested his old personality and traits like his deliberate pause after saying “now” when shifting the topic.

I then realized the connection between the two and googled further to find out more. That is when I found out that Professor Sugrue had already passed away more than a year ago, after a long illness. His daughter who managed his YouTube channel announced his death with a photo of him next to the quote from the Indian Poet Ravindranath Tagore. I have used that photo for this blog.

When I read the quote, I was shocked to learn how prophetic and incisive Professor Sugrue’s last words were. Inadvertently, I have become a testament to his last words. All this time, I am sitting under the shade of the knowledge tree he had planted.

Economics is primarily a study of exchange and trade. Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” But what Tagore and Professor Sugrue have taught me is completely different than Adam Smith. Of course, as I said before, economics addresses the biological needs and not the spiritual. Economics is not Philosophy and vice versa.

The question in my mind remains about how I pay my debt to teachers like Tagore, Sugrue, and many others, whose wisdom I have and continue to benefit from. The following quote is attributed to Issac Newton, “I stand on the shoulders of giants before me”. My only solace is that even Newton did not have a clear answer to my question!