[For the ancients] free men must know something of everything and understand general principles without yielding to the narrowness of expertise. The Romans’ recommended course of study was literature, history, philosophy, and rhetoric....That is a surprising degree of agreement! However, with the coming of the modern age, the trouble started.
The seven liberal arts of the Middle Ages consisted of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). The discovery and absorption of Aristotle’s works in the twelfth century quickly led to the triumph of logic and dialectic over the other arts.... [For the Medievals] An ambitious scholar could hope to achieve some semblance of universal knowledge. This was good in itself, for to the medieval men God was the source of all truth and to comprehend it was to come closer to divinity. They also placed great value on the practical rewards of their liberal education....
[Renaissance students] thought these studies delightful in themselves but also essential for achieving the goals of a liberal education: to become wise and to speak eloquently....
No more than the ancients did the Humanists think that liberal education should be remote from the responsibilities and rewards of the secular life of mankind. Their study should lead to a knowledge of virtue, but that knowledge should also lead to virtuous action in the public interest, and such action should bring fame as its reward....
You can read the rest and think it over, but I suggest you appreciate the strength of the frame Dr. Kagan has built. If you were to ask me what you ought to study, given the costs of education and the need to focus on a particular areas, I would say that some people who are especially good at it ought to study particular sciences where they find they have a great talent; but that most people, and especially those who intend to be men of the world and to act rather than think and experiment, could do little better than to study the Romans' recommended course, plus the most of the Medievals' annotations: "literature, history, philosophy... grammar, rhetoric, logic... arithmetic, geometry, astronomy [one might say instead the sort of physics necessary to understand astronomy], and music."
This provides you with the best rooting in Truth as we have known it [in history, philosophy, logic, arithmetic, geometry and physics], and with the best we have thought about Beauty [in literature and grammar, rhetoric and music, but also in history and philosophy].
At the union of Truth and Beauty is, I think, what Plato called The Form of the Good, or goodness itself; it is where the Medievals thought they would find the divine. You will get all you need to know about men, and -- as Maimonides said of such a course of study -- a chance at a vision of God.
Hmmm...I think this is much more Kagan's point here:
ReplyDelete"I submit that in America today the most important social distinction, one almost as significant as the old one between gentle and simple, is whether or not one has a college education. Within the favored group, finer distinctions place a liberal education, as opposed to a vocational or merely professional one, at the top of the social pyramid. Graduates of the better liberal arts colleges are most likely to marry the most desired partners and hold the best positions and appointments in business, their professions, and government."
So it's not really education, as much as both class-markers and perhaps even more importantly, Credentialism.
You want to learn? You don't need a school for that anymore. In the middle ages, the universities were where the books were. Now? As I've noted before with music, one is able to access huge amounts of the learning of not just Western civilization, but the rest of the world, too.
So, study what you will, but what you *do* will be what matters in the end.
That may well be his point, but I wouldn't want you to miss the deeper point while following him. Social commentary on the current situation is one thing; but a pointer at ancient wisdom and the highest truths is something else again. Don't pass it by.
ReplyDelete"In the middle ages, the universities were where the books were."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Knowledge is valuable.