What Does it Mean to be Liberally Educated?

[There is no such thing as liberal education without literacy. Literacy implies texts, where a text can be broadly defined as one or more sentences written down. There fore, liberal education has something to do with texts. Yet not all texts have something to do with liberal education. Romance novels, technical manuals, and most journalism, for example, have little or nothing to do with liberal education. The problem of liberal education, therefore, seems to boil down to identifying the texts that serve the purpose of liberal education, and then reading and discussing those texts. At this point one is naturally tempted to ask, "But what is the purpose of liberal education?" For until that question is answered, it will be pointed out, we cannot say whether any given text serves the purpose. But to ask the purpose of liberal education is surely a bit like asking the purpose of life. Briefly, the purpose of life is "to live," where it is up to the individual to attach meaning to the words "to live" according to his own philosophy and system of values. And those who come this far would probably agree that the purpose of liberal education is to live more fully than we could without it. We will therefore bypass the subjective, value-dependent question, "What is the purpose of liberal education?" and concentrate on the challenging task of finding those texts which most intelligent, well- informed people would concede have something to do with liberal education. Perhaps one way to persuade sceptics that we haven't set off on a fool's errand is to assert in theory what everybody accepts in practice, namely, that some texts are better than other texts. Doubtless even this assertion will provoke controversy. Fortunately it is one of those statements that one cannot deny without at the same time affirming. Suppose you say "No text is better than any other text." The logical implication is that the text, 'No text is better than any other text' is better than, 'Some texts are better than other texts.' For the time being then, let's accept common sensical thinking in theory as well as in practice. This leaves us free to ask the potentially fruitful question, "Which texts are good?" For if it is possible to determine which texts are good, we will then be in a position to offer a straightforward and practical answer to the question, "What does it mean to be liberally educated?" Happily, it is an answer that confirms the classical view, namely: To be liberally educated means being well acquainted with good texts, some of which are part of the canon. A few definitions may be in order at this point:

A Text: A statement, an argument, a narrative, or a poem.

Acquaintance: A cognitive relationship with something.

The Canon: Those texts (i.e. the Bible, Shakespeare, the Koran, etc.) which are given a place of honour in a particular culture, and are widely held to be of the greatest value.

However, it is not easy to say when a text is good, even when there is no one around with a contrary opinion. In his book, Confessions of a Philosopher, Bryan Magee presents one of the difficulties as follows:

In ordinary life one knows that it is possible even with the best of intentions to utter words and yet say nothing...empty utterance is the order of the day throughout the mass media, including the so-called quality press. Given that speaking without saying anything is compatible with both high intelligence and good intentions, how are we to distinguish between statements that really do say something (true or false) and statements that say nothing at all?

How indeed! To take the measure of the problem let us begin by examining the texts below in order to decide which of them are good, and which are nonsensical, trivial, obscure, or just empty rhetoric? (Empty Rhetoric: language designed to have a per
suasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.) You don't have to agree with a text to pronounce it good, but there has to be something about it that pleases you. A text that arouses in you nothing but antagonism and visceral disapproval can never be good for you. Nevertheless, an offending text may still qualify as good if a consensus can be found for it—though it must always remain subject to revision at another time and place. Perhaps if the consensus is weak we might want to call a text "useful," reserving the word "good" only for texts for which strong support can be found. The selected texts touch on the following topics: vision, liberalism, religion, evolution, human destiny, words, literature, algorithms, intuition, intellectual vigour, artificial intelligence, free will, determinism, faith, the cultural impact of the Bible, the cosmological argument, life after death, miracles, grace, capitalism, competition, technology, and work. Their authors, in alphabetical order, are: Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton, George Gissing, Harvey Cox, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Dawson, Daniel Dennett, Albert Einstein, Northrop Frye Jacques Ellul, John F. Kennedy, Hugh Kenner, Arnold Lunn, Karl Marx, Michael Moore, Malcolm Muggeridge, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen Rose, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and Gore Vidal. The authors of the passages have been concealed so that each may be judged free of the bias that sometimes arises when one knows the source. However, one should not to be overly cautious or afraid to go with one's gut feeling. As somebody said, "Everyone has a right to be wrong in their opinions": besides, opinions can always be revised. To find out who wrote what, just hold your cursor over the word Author for a few moments. The author's name will appear in a yellow box.]

A complicated algorithm would approximate the competence of the perfect understander, and be "invisible" to its beneficiary. Whenever we say we solv ed some problem "by intuition," all that really means is we don't know how we solved it. The simplest way of modelling "intuition" in a computer is simply denying the computer program any access to its own inner workings. Whenever it solves a problem, and you ask it how it solved the problem, it should respond: "I don't know; it just came to me by intuition."

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Capitalism is legalized greed.

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Consumer capitalism is dedicated to the proposition that production is good in itself, no matter what is produced. The net effect is the massive production of absurd, empty and useless items which are nevertheless utterly serious since we earn our living from them, and dedicate our leisure time to them.

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Experience offers proof on every hand that vigorous mental life may be but one side of personality, of which the other is moral barbarism.

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I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe. The twenty-first century should be an age of reason. Yet irrational, militant faith is back on the march.

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In the service of life, sacrifice becomes grace.

It is as easy for me to believe that the universe made itself as to believe that a maker of the universe made Himself—in fact, much easier, since the universe visibly exists.

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It is spirit that is the principle of unity and matter that is the principle of division. And as soon as this truth is admitted, religion will no longer appear as an unessential and extraneous element in culture, but as its most vital element. For religion is the bond that unites man to spiritual reality, and it is only in religion that society can find the principle of spiritual union of which it stands in need.

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Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

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Literature exists in a verbal universe, which is not a commentary on life or reality, but contains life and reality in a system of verbal relationships.

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Man is a competitive animal and war the most thrilling of all competitive sports, a fact which our pacifists always forget.

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Man now needs for his salvation only one thing: to open his heart to joy, and leave fear to gibber through the glimmering darkness of a forgotten past. He must lift up his eyes and say: "No, I am not a miserable sinner; I am a being who, by a long and arduous road, have discovered how to make intelligence master natural obstacles, how to live in freedom and joy, at peace with myself and therefore with all humankind."

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Religion is the sigh of a creature burdened with unhappiness, the soul of a world without heart, the spirit of an age without spirit. It is the opium of the people.

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Somehow I have always had an inner and unaccountable conviction that any religious expression of truth, however bizarre or uncouth, is more sufficing than any secular one, however elegant and intellectually brilliant. Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.

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Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrong ly) because they have a doctrine against them. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is—that they see ghosts.

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The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

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The rise of natural science, of democratic political institutions and of cultural pluralism—all developments we normally associate with Western culture—can scarcely be understood without the original impetus of the Bible. Even though the conscious connection has long since been lost sight of, the relationships are still there. Cultural impulses continue to work long after their sources have been forgotten.

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The vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I be lieve in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

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To live well is to work well.

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We are just a temporary assemblage of atoms which will soon be dispersed and replaced by others. We're all interchangeable. The human species has no meaning at all. It follows the law of every species, to replicate itself, to adapt if it can and if it can't, to die. There's no more to it than that. This isn't very glamourous which is why we invent sky-gods which we touchingly put in our own image. I love that bit in the Bible. It must have given great comfort round the camp fire. The big fella in the sky, he's one of us! He isn't. There's nothing there.

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We live on the borders of multiple determinisms, and it's that which gives us the sensation of freedom when we're acting. Those determinisms are shaping the way in which we act and respond at any given moment. But they are not free will in the Cartesian sense.

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Words are magical: words are. The word "tree" is not merely a counter or a pointer: it exists as an object, in all the analogical splendour of being, just as the tree itself exists.

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