Why Choose the Liberal Arts?

Mark William Roche

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780268091743
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In a world where the value of a liberal arts education is no longer taken for granted, Mark William Roche lucidly and passionately argues for its essential importance. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience in higher education as a student, faculty member, and administrator, Roche deftly connects the broad theoretical perspective of educators to the practical needs and questions of students and their parents.

Roche develops three overlapping arguments for a strong liberal arts education: first, the intrinsic value of learning for its own sake, including exploration of the profound questions that give meaning to life; second, the cultivation of intellectual virtues necessary for success beyond the academy; and third, the formative influence of the liberal arts on character and on the development of a sense of higher purpose and vocation. Together with his exploration of these three values—intrinsic, practical, and idealistic—Roche reflects on ways to integrate them, interweaving empirical data with personal experience. Why Choose the Liberal Arts? is an accessible and thought-provoking work of interest to students, parents, and administrators.

1

Engaging the Great Questions

A liberal arts education can be defended first and foremost as an end in itself; that is, it is of value for its own sake independently of its preparing students for eventual employment. As an end in itself, a liberal arts education contrasts strongly with the increasingly common notion, informed by the credentialism and achievement ethos of our era, of education as primarily a means to an end. Indeed, a recent study has shown that “students and parents overwhelmingly believe the reason to go to college is to prepare for a prosperous career” (Hersh, “Intentions” 20). In the wake of contemporary society’s elevation of instrumental rationality (how do I achieve a given end?), we notice an increasing neglect of value rationality (which ends should I pursue?). A liberal arts education asks questions about those higher ends, those ultimate values. Not only does it help us discover intrinsic goods, it is itself an intrinsic good. Liberal arts students gain insight into what has supertemporal value, they explore the challenges specific to our age, and they learn to express wonder and awe. Becoming engaged with a range of disciplines and questions is its own reward. A classic and compelling defense of this ideal of learning for its own sake was given by John Henry Cardinal Newman, who argued that “there is a knowledge worth possessing for what it is, and not merely for what it does” (86). Newman states further that “there is a Knowledge, which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labour” (86).

Through the liberal arts, students explore profound and evocative questions, engaging issues that appeal to their curiosity and desire for knowledge and deepening the restless urge to see how ideas fit together and relate to life. Great questions naturally form themselves in the minds of young persons. I once spent a day exploring great questions with a group of advanced high school students in Germany. The conversation was part of an endeavor, undertaken by German philosophers, to understand what deep questions animate young persons. When I asked the students what philosophical questions most engaged them, they named quite a few, but two sets of questions dominated. The first set circled around God. After my original concept of God as an old man with a beard, sitting above a cloud, has been shattered, can I still believe in God? Is there a concept of God that is compatible with reason? And if a more mature concept of God is possible, what would it look like? Such searching questions are almost inevitable for young persons who have been raised in a religion and then encounter, for any number of reasons, doubts about their earlier, more naive concepts of God. The second set of questions revealed an innate interest in the natural world and a fascination with the place of the individual within the almost unfathomable vastness of the universe: Does space end, or is it infinite? Has time always existed, or was there a beginning? If there was a beginning, what existed beforehand, and if time has existed forever, how did we ever get to the present moment?

Those were not their only questions. They also wanted to know: What are the defining characteristics of our age and our generation? What virtues are most needed today? Why is there evil, and why must innocent persons suffer? What is the meaning of death? Are mathematical truths something we invent, or are they somehow already present, simply waiting to be discovered? How do we know that there are normative truths? Are there philosophical concepts that can help us in our conflicts with our parents and with others? Do we possess free will, or is everything determined? Questions such as these are often met with unease by parents. The questions are complex, and meaningful answers are not easy. Also, our broader society lacks a rich culture of conversation that would embrace, rather than cast aside, such questions. But complex questions such as these are essential to a deeper understanding of the world and of ourselves.

Even as students bring great questions with them to college, the university cultivates in them a curiosity about questions they had yet to consider: Why are there wars? What is the highest good? Is it better to suffer or to commit an injustice? What are the best conditions for human flourishing? What are the defining characteristics of the just state, and how might we most effectively change our state to approximate that ideal? What are the great artworks of the ages? How do planets form, and how did life on earth arise? Is there, or was there ever, life elsewhere? Why is there anything at all, and why not nothing? Do science and religion necessarily conflict? What were the great turning points in history? Why do some countries develop successfully and others stagnate? What are our generation’s most pressing moral obligations? Which, if any, of the world’s religions are true? Do animals have consciousness? How does the mind work? None of these questions permit simple answers, and they do not all have practical value in the truncated way in which we tend to define practical value, but they do matter to students. To understand our world as it is and to understand our world as it should be are values in and of themselves.

What do students explore in the individual disciplines of the arts and sciences? In mathematics, students study patterns, both empirical and imagined. They learn how to explore numbers and shapes, to develop mathematical proofs, and to perform differentiation and integration, which are essential for measuring motion and change. They become familiar with the fundamentals of probability and randomness, learn methods of statistical analysis, and become astute evaluators of quantitative evidence. Through their study of logic, they advance their capacity for clear thinking, and in their exploration of both rigorous theory and wide-ranging applications, they begin to see in mathematics a discipline of beauty and wonder.

Students obtain through the natural sciences a richer comprehension of the world. They learn to observe natural phenomena with a keen and inquisitive eye. They gain an understanding of the universe, its evolution and structure; the fundamental laws and phenomena that underlie both physical and biological systems; the natural history of our planet, solar system, and galaxy; the composition and properties of elemental forms of matter; and the principles governing the activities of living systems in relationship to their environments. They learn to apply reason to evidence, to form concepts that relate to experience, and to induce laws from the sequence of phenomena. They develop a hunger for data, and they learn to test their theories against reality and to see in reality beauty and grandeur. In addition, they grasp the ways in which scientific principles and insights help to inform important issues of public policy and human welfare, and they become adept at assessing arguments that are based on scientific claims.

In psychology, students explore the human mind. They study the ways in which both biology and environment influence thought and behavior. They explore the development of the human being, from infancy to old age. They examine questions of perception, cognition, memory, and learning as well as decision making and problem solving. They develop and assess theories of personality and of interpersonal relationships, and they analyze individual and collective identity crises. They seek to understand, prevent, and alleviate mental health problems and to know the conditions necessary for human flourishing.

Through their study of the social sciences, students learn to analyze and appreciate the diverse ways in which social and political structures are organized. They achieve a greater awareness of the common and distinct characteristics of peoples and cultures. They study human development across time and cultures, cultivating a richer sense of the motives, attitudes, and values that animate individuals and societies. They explore the ways in which social structures influence human behavior. They devise categories for understanding the complex relationships, including the economic forces, that shape our world, and they learn to approach problems and questions with formal and statistical models. They investigate forms of conflict and power as well as diverse styles of leadership. They study the varied impact of scientific and technological change. They learn how to sift and evaluate the wealth of information and competing claims that crowd us on a daily basis, and they learn how to apply quantitative and qualitative methodologies to help analyze and solve complex problems.

Through the study of history, students cultivate an appreciation of diverse contexts and traditions, a sense of the complexity of causal forces as well as of the great debates of the ages and the dialectic of continuity and change. They learn what is involved in the analysis and interpretation of the past, including the sifting of a wide variety of documents and the close study of pertinent materials. They develop an empathy for and an appreciation of what is different. They learn to understand how contemporary challenges relate to, and derive from, earlier developments, and through their knowledge of other eras, they gain a wider horizon and thus a richer perspective on contemporary challenges.

An experience of the arts, which appeals to our imagination, emotions, and intellect, makes visible to us the multiple riches of the senses and enables students to grow in self-awareness, creativity, and sensitivity. Through their exploration of the arts, students gain a greater understanding of nonverbal communication. The arts help students recognize the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be while at the same time reconciling them to what is good and beautiful about the world they have inherited. Art assists the individual’s search for edification and contributes to the collective identity of a culture. Indeed, art offers a window not only onto the collective identity of a given culture but also onto the complexity and dignity of humankind and indeed onto the transcendent itself. Participation in art gives students all of these qualities as well as experience in both disciplined collaboration and creative innovation.

The study of language and literature cultivates in students verbal precision as well as a sensitivity to language and its potential for complexity and elegance. It provides them with an awareness of rhetoric and style. It educates them to think more imaginatively, to see the world through metaphors and stories. The reading of literature gives students an appreciation for form, an understanding of, and empathy with, a wide range of human experience, and a nuanced grasp of hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation. It also alerts them to the persuasive and manipulative power of language. The study of other languages and literatures offers students encounters with the diversity and magnificence of human expression and affords them new insights into their own language and culture. It gives them experience with translation as well as a greater social sensibility and an awareness of another culture’s history and civilization. In addition, it allows students to communicate with others across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

The study of religion offers students insight into religious artifacts, rituals, and texts and engages them in the complex interplay of faith and reason and the search for religious wisdom. At its depth, the study of religion is not only disinterested, allowing for objective exploration of the subtleties of religious practices and differences among religions, but also existential and formative, allowing students, within the paradigm of theology, to recognize a link between God and truth, to grow in understanding of the mysteries of their faith, and to experience a formation that speaks to the whole spirit oriented toward God in intellect and love.

Students of philosophy experience the joy of asking and exploring questions concerning the opportunities, obligations, and ultimate meaning of human life. They analyze methods of understanding reality as well as the processes and conditions of understanding itself. Philosophy gives students insight into the whole of knowledge and into the presuppositions and ends of the diverse disciplines. It teaches them how to justify correct positions and criticize false opinions, to uncover flaws in assumptions and arguments. It encourages them to relate all aspects of life to the principles of ethics. Beyond giving students tools for analysis and judgment, philosophy cultivates the love of wisdom and teaches them that thought is its own end.

Liberal arts students are encouraged to develop not only an awareness of knowledge intrinsic to their major but a recognition of that discipline’s position within the larger mosaic of knowledge. The college or university citizen is invested in the search for not only specialized knowledge but also the relation of the diverse parts of knowledge to one another. To be liberally educated involves knowing the relative position of the little that one knows within the whole of knowledge (Hösle, “Great Books”). Mathematics helps us see the basic structures and complex patterns of the universe, and the sciences help us understand and analyze the laws that animate the natural world, the inner world, and the social world. History opens a window onto the development of the natural and social worlds. The intellectual fruits of art and literature, the wisdom of religion, and the ultimate questions of philosophy illuminate for us the world as it should be. In essence, then, the arts and sciences explore the world as it is and the world as it should be. While not every class at every college helps students grasp the higher principles articulated above, the ideal liberal arts classroom does more than focus on specialized questions and teach technical knowledge; it relates those specific pursuits to the overarching purpose of a discipline and of intellectual query in general. An ideal liberal arts experience also ensures that students are familiar with the questions raised in disciplines beyond their own major or concentration.

A goal of every university is to explore the unity of knowledge across disciplines. A legitimate concern that arises when developing countries move away from the concept of the university and instead create focused institutions of business and engineering is the loss of this unity of knowledge, even as a regulative ideal. Wisdom is the ability to understand and interpret individual phenomena from the perspective of the whole. An institution of higher education that does not include diverse disciplines or a theory of learning that brackets overarching or ultimate questions is not well suited to the cultivation of wisdom, which is no less necessary to address the challenges of our age than are particular technical skills.

One of the greatest joys of serving as dean was gaining an understanding of a full array of disciplines beyond my own. Each time a department was evaluated, each time a promotion and tenure case was reviewed, each time a potential faculty member was interviewed, an opportunity arose to learn about the recent developments in and the most engaging questions of a given discipline. What are some of the most counter-intuitive insights ever discovered by psychologists? In what ways has economics evolved in recent years? What are the most pressing methodological debates in history? What are the most important unsolved problems in philosophy? Why should a student major in English? What are the best strategies for teaching painting? Each field contributes in fascinating ways to the full mosaic of knowledge. These arts and sciences disciplines differ from fields, such as architecture, business, engineering, law, and medicine, whose goals are associated less with knowledge for its own sake and more with knowledge as it is applied to activity in the world.

In some arts and sciences disciplines we recognize great historical progress; in others we develop extraordinary admiration for past achievements. Whereas science is almost always measured in terms of advancements, in the arts and humanities many peerless works derive from earlier eras. We do not today seek to understand the world via eighteenth-century biology, but we don’t hesitate to read Plato and Sophocles, Dante and Goethe to engage in rich intellectual and aesthetic experiences and to understand the world better. Few would argue that such writers have somehow been superseded. The distinction between science as necessarily progressive and the arts and humanities as not participating in progress in quite the same way was one of the principal reasons for the historical separation of the arts and sciences in the seventeenth century (Kristeller 526). Some of the prerequisites for greatness in the arts and humanities—emotional richness, the cultivation of diverse virtues, breadth of knowledge, and formal mastery—may diminish through the ages. Certainly, within the arts and humanities we recognize the introduction of new forms and more contemporary themes. However, the greatness of a work is measured not simply by its formal innovation or the local currency of its theme.

This lack of progress is not necessarily to be lamented; on the contrary, it means that the past is alive. We are not alone in our age but can find enriching perspectives in the past, which thereby becomes very much a part of the present. We have reason to look toward other ages with great humility as we reflect on great works, whose forms embody their messages and in which the parts and whole reinforce one another in organic and inexhaustible meaning.

A humbling sense of the value of the past is essential for us as we recognize that not everything can be addressed via advances in instrumental or technical rationality. The balanced self requires not only rationality, analysis, and discipline, but also playfulness, sympathy, and beauty. Today, philosophical synthesis and reflection on eternal values have for the most part given way to specialization and utility. The pragmatic concept of truth as utility is intimately connected to the reign of instrumental reason, which usurps the traditional hierarchy of theoria (contemplation) and poiesis (production). In an era that elevates the act of making, we tend to neglect the value of contemplation and the leisure that makes it possible. The British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet captures the concept well, writing that “leisure” was for the Greeks

the expression of the highest moments of the mind. It was not labor; far less was it recreation. It was that employment of the mind in which by great thoughts, by art and poetry which lift us above ourselves, by the highest exertion of the intelligence, as we should add, by religion, we obtain occasionally a sense of something that cannot be taken from us, a real oneness and centre in the universe; and which makes us feel that whatever happens to the present form of our little ephemeral personality, life is yet worth living because it has a real and sensible contact with something of eternal value. (1: 488)

For the early Christians this ancient concept still held sway and became in their eyes otium sanctum, or sacred leisure. Augustine writes: “the love of truth seeks sacred leisure” (City of God XIX.19, translation modified).

In modernity leisure seems to disappear. Technical inventions and eventually social techniques increase the pace of life. With technology the world moves more quickly. Not by chance Tommaso Campanella’s seventeenth-century utopia City of the Sun concludes with a description of a new invention followed by the lack of time to continue more leisurely discussion. Dialogue is not all that is threatened. From television screens in waiting rooms to cell phones, iPods, and BlackBerries on the streets, meaningful solitude, which allows us to gain distance from the distractions and cliches of the age, is threatened. Already in the seventeenth century, Pascal took note of the range of human distractions and the hesitancy to spend quiet time with one’s own thoughts (e.g., 70, 165, 168, 515); the developments of technology only exacerbate this universal temptation.

Contemporary society has little patience for the apparent idleness of learning for its own sake. Today we elevate an instrumental form of thinking, a means-end rationality, in ways that tend to obscure what is of intrinsic value. Ironically, means-end thinking does not lead to happiness or well being. Happiness is not something that can be bought, purchased, sought; it comes to one with meaningful values as a gift. In addition, the elements of spontaneity and vitality, play and tranquility, which also belong to happiness, are neglected to the very extent that instrumental reason is elevated. Moreover, when reflection on how to reach certain ends becomes supreme, it easily overshadows the question, which ends should I seek to achieve.

In “The Organization Kid,” David Brooks underscores the ways in which contemporary students view college as a full schedule of industrious activities and a means toward further advancement. Rightly understood, however, a liberal arts education is more than a means to an end; it is a dose of otium (leisure) in a world driven by speed and utility. To devote one’s time to exploring the great questions is not to negotiate the automatic rungs of the ladder of success, but to step out, pause, and deliberate. The origin of the word “school” or Latin “scola” derives from the Greek term for leisure (scholē). This is not leisure in the sense that most Americans think of leisure. It represents the values of rest and focus in advance of, as a respite from, and as a reward for, daily work, and it is analogous to repose and silence as presuppositions for meaningful communication with God. When we are gripped by substantive works and great questions, we may be so immersed in them that we forget the external world. We lose ourselves in what we are reading and thinking. Through the leisure of contemplation we abandon the contingent and engage the eternal; we conceive of ourselves as more than merely material beings. Such joy does not, and need not, serve a purpose beyond itself. If we believe Aristotle, we do not rest primarily in order to work more effectively; on the contrary, the business of work serves the external purpose of giving us the conditions for leisure and repose, on which the joy of contemplation, our highest end, depends (Nicomachean Ethics X.7).

The Paul Klee oil painting I chose for the cover of this book conveys, I think, a suggestion of what we might understand by the ordered and energetic leisure of a liberal arts experience. Klee paints a magically alluring canvas of diverse and interesting paths. The soft lig...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Engaging the Great Questions
• 2. Cultivating Intellectual and Practical Virtues
• 3. Forming Character
• 4. Integrating the Values of the Liberal Arts
• Notes
• Works Cited