Accepting the Invitation to the Great Conversation Extended by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins

     If I think about it, I am saddened that I received the invitation later in life.  I wish I had received and accepted the invitation in High School, or college, or certainly graduate school.  It was not all my fault, I was not told about the invitation until about twelve years ago.  Since that time, I have invited hundreds and hope to invite many more.
     What is The Great Conversation? The actual wording I am most familiar with comes through the writings and lives of Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins.  Since the 1960's those two men and a handful of others fought valiantly against social and cultural trends that would all but be the end of the Great Tradition, the Great Books, and the Great Conversation.  While things have gotten considerably worse since these intellectual warriors declared a strategy of intellectual health, there are loving resistance fighters and pockets of resistance found here and there.  
     Robert Hutchins, "Until lately the west has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through Great Books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of this tradition. There never was very much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind call the finest creations, in writing, of the Western mind."  
     Since Hutchins originally penned these words, various "isms" stormed the gates of the academy and established themselves as the norm.  My wife (a librarian, yes, there are still a few of those left also, yet to be replaced by "media specialists") and I were discussing several works of "Young Adult fiction" and both agreed how extremely dark they were, and concluded that where God is murdered, despair ensues.
     Later, in the same essay, Hutchins said of Liberal education,   With the ongoing debate about the meaning and value of a Liberal education, it should surprise no one that we have no way of addressing basic problems, and our ability to make distinctions has evaporated. The common inability to connect even the most readily connected shows what happens when we abandon education that is natural to and formatve of the human mind.
     It was Mortimer Adler, who later wrote, "the goods of the mind are information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom."  That is, we naturally desire these things for the mind.  And yet, we have become inundated with trivial disconnected information, bombarded with surface knowledge, given a shallow understanding, and who really, talks about wisdom any longer?  If Adler is right (and he is) that wisdom, "is generally acknowledged to be the highest good of the human mind, " then we are in serious trouble being part of human history that no longer even uses the term.
     You do not need to be a Historian to know that "there is a clear break between this century and the twenty-five centuries that precede it in the tradition of Western civilization." We are paying dearly for our ignorance and rebellion.  We are reaping the consequences of of ignoring the invitation to join that Great Conversation.  Our only hope, on a humane level, is to hear the invitation and join in that conversation.  There is much knowledge, understanding, and yes, even wisdom found in that conversation.

Adler on Authentic and Phoney Teaching and Learning

     There is a story floating around in our culture that the way some bank tellers are taught to distinguish between real money and counterfeit money is that they handle so much of the real stuff, when a fake comes their way, they know something is amiss.  I am not sure about the authenticity of this anecdote, but I am sure that for anyone who has been exposed to real learning and phony learning, they know the difference.   
     There is certainly a noticeable difference between genuine teachers and mere dispensers of data. There is also the difference between authentic learning, and going though the motions that merely ape learning.   
    How would one know the difference if not trained?  One way would be to listen to those who not only are educated, but also those who have spent a life exploring the Great Books and have conversed for decades to understand and attain a modicum of wisdom on this matter. In an essay entitled, Teaching, Learning, and Their Counterfeits (1976; 1987), Mortimer Adler is a most competent and qualified assistant in our quest.   
     On real teaching Adler says, "these basic insights are epitomized by Socrates when, in the Theaetetus, he describes his role as a teacher by analogy with the service performed by a midwife who does nothing more than assist the pregnant mother to give birth with less pain and more assurance. So, according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learner's part."  
     Regarding the true learner, Adler says "Discipline in the traditional liberal arts imparts the skills by which an individual becomes adept at learning. They are the arts of reading and writing, of speaking and listening, of observing, measuring and calculating – the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the mathematical arts, and the arts of investigation. Without some proficiency in these arts, no one can learn very much, whether assisted or not by the use of books and the tutelage of teachers. Unless the teacher is himself a skilled learner, a master of the liberal arts which are the arts of learning, he cannot help those he attempts to teach acquire the skills of learning; nor can his superior skill and learning provide the learner with the help he needs in the process of discovery."

There is much more in ths brief essay for those who would seek to learn or teach.

Russell Kirk Would Have Been A Great HeadMaster....Actually, He Is!

     With all the noise of recent months in the media about getting rid of Liberal Arts at certain colleges and universities in place of more "practical," or as the ancients would have classified it, "technical training for slaves," there comes a time to respond.  But we begin with a defense of the barbarian position for a moment.  Much of what passes in the name of Liberal Arts should be banished as it was never worthy of study.  While one may enjoy the longest running animated series in television history, it really is not worthy of deep attention and three hours university credit.  Or one may be obsessed with the most recent academic fad and desire to get a major in it through the "Liberal Arts Dept."  I fear to mention one as tomorrow it will likely be different.  Actually, it will likely be different in fifteen minutes.  

     If one is considering the value of a Liberal Arts education on the high school or college level, it would be most helpful to articulate exactly what a liberal arts education really is or should be.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Among the very fine explanations of what a Liberal Arts education is and should be, Russell Kirk's The Conservative Purposes of a Liberal Education is to be considered.  In truth, if adhered to, this little essay may go a long way in helping us avoid the way of Babel Technical Institute.

     The rare quality of those writing about the great tradition or liberal arts of past days is that they all had a sense of history of which moderns seem to be completely or significantly ignorant. Kirk affirms,"what we now call 'liberal studies' go back to classical times."
     When the moderns took over liberal arts, the term liberal became emphasized and the word arts in the broadest sense was completely lost, but more than that, was the death of the deep and rich history of the term liberal arts. "By 'liberal education' we mean an ordering and integrating of knowledge for the benefit of the free person–as contrasted with technical or professional schooling, now somewhat vaingloriously called 'career education'."
     Russell Kirk has a very profound understanding of what liberal education is all about,"the higher aim of 'man as an end,' is the object of liberal learning…the primary purpose of a liberal education then is the cultivation of the person's own intellect and imagination, for the person's own sake...the function of liberal education is to order the human soul…liberal learning emancipates the mind from every narrow provincialism, whether of egoism or tradition." For the modern critics who say that the professor of liberal education is married to tradition for the sake of tradition ignores entirely what Kirk said just a moment ago, and that is we are to be freed from our own egoism and the spirit of this age as well as traditionalism, that is, being committed to tradition just because it is tradition.
     Another unique insight from Russell Kirk is a fun verbal rhetorical play where, speaking of liberal education, he talks about it as having a conservative purpose," liberal education is conservative in this way: it defends order against disorder. In its practical effects, liberal education works for order in the soul, and order in the republic. Liberal learning enables those who benefit from its discipline to achieve some kind of harmony within themselves."
     Those concerned about liberal education should strive diligently to reclaim the term humane learning. Humane because it emphasizes that human at the center of this worry. Russell Kirk says this," that person has primacy in liberal education." This is not to say that for the Christian humanist or the Christian scholar, God is not at the center of humanistic learning since humans are the pinnacle of God's created order.
     When Kirk describes the function of a liberal education, he certainly does not do this in the terms that moderns would describe the function of a liberal education. For Kirk, the purpose of liberal education "is to conserve a body of received knowledge and to impart an apprehension of order to the rising generation."
     Again, for the moderns, the purpose of a liberal education is to get a set of skills so that the labor force can be well trained. For Kirk, he would strongly disagree. He says the primary result of a liberal education is conservative in nature, in that "it gives to society a body of young people, introduced to some degree to wisdom in virtue, and may become honest leaders in many walks of life."
     Considering the significant decline of education America has experienced since Kirk wrote this essay in the 1980s, we can only imagine that universities have become more of the diploma mills today than they were back then as market interests have taken over the heart and soul of higher learning.
     On the most positive note, Russell Kirk observes that most people who have the shaping force of liberal education do not take the places of power and influence that the corrupters of our society possess.  "Most possessors of a liberal education never come to sit in the seats of the mighty. Yet they leaven the lump of the nation, in many stations and occupations; we never hear the names of most of them, but they do their conservative work quietly and well." Here Russel Kirk is also reflecting on the very nature of good itself--that God and his goodly manner has determined that Good will quietly and subtly work out its way in our fallen world for His glory.

     For those of us in Humanities, Humane Letters, or Liberal Arts (in the original sense of the term), if we are learned, then it is in part because of people just like Russell Kirk.  If we are even scholars in the making, it is because of the Great Tradition that Kirk upheld.  So if we are masters, then let us remember our Headmaster and offer words of gratitude in his memory.

     

Eric Voegelin: Prophet to the Modern Academy

     Eric Voegelin (1901– 1985) penned an essay entitled On Classical Studies (1973)--an essay that was shaped by the Classical west and the Christian faith and is philosophically opposed to the distortions of Enlightenment rationalism.
     Reading Voegelin is akin to reading Amos or Joel. But instead of ancient Israel, it is the modern academy that is being rebuked. Here are just a few portions from his essay On Classical Studies to illustrate the significant problem that had occurred by 1973, "the fragmentation of science through specialization and the deculturation of Western society…specialized histories…institutional reduction…the life of reason; the end of ineluctable condition of personal and social order, has been destroyed."  In addition, Voegelin says, "the climate of our universities certainly is hostile to the life of reason…the fanatically accelerated destruction of the university since the Second World War…a pathological deformation of existence."
     This essay is a powerful indictment of the spirit of the age and the 1970s that had been a logical extension of the 1960s and earlier.  But, all is not lost.  There are always those who are in opposition to the new dark ages of the modern university.  Voegelin paints a dark picture of higher education, but does not despair.
     At the very center of Voegelin's critique is the observation that until the modern world there was a clear understanding of the nature of humanity. It is at this point that Voegelin does a masterful job of distinguishing between the Classical and the modern mind in several categories:
1) The nature of man
2) The movement from opinion to understanding
3) Society for humanity
4) The human being's relation with the Divine
5) Humans seeking and reflecting
6) Questioning
7) Education
8) The nature of reality
9) Reason and freedom
     There are numerous references to various philosophies and philosophers who shaped the modern mind, in particular Comte, Locke, Hegel, and Sartre.  Voegelin encourages the modern person to expand the list that he started accordingly, especially in light of  "the opinion literature and the mass media." One phrase that Voegelin examines that has become normative in the modern university, including in Bible and Theology programs, is the use of the phrase "critical theory" which Voegelin says is "a euphemism for irrational, nihilistic opining."
     Some other prophetic phrases addressing the tone, telos, and tenor of the modern university found in this important essay include, the drivel of opinions...educational institutions have cut them off from the life of reason...and the flabbiness and emptiness of the institutionalized climate." Voegelin conjectures about the future of historical sciences. He proposes that Classical Studies would be a sound ally to Historical Sciences if they would merely open up to Classical Studies. This did not happen. And it is not happening.
     Upon conclusion of reading this essay by Voegelin, the reader could easily despair. His essay is significantly darker than many others considered in this blog series on Liberal Arts. What was occurring was properly diagnosed in the early 70s and has disintegrated to the point of complete functional ruin. On the other hand, homeschoolers, a handful of Christian schools not in line with the national norm of the public school, and many Classical Christian schools are communities of character and genuine learning. There is hope, small, but it is there.

Why Mortimer Adler Would Have Been the Best Academic Dean Ever

    If he were still alive on this earth, and if he were looking for an opening, any College or Classical Christian School looking for a first rate academic leader would be foolish not to at least interview Mortimer Adler.   
     In the modern world, with the modern academy having been taken over by the business model, one can only hope that somewhere there are Adler-like leaders being groomed.  In an essay entitled, Liberal Schooling in the 20th Century released in 1960, Mortimer Adler lays out some of the most wonderful ideas and plans for higher education you will read anywhere in the modern world.  What Adler said for the 20th century is as true and relevant for the 21st century.  
     Adler begins with an assertion that many modern administrators would find appalling. Being a realist, who had some sense of human nature, he says the following about young people being educated, "The reason is simply that youth itself–immaturity of mind, character, and experience–is the insuperable obstacle to becoming educated. We cannot educate the young; the best we can do for them is to school them in such a way that they have a good chance to become educated in the course of their adult life." Adler actually may have been ahead of his time, since all of us who have been teaching of recent years have had students leave high school and go to college who are not well prepared.  There is evidence that even in college there is a growing rank of graduates who graduate and still need what Robert Hutchins called the "six R's of remedial reading, remedial writing, and remedial 'rithmetic."
     Specifically addressing the matter of Liberal arts and her growing disrepute, again quoting Hutchins, "the liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is weather he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one, or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one."
    Writing in 1962, Mortimer Adler made assertions then that were not embraced and certainly would be considered ridiculous at our moment. When it comes to education, Adler says that there should be no specialized training in real liberal arts colleges and certainly no specialization in k-12.  I remember reading not long ago that there are those who are saying that specialized training should actually begin in middle or high school, but we should test children for training in elementary school. Related to this notion is that since many colleges and universities are now flooded with electives in addition to specialized training, it would not surprise the reader that Adler said no to electives. He also says there should be no special divisions among the faculty. The teachers at a university, show first and foremost their worth, as teachers, by being excellent, authentic teachers.
    Another extremely radical notion that Adler had in 1962 is that there should be no textbooks. Having been in a program for the past decade that does not use textbooks, I can 100% endorse Adler's proposal. The truth is, textbooks do not in any way, shape, form, or fashion aid the student in thinking through material. For all the years that I have been part of college education and advocating using the Great Books throughout the curriculum by arguing that every course in every department should actually require some primary sources, the responses have always been the same from most administrators and professors, "students are simply not smart enough to understand these books." It has been my deeply held conviction and, until this moment held in silence, that I do not believe that it is the students who are not smart enough for the Great Books to be taught across the curriculum. Adler gives an intriguing analogy to college students handling the Great Books. He says that the Great Books are like a puppy gnawing on a very large and meaty bone.  The puppy might not succeed in getting very much nourishment from such a bone upon which it is constantly gnawing, however, the very activity and exercise of gnawing on the bone, vigorously gnawing, is of great long-term benefits to the puppy.
     In the university where Adler would be Dean or a school where he would be Headmaster, all courses would at some point and in some way have the Socratic method as a dominate part of instruction. Adler says there would be "an occasional formal lecture out of course may supplement the Socratic method of teaching, which should be the model emulated by all teachers in a liberal arts college."
     How then are students evaluated in Mortimer Adler's school?  There are little to no written exams, there are only verbal exams. For those of us committed to the Trivium, we would certainly desire to petition Dean Adler to modify his current policy to include a great deal of writing.  Imagine every class, everyday as an oral exam. The class sizes are small enough for students to be engaged by the teacher in a meaningful way about meaningful ideas.
     It is truly tragic that Mortimer Adler had to actually defend the term Humanities in 1962 as it was already being abused. "When I say that the course of study in the liberal arts college should be exclusively humanistic, I do not mean to exclude the study of mathematics or of the natural sciences. When these subjects are approached in a certain way, they are as much a part of the humanities as our philosophy, history, and the social sciences, or the fine arts of poetry, music, painting, and sculpture. For those who may still be missing the brilliance of Adler's academic approach, he does qualify what he means by the term humanistic.  His clarification is rather simple, it "is to say that the humanistic approach to any subject matter is philosophical, in the sense that it looks for the universal and abiding principles, the fundamental ideas and insights, the controlling canons of procedure or method, all of which are determined by the faculties of man as inquirer or learner."  Again, for those in Classical Christian education, he is essentially addressing the good, the true, and the beautiful.  
     It should be remembered this essay was originally published in 1962. At that point Adler was seeing that many professional schools were asserting, especially in the areas of law, medicine, and engineering, that college graduates are woefully inept in their preparation to do the kind of work one should be doing in the field of law, medicine and engineering. One could certainly add other graduate studies to this list. If it was that bad in 1962, one can only imagine how much worse it has become by today.  So what is one to do?  Look for the Adlers of today and work with them, serve with them, learn from them, and do all these things in Kingdom terms so as to see fruit in the here and now, plant seed for the future, and make an eternal difference.

Some Select Quotes on Reading and Books

     These are quotes that I gathered from conversations, books, articles, blogs, tv shows and even movies. Since I am not sure of the specific source, only the author, I apologize in advance if the context of the actual quote goes against the intention of this collection of quotes about books and readings.  I share them in the spirit of sparking thought and eliciting delight.  

I read books to read myself.

~Sven Birkerts~

A classic is a book people praise and don’t read.

~Mark Twain~

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

~Jonathan Swift~

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

~C.S. Lewis~

It is from books that wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life.

~Victor Hugo~

The end of reading is not more books but more life.

~Holbrook Jackson~

Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.

~Joseph Addison~

The bookshelf, like the book, has become an integral part of civilization as we know it, its presence in a home practically defining what it means to be civilized, educated, and refined.

~Henry Petroski~

The love of reading enables a man to exchange the wearisome hours of life, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

~Montesquieu~

When I am dead, I hope it will be said: his sins were scarlet, but, his books were read.

~Hilaire Belloc~

The mere brute pleasure of reading—the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

~G. K. Chesterton~

We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves.

~Joseph Epstein~

If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.

~John Ruskin~

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

~ Cicero~

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

~Kathleen Norris~

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries.

~Rene Descartes~

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.

~Clifton Fadiman~

Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

~Solomon~

The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.

~Christopher Dawson~

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

~Mark Twain~

I cannot live without books.
~Thomas Jefferson~

Our high respect for a well-read person is praise enough for literature.

~Emerson~

The value of many men and books rests solely on their faculty for compelling all to seek out the most hidden and intimate things.

~Friedrich Nietzsche~

Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge~ 

Read in order to live.

~Gustave Flaubert~

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

~Thomas a Kempis~

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose offspring they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest worth and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

~John Milton~

Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing.
~Cicero~

The classics guard the truths of the human heart from the faddish half-truths of the day by straightening the mind and imagination and enabling their readers to judge for themselves.

~Louis Cowan~

Quiet for oneself, surrounded by books—that is of all things most desirable.

~Erasmus~

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

~Thoreau~

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

~ Christopher Wren~

He who destroys a good book—kills reason itself.
~John Milton~

Take up and read, take up and read. 

~Augustine~ 

No matter what his rank or position may be, the lover of books is the richest and happiest of the children of men.

~John Alfred Langford~

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

~Mortimer Adler~

For the grand and inescapable tradition of western literary classics confronts us with fundamental choices over our understanding of words, reading and art, as well as citizenship, civilization, faith, and the whole notion of the true, the good, and the faithful.

~Os Guinness~

Books are the children of the brain.

~Jonathan Swift~

We read to know we are not alone.
~C.S. Lewis~

When you sell a man a book, you don’t sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.

~Christopher Morley~

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

~Thomas Carlyle~

The great books speak to us honor and love and sacrifice; but they do not always speak in familiar phrases.

~Louis Cowan~

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

~Italo Calvino~

The problem for me is that reading is, I won’t say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.

~Joseph Epstein~

Literature is my Utopia.
~Helen Keller~

Quotes About Liberal Arts Education, Authentic Learning, and What Academy Life Should Emphasize

     I often find that just the right quote in the right places communicates a great deal more than thousands of poorly crafted words.  Of course, random quotes, taken out of context may distort the intention of the author.  With these quotes, I am confident that the range of authors were admirers and defenders of the Great Tradition and related subjects.  With that in mind, here are all sorts of quotes on Liberal Arts,  Authentic Learning, and What Academy Life Should Emphasize
     Note, there is no rhyme or reason to the order of the quotes and the author's name is given first, then the quote....Be edified!

Mortimer Adler

There are and always will be a relatively small number of highly gifted, strongly motivated teachers who manage, in spite of all adverse conditions, to perform creditably, even magnificently.

If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.

The direct product of liberal education is a good mind, well disciplined in its processes of inquiring and judging, knowing and understanding, and well furnished with knowledge, well cultivated by ideas.

On the assets of Liberal education,  it contributes—a good mind,…and a good mind is useful…

How does the teacher aid discovery and elicit the activity of the student’s mind?  By inviting and entertaining questions, by encouraging and sustaining inquiry,…by leading discussions,…

The most important kind of doing, so far as learning is concerned, is intellectual or mental doing.

Socrates…describes himself as an inquiring teacher, one who asks questions and pursues answers to get the truth.  He called his method of teaching something like midwifery because he viewed it as assisting the labor of his companions in giving birth to ideas.

The teacher’s role in discussion is to keep it going along fruitful lines—by moderating, guiding, correcting, leading, and arguing like one more student! The teacher is first among equals.  All must have the sense that they are participating as equals, as is the case in a genuine conversation…These basic insights are epitomized by Socrates…he describes his role as a teacher by analogy with the service performed by a midwife who does nothing more than assist the pregnant mother to give birth with less pain and more assurance.  So, according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learner’s part.

The teacher who has stopped learning is a deadening influence rather than a help to students being initiated into the ways of learning.

Thinking is only one part of the activity of learning.  One must also use one’s senses and imagination.                                                                                                 

W.H. Auden

One sign that a book has literary value is that it can be read in a number of different ways…Though a work of literature can be read in a number of ways, this number is finite and can be arranged in a hierarchical order; some readings are obviously ‘truer’ than others, some doubtful, some obviously false,…                                                                                                                                                           

Jacques Barzun

There is indeed the university’s primary task, the fundamental work upon which all the other services depend.  That primary task, that fundamental work is Scholarship…in the study and the classroom, it is research and teaching.
                                       

Wendell Berry

    The predicament of literature within the university is not fundamentally different from the predicament of any other discipline, which is not fundamentally different from the predicament of language.  That is, the various disciplines have ceased to speak to each other; they have become too specialized, and this over-specialization, this separation, of the disciplines has been enabled and enforced by the specialization of their languages.  As a result, the modern university has grown, not according to any unifying principle, like an expanding universe, but according to the principle of miscellaneous accretion, like a furniture storage business.

The thing being made in a university is humanity.  
                                       
Underlying the idea of a university—the bringing together, the combining into one, of all the disciplines—is the idea that good work and good citizenship are the inevitable by-products of the making of a good—that is, a fully developed—human being.  This, as I understand it, is the definition of the name university.

Daniel J. Boorstin

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.

Stratford Caldecott

Symptoms of our educational crisis, such as the fragmentation of the disciplines, the separation of faith and reason, the reduction of quality to quantity, and the loss of a sense of ultimate purpose, are directly related to a lack of historical awareness on the part of students. An integrated curriculum must teach subjects, and it must teach the right subjects, but it should do so by incorporating each subject, even mathematics and the hard sciences, within the history of ideas, which is the history of our culture.

The classical ‘Liberal Arts’ tradition of the West once offered a form of humane education that sought the integration of faith and reason, and that combined the arts and the sciences, before these things became separated, fragmented, and trivialized.

Christopher Dawson

The spirit of Christian humanism finds expression in Alcuin’s own letters to Charles the Great: ‘If your intentions are carried out,’ he writes, ‘it may be that a new Athens will arise in France, and an Athens fairer than the old, for our Athens, ennobled by the teaching of Christ, will surpass the wisdom of the Academy.  The old Athens had only the teachings of Plato to instruct it, yet even so it flourished by the seven liberal arts.  But our Athens will be enriched by the gift of the Holy Spirit and will, therefore surpass all the dignity of earthly wisdom’.

Albert Einstein

The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.

Joseph Epstein

In academic life, in my experience, there is no real conversation; just various people awaiting their turn to hold forth.

Erasmus

Bring a ‘scholar’ to a party: he will disrupt it either by his gloomy silence or his tedious cavils…Drag him along to a public festival: his face alone will be enough to put a damper on people’s gaiety…If he joins a conversation, everyone suddenly clams up.  

Henry Fielding

A true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation.

Mark C. Henrie

The history and the texts must be approached as disclosing the pattern of a civilization, the highest of human temporal achievements.  The history and the texts must be understood as aids pointing beyond themselves to the true object of our interest—the truth of things.

The end of liberal education is the health of the mind.

It is probably better to say that the end of a liberal education is to civilize man.
                     

Hugh of St. Victor

It is in the seven liberal arts, however, that the foundation of all learning is to be found.

Out of all the sciences…especially selected seven to be mastered by those who were to be educated.  These seven they considered so to excel all the rest in usefulness that anyone who had been thoroughly schooled in them might afterward come to knowledge of the others by his own inquiry and effort rather than by listening to a teacher.  For these, one might say, constitute the best instruments, the best rudiments, by which the way is prepared for the mind’s complete knowledge of philosophic truth.  Therefore they are called by the name trivium and quadrivium, because by them, as by certain ways (viae), a quick mind enters into the secret places of wisdom.

Robert Hutchins

The aim of a liberal education is excellence.

Craig W. Kallendorf

The early humanists were thus reformers of a special kind: not the kind who want to reform institutions, but the kind who want to leave institutions mostly in tact while improving the quality of the human material that directs those institutions…The great tool for this transformation of mankind was classical education: the canonical works of classical literature, which because they had such desirable effects were called bonae litterae (‘good letters’) or litterae humaniores (‘more humane letters’).  They were letters that made you morally better and more civilized.

Russell Kirk

The function of liberal learning is to order the human soul…it emancipates the mind from every narrow provincialism, whether of egoism or tradition,…
                                                                                                        
By ‘liberal studies’ we mean an ordering and integrating of knowledge for the benefit of the free person—as contrasted with technical or professional schooling, now somewhat vaingloriously called ‘career education.’

Liberal learning enables those who benefit from its discipline to achieve some degree of harmony within them.

The function of liberal education is to conserve a body of received knowledge and to impart an apprehension of order to the rising generation.

When I say that we experience an increased need for truly liberal learning, I am recommending something to leaven the lump of modern civilization—something that would give us a tolerable number of people in many walks of life who would possess some share of right reason and moral imagination; who would not shout the price of everything, but would know the value of something; who would be schooled in wisdom and virtue.

Peter Kreeft

One of the functions of the teacher is to raise the dead, to make their authors present. How? Not by doing anything to the authors, but to the readers: by getting the students to read the great books as their authors intended them to be read, namely actively, questioningly, in dialogue with the author, who will speak to them from beyond the grave or from a distance if, and only if, the reader asks the right questions, the logical questions. The reader may thus get the alarming sense that he is being haunted by the ghost of the writer. A great book, properly read, becomes not just a dead object but a living subject, a person, or the ghost of a person.
                                                                                                                                                         
As arms, legs, hands, hearts, brains, lungs, and all the other body parts make a single human body—and as the plot, characters, setting, theme, and style make up a single story—all these subjects in the curriculum make up a single thing: an education, an e-ducare, a leading-out and leading-up into the light. It is a change, like an operation or a birth: a change in the student. It is a change from darkness to light, from small mind to large mind, that is, from ignorance to knowledge, and (much more important) from folly to wisdom.

Peter Leithart

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity, and this vanity encompasses the making of and devotion to books. Devotion to liberal arts is no more vain than any other human pursuit, but neither is it any less vain. But though vanity and vapor, it is the labor that God has set in our hands, whether for a time or for a lifetime. And we can enjoy it in Him and enjoy Him in it.                                                                                                           

Knowledge can puff us with pride, but if it is received rightly, a liberal education inculcates at least one virtue: the master virtue of humility.
                                  

Robert Littlejohn and Charles T. Evans

Successful implementation of a liberal arts curriculum requires faculty who are invested in the tradition and who can envision the benefits for themselves and for their students.  The more familiar we teachers are with these disciplines, the more capable we are of teaching ways that promote the goals of wisdom and eloquence.  Still despite the attractiveness of the proposal, adopting new and unfamiliar perspectives on our vocation is an intimidating prospect.

Rhabanus Maurus

The seven liberal arts of the philosophers, which Christians should learn for their utility and advantage,…
                                                                           

Robert Royal

The Humanities are about human beings…How can we claim to be full human beings if we have not looked hard at the things that most directly concern us: ourselves and the societies in which, with others, we share the world? And how can we do so without taking seriously the best answers to such questions, which have survived the deaths of their authors, centuries of critics, and even cataclysmic changes in entire cultures?

James V. Schall

The liberal arts are not one person’s invention, but rather represent the collected wisdom of many generations and nations.  We should recognize, from the beginning, that these ‘freeing’ or ‘liberal’ arts are not simply a body of books, but a way of life enabling us to be free enough to know the truth of things.

To explain man to himself is the central purpose of any form of liberal education.

To have no articulated ‘city’ in one’s soul is the essence of an unfree man.  To have one, placed there by argument, is to be liberally educated.

What is known as ‘modern’ thought is largely the attempt to solve the classical human questions without recourse to either tradition.  Any adequate concept of ‘liberal arts’ and ‘liberal education’ would, to be intellectually complete and honest, have to attend to the Greek and Roman classical traditions, to the Hebrew and Christian revelation, to the patristic and medieval experience, and finally to modern claims, especially those arising from science and politics, even when they claim to be ‘autonomous.’

It would not be wrong to describe ‘liberal education’ as the effort to experience the proper pleasure due to knowing, according to what they are, all the things that are—seeing, tasting, listening, touching, smelling, remembering, imagining, knowing, thinking, and believing.

It is this exciting freedom to take into our souls what we are not, to take it in without changing or destroying what we take in, that constitutes the purpose of the liberal arts, which are designed to teach us how to be open to the various levels of being.

Seneca

“What then,” you say, “do the liberal studies contribute nothing to our welfare?” Very much in other respects, but nothing at all as regards virtue. For even these arts of which I have spoken, though admittedly of a low grade—depending as they do, upon handiwork—contribute greatly toward the equipment of life, but nevertheless have nothing to do with virtue. And if you inquire, “Why, then, do we educate our children in the liberal studies?” it is not because they can bestow virtue, but because they prepare the soul for the reception of virtue. Just as that “primary course,” as the ancients called it, in grammar, which gave boys their elementary training, does not teach them the liberal arts, but prepares the ground for their early acquisition of these arts, so the liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction.

                                                               

Allen Tate

To the question, what should the man of letters be in our time, we should have to find the answer in what we need him to do.  He must do first what he has always done: he must recreate for his age the image of man, and he must propagate standards by which other men may test that image, and distinguish the false from the true.  

Vergerio

We call those studies liberal, then, which are worthy of a free [liber] man; they are those through which virtue and wisdom are either practiced or sought, and by which our minds are disposed towards the best things.