I first met Visiting Instructor of Philosophy Mark Brouwer at an impromptu Commencement party for Wabash senior Alpha Newberry at Al’s house in May of 2005. Most of the faculty and staff had come and gone by 10 p.m. But Brouwer stayed past 3 in the morning, drinking a beer or two, and talking with and listening to a student who was trying to discern his next step in life.
Such moments are the norm for Brouwer. His calling is conversation, whether he’s talking with students at a party or reception following a guest speaker, sitting at the round table in the Scarlet Inn, or moderating a faculty discussion during his Brownbag lunch sessions for the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
"As I begin to understand my role as a man, I see that what I want to do with my life is to help people have conversations and ask themselves important questions," Brouwer says.
And he’s good at it.
In a culture where email, instant messaging, and web-surfing are supplanting face-to-face conversation as the rapid pace of life trumps the time taken for reflection, his is a rare vocation. How he came to that calling is even more surprising.
Brouwer grew up in Fairfield, Iowa—a typical Midwestern small college town, if you call a small college owned by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi typical. The town’s Parsons College became Maharishi International University, and a mecca for transcendental meditation, in 1973.
"In Fairfield, we had townies and meditators—we called them gurus," Brouwer recalls. "I considered them the oppressed minority in the town. I felt the Fairfielders didn’t give them a chance."
He has since reconsidered.
"Now I realize that these people practically colonized this small town with no respect for existing traditions or those who lived there," Brouwer says. "They came in thinking, ‘We’re going to give you all the benefits of California and New York; we’re going to civilize you.’"
That’s just what Brouwer was looking for back then.
"I didn’t realize we had a civilization of our own," Brouwer laughs. "I assumed civilization was on the coasts, that we were lost in the hinterlands."
He left those hinterlands for San Francisco after graduating from Grinnell College with a major in philosophy. Classes on wine tasting eventually paid off with a job at the Cannery Wine Cellar on Fisherman’s Wharf, and Brouwer soaked up the wine business like a sponge. "Wine is a very rich field of information," Brouwer says. "I was using my liberal arts experience to learn a trade and to explore a new field."
The store also had the largest collection of single malt scotch in the United States; the apprentice took that on as his "field of research."
"These were the early days of the single malt explosion," Brouwer says, recalling a 1993 issue of the Wine Spectator for which he was interviewed as an expert. It was a lucrative field, but not his calling.
"I loved learning new things, but it was more of a game for me."
So Brouwer studied poetics and linguistics at the New College of California while continuing to work his wine job. He hadn’t found his vocation at the Wine Cellar, but he found something even more important.
"Anne was a French exchange student working at the Wine Cellar." Brouwer smiles as he remembers meeting the woman he would eventually marry. "We became friends slowly over time, but she had to return to France. Nine months later, I gave a note to a friend who was going there to visit her."
Thus began a four-month flurry of letters.
"We still have them," Brouwer says. "Through this correspondence, we fell in love."
"Throughout these five years of wine tasting and studying poetics, I’d felt a yearning to return to Iowa, and I made regular trips to see my parents and my grandparents," Brouwer says. "I began to realize that I had inherited a rich heritage from those who had come before me, and that I had something to contribute to my family. I had to move to California to realize that I was an Iowan.
"I also I recognized that I wanted to be a father. Even more, I wanted to be married. I wanted to have a family.
"Still, Anne was something from out of the blue." Brouwer smiles.
After Anne joined Brouwer at his brother’s wedding on New Year’s Eve of 1996 and the two spent the following week together, Brouwer was convinced; he packed up his books and music and moved to France. It was a seemingly impulsive decision that had been a long time coming.
Brouwer immersed himself in his new country.
"Anne’s family welcomed me in a way that I find remarkable," Brouwer says. For a while, Brouwer lived with his future mother in law, listening to French talk radio and taking French language classes. Three months after his move, he proposed to Anne, in French. The couple was married in an 11th century chapel in the French countryside, and the groom gave a welcoming speech to the more than 100 guests in his newly acquired language.
The whirlwind of events had clarified his desire to attend graduate school in philosophy, but he now had a family to provide for. With few other choices, he went to work in an iron foundry.
"I was a barber of iron," Brouwer explains. "My job was to shave off the edges using a grinder.
"This place was something out of the 19th century—an open-air building where we were freezing. People would take coal from the foundry and light it in barrels for warmth, so there was this billowing black smoke throughout the building. I replaced people as they got injured, which was frequently. Two people had died there two years earlier—we had an emergency meeting every week!"
The philosopher’s career as an iron barber lasted three months. In 1998, the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where Mark had been accepted as a graduate student at Duquesne University. In 2001, he chose ancient philosophy, the realm of Plato and Socrates, as his field of specialization. His son was born the same year.
"That’s when my role as a father and my role as a teacher began to coalesce," Brouwer says. "I began to see the connections between an Ancient Greek worldview and my own life—even my respect for my own father deepened."
Mark and Anne’s daughter was born in 2003, two days before the Brouwers arrived at Wabash.
The last time we talked, Brouwer wanted to tell me about his grandmother, a teacher who finally retired at age 82. He had just returned from Iowa and long talks with her about the vocation they now share. As he and I spoke, I could see why Brouwer has become a favorite with many Wabash students. He listens carefully. He encourages ("I like that phrase," he’ll say, or "I hadn’t thought of that"). He’s one of those teachers whose manner invites you to think as you converse; you find yourself considering questions you hadn’t thought of, and sounding smarter than you thought you were.
"Education is giving people the tools and the desire to aspire to grow," Brouwer says. "After numerous conversations with my grandmother, I can see that this is what members of my family have been doing for generations. In some respects, what you happen to teach is almost by the by."