- The Thomistic Institute's Study Abroad Program is accepting applications for the spring semester of 2024, offering the opportunity to study in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.
- The program includes studying the ancient and medieval intellectual tradition of Rome, living near the Colosseum, and participating in cultural and intellectual events and excursions.
- The Thomistic Institute podcast promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and features lectures organized by university students.
- The speaker discusses the topic of integrated learning and the role of philosophy in liberal education.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of clarifying terms such as integration, liberal education, and philosophy.
- The speaker employs tools of interpretation and reasoning, drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas.
- The speaker explores what integration is not, including the misconception of integration as simply mixing or combining knowledge.
- The speaker plans to discuss errors or pitfalls in order to gain a better understanding of integration, liberal education, and philosophy.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt were considered candidates for the last men to know everything in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- The encyclopedic ideal of comprehensive knowledge was popular during this time, but is no longer possible due to the sheer quantity of knowledge and specialization within disciplines.
- Integrated knowledge aims to understand how everything is connected, rather than mastering all disciplines.
- Integrated learning involves relating parts to wholes and ordering and supporting different areas of knowledge.
- Wendell Berry's example of a tree represents the need for different ways of reflecting on concepts and the importance of recognizing specialized disciplines as partial and limited in their view of the whole.
- The modern university is criticized for its fragmentation and lack of integration in knowledge.
- The metaphor of a tree is used to describe the form of knowledge as organic, unified, comprehensive, connective, and moral.

- The piece discusses the concept of integration in education and how it has been lost over time.
- It criticizes popular misconceptions of liberal education, such as being well-rounded, fostering cultural appreciation, and teaching critical thinking.
- The author argues that liberal education should focus on responsible citizenship and overcoming confusion and ignorance.
- The invention of great books education is seen as a significant contribution to liberal education, but it is also criticized for its potential misconceptions.
- Mortimer Adler's views on liberal education are discussed, particularly his emphasis on the practical utility of logic.
- Adler argues that thinking is not separate from its embodied and affective dimension, and therefore, the liberal arts should consider grammatical and rhetorical implications.
- The author notes that Adler's views evolved over time, and he became known for his book "How to Read a Book" and his involvement with St. John's College.

- Adler designed "How to Read a Book" to convey the classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
- The trivium is the art of liberal education, which is an education in how to learn.
- A liberal artist is competent as a learner in any field of subject matter.
- Communication among disciplines is fostered by the trivium and is crucial for a university.
- Liberal education is training in the liberal arts, which habituates the mind to a certain kind of inquiry.
- Philosophy is not a domain of defective knowledge, but the pursuit of wisdom and the ordering of other disciplines.
- Philosophy is the architectonic science that unifies all sciences and provides a comprehensive view of truth.

- The piece discusses the importance of philosophy in a liberal education
- Philosophy is seen as a habit of mind that integrates all other disciplines
- The author explores the ideas of Wendell Berry, St. John Henry Newman, and Mortimer Adler as examples of philosophical thinkers
- The need for liberal education is evident in campus debates about curriculum and the purpose of education
- The exercise of the philosophical habit may be misunderstood or difficult to convey to others
- The basics of liberal education are learned before college through mastering grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

- Liberal education is not limited to college, but begins with the mastery of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as tools of learning before college.
- Liberal education can be practiced and strengthened outside of institutional college settings, such as in book groups, debating clubs, intellectual societies, and conversations after lectures.
- Indoctrination is understood as getting someone to believe something without thinking or understanding it, and can happen unintentionally in education.
- Positivism seeks to find unity in knowledge but has limitations, as it focuses on empirical verification and may not acknowledge assumptions like atheism and materialism.
- The right time to take up philosophy is subjective, but it is important for other studies to be informed by philosophy and for students to develop philosophical thinking skills early on.

- The Great Books College was designed to encourage open discussion and questioning without shame
- Philosophy can be found in reading texts together, rather than in traditional course sequences
- The nature of God and the relationship between immaterial and material worlds are not typically discussed in biology classes
- Distinguishing between good and bad skepticism is important in liberal learning
- Critical thinking is a tool, not the end goal of education
- The purpose of college and liberal education is not to tear down all beliefs, but to challenge and reaffirm them
- Criticism is a part of dialectic and asking for reasons, but not the final point
- Generosity of listeners supports the Thomistic Institute podcast and the spreading of powerful truths of faith.

The Thomistic Institute's Study Abroad Program is accepting applications for the spring semester of 2024, offering the opportunity to study in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. The program includes studying the ancient and medieval intellectual tradition of Rome, living near the Colosseum, and participating in cultural and intellectual events and excursions. The Thomistic Institute podcast promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and features lectures organized by university students. The speaker discusses the topic of integrated learning and the role of philosophy in liberal education. The speaker emphasizes the importance of clarifying terms such as integration, liberal education, and philosophy. The speaker employs tools of interpretation and reasoning, drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas. The speaker explores what integration is not, including the misconception of integration as simply mixing or combining knowledge. The speaker plans to discuss errors or pitfalls in order to gain a better understanding of integration, liberal education, and philosophy. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt were considered candidates for the last men to know everything in the 18th and 19th centuries. The encyclopedic ideal of comprehensive knowledge was popular during this time, but is no longer possible due to the sheer quantity of knowledge and specialization within disciplines. Integrated knowledge aims to understand how everything is connected, rather than mastering all disciplines. Integrated learning involves relating parts to wholes and ordering and supporting different areas of knowledge. Wendell Berry's example of a tree represents the need for different ways of reflecting on concepts and the importance of recognizing specialized disciplines as partial and limited in their view of the whole. The modern university is criticized for its fragmentation and lack of integration in knowledge. The metaphor of a tree is used to describe the form of knowledge as organic, unified, comprehensive, connective, and moral. The piece discusses the concept of integration in education and how it has been lost over time. It criticizes popular misconceptions of liberal education, such as being well-rounded, fostering cultural appreciation, and teaching critical thinking. The author argues that liberal education should focus on responsible citizenship and overcoming confusion and ignorance. The invention of great books education is seen as a significant contribution to liberal education, but it is also criticized for its potential misconceptions. Mortimer Adler's views on liberal education are discussed, particularly his emphasis on the practical utility of logic. Adler argues that thinking is not separate from its embodied and affective dimension, and therefore, the liberal arts should consider grammatical and rhetorical implications. The author notes that Adler's views evolved over time, and he became known for his book "How to Read a Book" and his involvement with St. John's College. Adler designed "How to Read a Book" to convey the classical trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The trivium is the art of liberal education, which is an education in how to learn. A liberal artist is competent as a learner in any field of subject matter. Communication among disciplines is fostered by the trivium and is crucial for a university. Liberal education is training in the liberal arts, which habituates the mind to a certain kind of inquiry. Philosophy is not a domain of defective knowledge, but the pursuit of wisdom and the ordering of other disciplines. Philosophy is the architectonic science that unifies all sciences and provides a comprehensive view of truth. The piece discusses the importance of philosophy in a liberal education. Philosophy is seen as a habit of mind that integrates all other disciplines. The author explores the ideas of Wendell Berry, St. John Henry Newman, and Mortimer Adler as examples of philosophical thinkers. The need for liberal education is evident in campus debates about curriculum and the purpose of education. The exercise of the philosophical habit may be misunderstood or difficult to convey to others. The basics of liberal education are learned before college through mastering grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Liberal education is not limited to college, but begins with the mastery of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as tools of learning before college. Liberal education can be practiced and strengthened outside of institutional college settings, such as in book groups, debating clubs, intellectual societies, and conversations after lectures. Indoctrination is understood as getting someone to believe something without thinking or understanding it, and can happen unintentionally in education. Positivism seeks to find unity in knowledge but has limitations, as it focuses on empirical verification and may not acknowledge assumptions like atheism and materialism. The right time to take up philosophy is subjective, but it is important for other studies to be informed by philosophy and for students to develop philosophical thinking skills early on. The Great Books College was designed to encourage open discussion and questioning without shame. Philosophy can be found in reading texts together, rather than in traditional course sequences. The nature of God and the relationship between immaterial and material worlds are not typically discussed in biology classes. Distinguishing between good and bad skepticism is important in liberal learning. Critical thinking is a tool, not the end goal of education. The purpose of college and liberal education is not to tear down all beliefs, but to challenge and reaffirm them. Criticism is a part of dialectic and asking for reasons, but not the final point. Generosity of listeners supports the Thomistic Institute podcast and the spreading of powerful truths of faith.

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This lecture was given on April 27th, 2023, at Saint Louis University.

Joshua Hochschild is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mount St. Mary’s University, where he also served six years as the inaugural Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His primary research is in medieval logic, metaphysics, and ethics, with broad interest in liberal education and the continuing relevance of the Catholic intellectual tradition. He is the author of The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (2010), translator of Claude Panaccio’s Mental Language: From Plato to William of Ockham (2017), and co-author of A Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in the Age of Distraction (2017). His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, Modern Age and the Wall Street Journal. For 2020-21 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

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The Thomistic Institute's Study Abroad Program is now accepting applications for the spring semester of 2024.

This unique and exciting Study Abroad Program offers you the opportunity to spend a semester in Rome at the Dominican Order's Pontifical University of St.

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To learn more about this life-changing opportunity, go to thomisticinstitute.org.

Welcome to the Thomistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Thomistic Institute chapters around the world.

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I always feel a little bit awkward about that because I'd actually like to engage in conversation.

The Thomistic Institute likes to record these and many of them turn into podcasts for people to listen to.

We'll have a chance to do some question and answer afterwards.

So I look forward to that conversation afterwards.

And if you can come tomorrow morning, I'm happy to continue the conversation.

The title, I will be talking about the title in the talk, but I'm grateful for the title.

I might have written the title, but if I didn't write the title someone else That I need to thank wrote the title, but I was assigned this title and so I wrote a new lecture I have a couple of different lectures that I've given But this is a new lecture for you and so you also can help me like refine it you can tell me if it made any sense or if it connected with other things that you've been thinking about in liberal education.

This could be like 45 minutes maybe almost 50 minutes.

I know that's a lot to ask, so buckle up, alright?

The role of philosophy in liberal education.

My main title asks, is integrated learning still possible?

In its surface structure, this is a theoretical question, which can receive an answer, yes or no, and either way could be defended with reasons, Explained and perhaps qualified or unqualified with further details.

Why and under what conditions is or isn't integrated learning possible?

I say this is a theoretical question, but rhetorically it also implies a practical question.

On the assumption that we want integrated learning, what can we do to get it?

What steps are available to us to achieve integrated learning?

What are the implications for the choices of non-integrated learning still available to us?

I will in fact try to give some practical advice by the end of this talk, but the practical advice, even if rooted in other practical concerns, will have to draw from answers to the theoretical questions.

A suggestion of an answer to the question in the title is already provided in the subtitle.

It seems we regard liberal education as that kind of education in and through which integrated learning is possible.

But about liberal education, there is another implicit question.

What role does philosophy, if any, play in integrating the learning of liberal education?

There are other questions embedded in the title.

The word integrated is in quotation marks.

Perhaps it is an authoritative or somehow formal word which needs interpretation.

Or perhaps it is a word so often repeated in different contexts that it is subject to confusion or has lost its meaning.

In any case, we need to clarify what concept it is supposed to capture.

And for that matter, we may need to clarify what the words liberal education and philosophy mean as well.

And perhaps we will do so precisely by clarifying what integration means.

I've just spent a long time belaboring some very simple points.

When I shared the title of this talk with my teenage daughter and asked her what she thought I was going to say, she could infer immediately that integrated learning is possible thanks to the role of philosophy in liberal education.

That would be a reasonable thesis for me to defend.

But if it is my thesis, and I suppose in a way it is, what does it mean?

So my opening questions have, I hope, disposed you not to take too much for granted and to appreciate the network of questions implied by the title.

A classical rhetorician might wonder if this extended prologue has made you docile and interested, if I have fostered my audience's humility and courage.

My opening reflections also serve another purpose.

They exhibit the utility of the most basic tools of liberal education.

Consider them tools of interpretation, or what Aristotle and the Scholastic tradition which learned from him called dialectic, or sometimes simply logic.

I'm not going to say much about Aristotle or Aquinas in this talk, but I assure you that what I say draws on study of what they say, especially about the nature of reasoning.

I will only note here that simply by reflecting thoughtfully on my title, by engaging in what I hope is a propagandic and not pedantic exercise of interpretation.

So far I have employed at least 3 sets of distinctions fundamental to the traditional Aristotelian approach to the art of reasoning.

First, my reflections draw from the division of acts of intellect into 3 types.

The formation of concepts as when we reflect on the meaning of terms or define and distinguish key notions.

The making of judgments as when we give or refuse assent to statements, assessing the truth or falsehood of claims.

And discursive reasoning, that is, connecting or running together multiple judgments, giving reasons supporting the truth of 1 claim in light of another, and illuminating inferences and forming arguments.

Second, I've been drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning.

Sometimes we use our rational powers for the sake of knowing, and sometimes we use them for the sake of doing.

We can act in order to seek truth and we can use the truths we know in order to discern what actions to choose.

Philosophers even argue sometimes about whether or not or in what sense different specialties like ethics or theology, sometimes even logic, in what sense they count as practical or theoretical.

But such contested or mixed cases only confirm that the distinction is helpful for us to clarify exactly how and why we are exercising our minds and better understand the relation between our knowing and our doing.

Third, I've employed the distinction that constitutes 3 of the traditional 7 liberal arts, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

For when evaluating language, it is 1 thing to look at the external structure of expressions, grammar, in order to evaluate their correctness and function in terms of linguistic conventions.

It is another thing to discern the intelligible content of what is expressed, to evaluate the adequacy of concepts, the truth of propositions, and the reasonableness of inferences.

And it is yet another thing to consider the social influence of those expressions as contextualized acts of communication in order to appreciate and evaluate the persuasive effect of expressions as distinct from their grammatical correctness or logical strength.

For language has an undeniable power to stir imagination and emotion, the effective energy of words to soothe or disturb, to activate a memory or arouse a sense of dignity, to provoke wonder or sow doubt, to divide by fear or bind by love.

What is the role of philosophy in liberal education?

My plan is to proceed by a via negativa, the negative way.

I will seek to clarify terms indirectly by noticing first some errors or pitfalls.

To gain a better understanding of what integration, liberal education, and philosophy are, and how they are related, and why they are valuable, and how we might achieve them, let us consider in turn what they are not.

So the first main section is what integration is not.

In some contexts, integrating can simply mean mixing or combining.

Even if we understand parts as integrated into a whole, we might think of the whole as simply the sum of the parts, as if integration is merely aggregation or accumulation.

To have fully integrated knowledge in this sense would only mean to acquire all the parts of knowledge, and in that sense, to know everything.

There may have been a time when this was thought to be achievable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who died in 1832, and Alexander von Humboldt, who died in 1859, are sometimes offered as candidates for the title of the last man to know everything.

The 18th and early 19th centuries boast a class of scientific and literary polymaths who knew multiple languages, practiced various arts, and contributed to science and culture.

What disciplines they did not directly participate in they could keep abreast of through reading, correspondence, joining philosophical and scientific societies, attending lectures, and keeping the right society.

It tells us something about the history of knowledge that it even seemed possible to know everything and desirable to compile all knowledge, the encyclopedic ideal also a phenomenon of the 18th and 19th centuries.

We still have resources that call themselves encyclopedias, but they are not in fact, and they do not pretend to be truly encyclopedic, offering a comprehensive account of all branches of knowledge.

The aggregative or accumulative notion of comprehensive knowledge, what I'm calling the encyclopedic ideal, expired, breathing its final breath perhaps in 1889 with the publication of the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Why is comprehensive knowledge in this sense not possible anymore?

The sheer quantity of knowledge is surely too great, but a stronger factor is the proliferation of disciplines, and specialization within the disciplines.

Goethe could master many disciplines, but today the most intelligent person can rarely claim to have mastered even 1.

Take a single field with a clear standard of mastery—mathematics.

Can 1 and the same person be an expert in all the branches of mathematics—number theory and probability, and topology and game theory and non-Euclidean geometries.

Or take a discipline where 1 might expect a common set of commitments and principles, like Catholic theology.

Different methods and assumptions and scholarly authorities make a biblical scholar unlikely to teach systematic theology, a canon lawyer unlikely to teach liturgy, and a moral theologian unlikely to teach patristics.

There may be exceptions, but they prove the rule.

Modern disciplinary specialists are as likely to feel actually as separated by their specialties as they are nominally united by a general discipline.

We aspire to integrated knowledge because we experience modern disciplines not only as proliferated and specialized but as fragmented.

We don't want or need to know everything, but it would surely be beneficial to know how everything is connected, how to grasp the various parts not in their separate detail, but as parts constituting a whole.

To speak of the integration of knowledge, then, we aren't aiming for an encyclopedic or comprehensive accumulation of knowledge, not knowing everything in the sense of mastering all the disciplines.

That polymathic aspiration was probably never really possible, even 200 years ago.

But today, it seems not only quaint, but unhelpful.

What, then, could integrated learning be?

It would be comprehensive in a different sense, as capable of ordering and relating all knowledge.

It would be like the knowledge of an architect who coordinates all of the arts serving the building project

the stone carvers and carpenters, the toolmakers and wood millers, the iron smelters and mortar mixers, without needing to practice these skills himself.

He appreciates them, orders them, and supports them, actually helps them to perfect their individual dignity and find opportunity for their fulfillment as ordered towards a common, noble project.

The architect's understanding of the crafts draws on and contributes to, without seeking to replace or fully master each individual craft.

Integrated knowledge would be architectonic in this sense, and integrated learning would be a learning that even in the act of studying parts would be seeking to relate them to wholes.

Integration after all usually does not mean mere aggregation or conjunction, but something more like incorporation.

To take something and make it a part of a whole, not simply count as a part of something, but help it to actualize it as something that participates in something else.

To integrate a part into a whole thus makes the part a part, a member of something greater.

If something is an integral part of a whole, it somehow helps to constitute or fulfill or realize that whole as a whole, and so the whole would not be complete without the part, it would not be fully the whole that it is.

For parts to be integrated is for them to be ordered to a common end, to be made part of a system that depends on them and yet cannot be reduced to any set of parts, even the whole set of parts, considered as parts.

The whole, or system, or community, is the interrelation of the parts.

Integrated knowledge would be knowledge whose parts form an ensemble, a harmony, as musicians making up an orchestra.

The poet, storyteller, and essayist Wendell Berry, in his 1984 essay, The Loss of the University, chooses an appropriately organic example of the precondition of integrated knowledge, an openness to different ways of reflecting on the concept of a tree.

It is necessary, for example, that the word tree evoke memories that are both personal and cultural.

In order to understand fully what a tree is, we must remember much of our experience with trees and much that we have heard and read about them.

We destroy those memories by reducing trees to facts, by thinking of tree as a mere word, or by treating our memory of trees as cultural history.

When we call a tree a tree, we are not isolated among words and facts, but we are at once in the company of the tree itself and surrounded by ancestral voices calling out to us all that trees have been and meant.

This is simply the condition of being human in this world, and there is nothing that art and science can do about it except get used to it.

But of course, only specialized professional arts and sciences would propose or wish to do something about it.

Berry specifically takes this example to represent an ideal for university education, to speak of things in a way that captures their true nature, which requires that specialized disciplines recognize themselves as specialized, that is, as partial and limited in their view of the whole.

This necessity for words and facts to return to their objects in the world describes 1 of the boundaries of a university, 1 of the boundaries of book learning anywhere, and it describes the need for humility, restraint, exacting discipline, and high standards within that boundary.

Berry proposes this ideal of humble submission to reality specifically as a response to the experience of fragmentation.

1 of the things that 1 might know about a tree, for instance, is how powerfully it has served as an image of an ordered whole.

So Barry's tree becomes, for integrated knowing, not only an example, but a metaphor.

Thrail that his cousin, Cornelius Ford, advised him to study the principles of everything, that a general acquaintance with life might be the consequence of his inquiries.

Learn, said he, the leading precognita of all things.

Grasp the trunk hard only, and you will shake all the branches." The soundness of this advice seems indisputable, and the metaphor entirely apt.

From the trunk, it is possible to branch out.

1 can begin, continues Berry, with a trunk and develop a single branch or any number of branches.

Although it may be possible to begin with a branch and develop a trunk, that is neither so probable nor so promising.

As Berry applies the metaphor, a healthy university would be a living tree whose many branches are nourished by a strong trunk rooted in deep soil.

Against this standard, Berry argues, the modern university more and more resembles a loose collection of locked branches waving about randomly in the air.

Massingham wrote in 1943, while the essence of culture is initiation into wholeness, so that all the divisions of knowledge are considered as the branches of 1 tree, the tree of life whose roots went deep into earth and whose top was in heaven.

And so for Berry, the metaphor is not only useful for its strong biological association, but for its lofty theological associations, elevating the mind to awareness of all things in relation to God.

I have 1 more quote from Barry, is it alright if I keep doing this?

This tree, for many hundreds of years, seems to have come almost naturally to mind when we have sought to describe the form of knowledge.

In Western tradition, it is at least as old as Genesis, and the form it gives us for all that we know is organic, unified, comprehensive, connective, and moral.

The tree at the beginning was 2 trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Later, in our understanding of them, the 2 trees seem to have become 1, or each seems to stand for the other, for in the world after the fall, how can the 2 be separated?

To prepare young people for life is to prepare them to know the difference between good and evil.

If we represent knowledge as a tree, we know that things that are divided are yet connected.

We know that to observe the divisions and ignore the connections is to destroy the tree.

The history of modern education may be the history of the loss of this image and of its replacement by the pattern of the industrial machine, which subsists upon division, and by industrial economics, publish or perish, which is meaningless apart from division.

By reflecting on false conceptions of integration, by articulating the felt problem of fragmentation to which authentic integration must answer, and by drawing insight from Wendell Berry, we come to this.

Integration is tracing things to their origins and ends.

It is knowing parts as ordered to wholes, and grasping the whole as ordering the parts, and the parts as related to and complementing each other in their ordering to the whole.

Integration doesn't only connect, it organizes.

It grasps, beyond the conjunction of parts, the unity of the whole.

It doesn't enumerate each branch, each leaf, each cell, or each molecule of the tree, but comprehends them all in the sense of grasping them all as elements of the tree.

The second main part, what liberal education is not.

Surely you have heard at least some of the following popular but misleading half-truths about what is meant by liberal education.

People say that it aims at producing students who are well-rounded, as if liberal education is a little of this and a little of that, wide coverage with no depth.

Like a piece of material subjected to the action of an abrasive file.

Well-rounded suggests raw rough spots smoothed off through broad but shallow exposure.

Or we hear that liberal education fosters cultural appreciation.

With some history in literature and art, the student learns to recognize and value what counts as culturally significant, and spares embarrassment when such topics arise at the proverbial cocktail party.

At best, the goal is not wisdom, but maybe erudition.

Perhaps liberal education is about self-discovery, although 1 of the first things we need to know is whether that phrase is heard as a kind of Socratic invitation, know thyself, or a narcissistic excuse, find yourself in whatever you want.

Liberal education surely should have profound personal significance, but such a subjectivist phrase does not illuminate the nature of liberal education.

Related to this, I've been disappointed to notice a trend in describing liberal education as about exploring meaning, even worse if meaning is characterized as something made or created.

Presumably, this is supposed to position liberal education in contrast with science, which treats meaningless facts.

But does that mean that liberal education is about non-factual meanings?

I'm sure you've heard liberal education described as useless.

This description even has the power to unify its critics and champions.

Why engage in useless studies, sneer the pragmatists who recommend engineering or nursing.

Precisely because it has a value beyond utility, respond the liberal educators, embracing uselessness as a badge of honor.

In fact the uselessness of liberal education has been greatly exaggerated.

Yes, its utility arises from the fact that some kinds of knowledge are more valuable for their own sake and not instrumentally, but that does not mean that liberal learning has no instrumental value or utility.

A particularly dangerous characterization of liberal education is that it teaches the art of critical thinking.

In a very classical sense, where criticism means active intellectual engagement, it is true that this is an aspect of liberal education.

But in the modern ethos, critical thinking too easily suggests suspicion and doubt, rejection of tradition and authority, and corrosive skepticism.

Liberal education should make 1 free but not lawlessly independent.

It requires discipline, conformity to standards, and a grasping of things for what they are.

So on the other hand, perhaps we should think of liberal education as a kind of civic education or education for responsible citizenship.

They're on all the websites and all the colleges that try to say that they're liberal arts institutions.

Does civic education mean that liberal studies are a tool of politicians, or a shield against them.

Leo Strauss said that liberal education is counterpoison to mass culture.

A liberally educated mind being less prone to fads and temptations, harder to mislead, perhaps not eliminating confusion and ignorance but providing the power to overcome confusion and ignorance.

I have no doubt that authentic liberal education can make 1 a more responsible citizen, at least in being less susceptible to propaganda and manipulation.

But that is a side effect of liberal education, not the defining purpose.

The great American contribution to the conception and renewal of liberal education is the invention of great books education.

In a moment I will speak about its greatest promoter, Mortimer Adler, and I agree that books, great ones, are essential to liberal education, but the notion of great books carries a risk of several misconceptions.

That liberal education introduces you to a coherent conversation.

That it is a conversation of questions with no answers.

That education is a matter of authorities and a mastery of a canon.

That liberal education only prepares you to be a certain kind of reader or scholar with no relevance at all to the real world.

There are in fact many different kinds of great books initiatives, and no 1 of them is guilty of fostering all of these mistakes, but they are common criticisms.

Having reviewed these inadequate conceptions of liberal education, let us give a further hearing to Mortimer Adler, who is more subtle on the topic of liberal education than the great book's label suggests.

article, Tradition and Communication, Adler argued that the liberal arts of the trivium—that is, grammar, rhetoric, and logic—are primarily and essentially the arts of teaching and being taught.

Logic, broadly construed, is a crucial animating theme for Adler.

Dialectic was the subject and title of his first book in

and informed his reflections on collegiate curricular reform.

For the Thomist philosopher Charles Deconnick, Adler's 1937 article emphasized too strongly the utility of logic.

Deconnick wrote Adler a long letter criticizing the implication that logic was a practical art.

De Connick distinguished between speculative and practical arts, and said that while grammar and rhetoric may be practical, logic was speculative.

The 2 men exchanged another set of letters but a few years later in 1941 Adler took the opportunity of a visit to the University of Laval in Quebec to carefully refine his position on a generous in a generous response to Deconnick's criticism.

In a lecture on logic and liberal education, which is unpublished, Adler is quite deferent to De Connick as an expert in scholastic philosophy and seeks agreement by clarifying the kind of practical utility that he meant to attribute to logic.

So in this lecture Adler says, the liberal arts are not arts of thinking if that word be used to name the acts of intellect as an isolated faculty.

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The Role of Philosophy in Liberal Education | Prof. Joshua Hochschild