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Reading the Essay that Expelled Shelley from Oxford ('The Necessity of Atheism') (Patreon)

Published:
2021-08-03 08:04:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

The legend has it that poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford for the controversial essay 'The Necessity of Atheism'.

Today we'll examine whether that is true, and we'll read the essay together and ask:

Did it warrant the poet being expelled?

If you haven't already checked it out, you might enjoy our first Shelley lecture: 'Ode to the West Wind'.

And thank you to patron and deep reader Sharon whose love of Shelley and interest in this essay inspired this video.

Video Timestamps:

  • 0:00 Was Shelley really expelled from Oxford? 
  • 0:40 My experience with Oxford  
  • 2:00 Rustication vs expulsion 
  • 4:00 How Shelley could have avoided expulsion  
  • 4:30 Shelley's history and the essay 
  • 5:30 Reading 'The Necessity of Atheism' together 
  • 25:19 My final thoughts on the essay

What do you think of the essay?

Does Shelley make some valid points?

Did he deserve to be expelled from Oxford?

Happy reading!

Files

Previews only

Reading the Essay that Expelled Shelley from Oxford ('The Necessity of Atheism')

0:00 Was Shelley really expelled from Oxford? 0:40 My experience with Oxford 2:00 Rustication vs expulsion 4:00 How Shelley could have avoided expulsion 4:30 Shelley's history and the essay 5:30 Reading 'The Necessity of Atheism' together 25:19 My final thoughts on the essay

Comments

Bill Freeman

Ben – Outstanding – great info and another front-row seat to your thinking process. For whatever reason even amid the Oxford style, you do it proud and (fortunate or unfortunately, based on perspective) validate it. But that could very well be overstated praise. I suspect that it is far more you (and your pre-Oxford exceptionalism that allowed your acceptance into this elite club) that was the vital part. I was particularly struck that post-graduation (if that is what an Oxford ending is called), you were so burnt out and couldn't read a thing. Can’t imagine admission promo copy stating that “our graduates leave totally spent needing vast amounts of time to recover from our learning experience . . ." ). IMHO, education, real education, seems to be a two-part process: formal exposure and then the vital time to let that exposure germinate into knowledge. The former is just short-term regurgitated facts masquerading as education. Facts are not knowledge and most certainly not wisdom, the ultimate goal of learning. You survived a “pressure cooker” experience and don’t seem worse-for-wear but, perhaps, could have lived into the same space without such pressure. Who knows? Rustication sound like mental corporal punishment. Unsurprising, you mentioned that mental health issues were a very common reason for rustication. Doesn’t that bait the question, "why?" To what end? I admire your self-knowledge and pushback at the end of your second year that you needed to continue less you very well might not return. Since it has been over 200 years from Shelley’s essay resulting in his rustication, I’ll pass on any judgment. Turning to his essay, I thought it was great. As you state, it seems to focus on the “first cause.” Unavailable to his times is the now universal scientific belief of the Big Bang Model. Perhaps that is some vindication.

hardcoreliterature
>>65112460

Wow. Mind-blowingly great comment, Bill. Perhaps the real reason for my long break from reading post-university is because I sorely needed the second part of the educational process as you describe it. A deluge of information without application is rarely rewarding. No surprise, I think, that after a year spent inside bent over my books for hours on end and nothing much else, I did the complete opposite. I went and lived. After a brief period living in the US, I got as far away as possible, picking the culture I thought most polar opposite to mine - Japan. The years of travel and trauma that followed now inform my reading today, and I get so much out of them. I can't wait to see how they continue to aid me and deliver insight over the course of my next few journeys. On the issue of mental health, those in Oxford try to say it's not a chicken-and-egg situation, but rather the "brilliance" (not my word) of these students comes with mental health issues hand-in-hand, and the pressure cooker teases them out. But Malcolm Gladwell, in David and Goliath, reviewed a study that found students accepted by Harvard are significantly happier if they go to a college lower on the ranking. I think there is a bit of a blend going on personally. Having struggled with my own issues over the course of my life, I would be hesitant to put it down to any one thing, but rather a range of variables all playing off one another (some of which can, fortunately, be ameliorated). Also, great point about the Big Bang Model. Thank you for such an awesome comment - the insight you bring to me, others, and these books is incredible.

Bill Freeman
>>65112460

Ben – thank you for your reply and kindness. I enjoy these exchanges. I’d like to add a bit more about what I believe, as an educator, is a horrible yet dominant model of education. Continuing my theme of education as a two-part process (exposure and germination), the dominant mode by far is the one-way, teacher>student funnel. And with an assessment designed for regurgitation. At best, this is a short-term memory exercise with no lasting value. And every time we grade on these assessments we do, we commit academic malpractice. EVERY TIME. I am reminded of my grueling three-day doctoral comprehensives – four essays that I crammed for four months. I remember NOTHING. Since Oxford’s rustication is deeply embedded, so is the abuse and the fantasy of anything approaching education. I am sure that you are acquainted with Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Fifty years after his publication, we still have, as he called this dominant education model, the “banker model of education,” with teachers as givers and students as receivers. Fifty years and yet we continue and exact mental abuse as a reasonable cost. In the U.S., at least of late (~10 yrs), there has been a movement toward competency-based education wherein students demonstrate application-understanding (whether from prior personal education or related experience) via the ability to apply, competently, educational concepts. I was involved in the design, accreditation, and delivery of a competency-based “Master of Business” (MBA) degree for a few years. Students could “test out” based on demonstrated competencies or stop and digest that learning to reassess those competencies and continue to the next set of competencies. The result was huge student satisfaction, integrated knowledge, reduced time-to-graduation, and dramatically decreased education costs. And it is those very benefits that are thwarting the adoption of this model. The dominant higher-education model is credits-per-hour with related credit-based tuition that insists on being time-bound (more credits, more time, more money). Applying this to you, it is clear that you could very easily "competency test out," at least, at a master’s level and earn a related degree. Then, how about taking that degree and “apprenticing” as a teaching scholar (“professor of practice”) at a university, public library, corporate learning or community center to hone your adaptation skills while learning new ones and then sit for doctoral competency assessments? Tweak as needed, to be sure, but you get the idea. That is disruption.

hardcoreliterature
>>65112460

Wow. How can I possibly put it better? The one-way teacher>student funnel, short-term memory exercise with no lasting value, academic malpractice. I fully agree with you on all accounts. I also remember nothing from any of my education - at least not my Oxford education. Without a doubt, I learnt so much from my sixth form English teacher, Mr Dearmer, at the age of 16-17 than I ever did in Oxford. I wrote to him years later just to thank him for putting me on course. He influenced me in regards to everything - my readings of Shakespeare, Conrad, Dickens, all the great books - I am in debt to him (and my grandmother, and a handful of other people). But, petulant though this may sound, I owe almost nothing to the great academy that is Oxford, and feel they, if anything, took something from me. My first year tutor was a marvellous man, but apart from him I felt as though the atmosphere was rather hostile and not conducive to real learning. I don't know about the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed", but it sounds like something that will speak to me passionately. I'll search out the man's work! There are some really thought-provoking ideas in the rest of what you write here to me, Bill. Thank you :) Much for me, and others, to ruminate on!

Florian Pesantes
>>65112460

What a most interesting conversation between the two of you, Bill and Ben and thank you to share it publicly. Benjamin, I wonder how you’d be and act today had you never been to Oxford or any other University ever. My best guess is that your obviously brilliant brain had got you where you are as well at less cost for brain and soul. But we are living in this world and an Oxford degree is a visible proof of quality and an entrance ticket to certain privilege and visible gravitas in your country and abroad. Also to scorn Oxford after having done it and with success is so far more respectable than otherwise. One would think, ‘well, well these grapes are too sour for him’. Also to overcome such a long period of unpleasant and challenging time, challenging to the limit, can give one much strength. If we can believe Nietzsche. Yet, the man who invented the marathon died at completion. I’ve been to school for 12 years and medical school thereafter and next to nothing had ever been interesting to me then. But one extraordinary teacher in German Literature in high school stood out. I remember the one heureka moment precisely. What a waste of time! I sometimes dream of a world where all this talent slumbering or even oppressed in us 7 billion could be brought to blooming. For this we would need teachers like both you and a societal order that would prefer a happy species over an army of battery hens and chicken.

Bill Freeman
>>65112460

Florian – So many of us have had such horrible education experiences. I have taught a lot of medical students. Many are so angry after the grind of medical school. Then, at least in this country, there are three years of 80+ hour weeks. I learn so much more from experiences like our bookclub and these sharings.

Sharon xx

Firstly, thank you Ben for doing this lecture. I've been so excited to get to it but I've been saving it until I had enough spare time to do it justice and respond accordingly. It's been really useful as, even though I've read the essay a few times through, it's very dense and heavy going so your thoughts and opinions have really helped me unpick it a little more. This discussion arose as a result of my/our study of Shelley's, Ode to the West Wind where we [Ben and I] felt that Shelley gave some very mixed messages relating to myth/mother nature/religion/God in the poem and clear indications that religion was still a part of his life or, at the very least, his thought processes [psyche?]. I knew he'd written the essay before I read the poem so I expected to see more myth/paganism and less God if I'm honest. What I realise now is that Shelley was 18 when he wrote the essay and 27 when he wrote, Ode to the West Wind. A huge growth in both maturity and life experience had no doubt taken place in those interim years, especially given the cross over between adolescence and adult hood during the early part of those years. That must have made a massive difference in how he viewed atheism/religion although one is lead to believe that he remained a staunch atheist to the end and was certainly quite radical in his approach to many of life's institutions at the time. Possibly age softened him a little and made him more accepting. It does not take a brain surgeon to work out that Oxford University is [and certainly was during Shelley's time] firmly grounded in christianity; every college has it's own church or chapel which contribute towards the beautiful 'dreaming spires' of Oxford's legendary skyline. So to write [and claim] an essay entitled, 'There is no God!' as an Oxford undergraduate, was surely academic suicide? I cannot belive for one moment that he didn't know exactly what he was doing or what the impact of that would be. Was it intentional academic suicide, rebellion or plain stupidity? I'm unsure at this point. Was it worth expelling him for? I don't think so as surely it's the sign on an enquiring mind to be able to formulate such an argument worthy more of debate than expulsion. Is the expansion of minds not the whole point of education at any level? Disagreeing with his perspective doesn't make it any less valuable. Maybe this was a final straw moment if he'd failed to achieve up until that point or it could just have been a step too far in the religious climate of the time. Shelley has made some valid points but has produced a very one-sided argument and failed completely to mention/realise that belief in God is based in faith, not fact. I chuckled at the line, "the onus probandi rests on the theist". If I am the believer then it's you who needs to prove me wrong, not the other way round because actually if I'm happy and confident in my belief, I don't need factual evidence to support that because I didn't have it to start with. Hebrews 11:1 puts it much better than I can - "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." KJV His assumption also appears to be that people want/need factual evidence to underpin their belief in God when I don't think that they do. Some would argue that the bible and the evidence of some saints is proof enough. Other's would say that their faith is driven by something unseen and that too is enough. We're back to Hebrews 11. Even though I found the essay hard to dissect I thought it held some valid points but smacked of the enthusiasm of youth. I have absolutely loved this discussion and the contributions of all those who have commented before me. Wow, who needs an Eng Lit degree course when we have this corner of excellence at our fingertips. Thank you again, Ben. Brilliant :)

hardcoreliterature
>>65489126

Thank you to you too, Sharon, for inspiring it. This is a rather dense and difficult essay, so I definitely needed some community spirit to muster up the motivation. Very interesting that you have timelined this. I always find this so valuable, and it's part of the reason I love the Everyman editions so much. They have a chronology printed at the front, with author's life and historical events. Always illuminating. As it is in this case. A ten-year difference is staggering, especially for a poet who did not live to see his third decade. Our brains aren't even fully developed until we are 25, and how many of us have lived much of a life away from our school peers and parents at the age of 18? I agree with your sense that age softened him a little, and personally I see his 'Ode to the West Wind' as being a more powerful and mature manifesto of spiritual belief than this essay. 'The Necessity of Atheism' reads more like 'The Necessity to Get Myself Expelled from Oxford for Being A Smart-Ass'. Academic suicide, as you say. He does raise some nice points, though, about the nature of proof and belief. If he had written this essay today and submitted it as a Finals essay at the same institution, I'm sure he would have received a first :) Also, like you, I am happy and confident in my belief, and find myself to have a very fulfilling relationship with my higher power. It wouldn't occur to me to ask for "proof". I already have all the proof I need. An atheist might call my proof "faith", but, with some probing and digging, I am sure I could "prove" that very same atheist to be spiritual or religious in some sense. We all have a higher power. But I suppose these are matters of definition. Thank you for the amazing comment as always, Sharon :) I love that testimonial - "who needs an Eng Lit degree course when we have this corner of excellence at our fingertips." This has thoroughly made my day!