Is a liberal arts education for everyone?

David Warren, "Universities: Who Needs 'Em?" (InsideCatholic, August 23, 2010):

... But what I find more interesting, in reading accounts of the mediaeval universities, is the speed with which they allied themselves with Bishops against Pope, with Court against Church, with Law against Spirit, and, when they were being spiritual, with the spirit of secession in all of its instinctive and demonic forms.

Conversely, they were from their beginnings the flag-bearers of bureaucracy and regulation....

More deeply, by freeing students from the oversight and discipline of religious orders, and then creating a class of professors out of former students, the mediaeval universities were formulating a new kind of man -- the public intellectual, quite full of himself -- the sharp edge of whose intelligence would be honed to serve adolescent dreams of power and control, with endless voyages into "pure theory."

One hears the echo through the ages of Benedetto Gaetani, papal legate and future Pope Boniface VIII, gone to Paris in 1290 to express the exasperation of the Roman Curia -- not only with the intensely meddlesome political posturing of the university, but also with its venal attachments to worldly vested interests. To a professoriate flouncing their reputation for the "higher" education, Gaetani cries: "It is all trivial!"

And to the smug looks on many hundred faces, he declares: "We are called by God not to acquire learning to dazzle mankind, but to save our souls!"

Now -- please -- I am not against learning, and to some degree, not even against learning as an end in itself. Nor am I actually against universities, in principle; or at least, not yet. But I would like to wonder aloud if the time is not approaching to pull the fiscal plugs on all of them, and start over from the monastery again.

This is food for thought, especially in light of the talks to which we were recently treated by Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J. (Fordham) at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. One of the more interesting things he did was to question whether most Catholics need any theology at all, let alone philosophy. Rather, what they need is catechesis and spiritual formation. He contrasted the "learnables" with the "developmentals," suggesting that the latter have been overly neglected in our culture -- especially (but not only) secular culture. Of course, he added, seminarians need the "learnables" too, and even theology and philosophy -- but perhaps not in the way they're often taught, where they are taught apart from the practical concerns of the "developmentals."

In one sense, I think that the value of the liberal arts has been unduly marginalized in modern times by disciplines with demonstrable utilitarian value -- professional programs in business, computer science, engineering, economics, physical therapy, nursing and restaurant and hotel management come to mind. By contrast, the problem with liberal arts disciplines is that they have no demonstrable utilitarian value -- things like literature, history, art, philosophy, and theology come to mind. Further, since the only kind of value recognized these days seems to be utilitarian value, the liberal arts are generally assumed to be valueless. What is not recognized, as Josef Pieper would be quick to point out, is that some things have value for their own sake, as ends in themselves. To understand the nature of human beings and the real world has considerable value, even if it has no demonstrable utilitarian value. Knowing who we are, where we came from, and our purpose in life, is important in itself, even if it doesn't get us a job or earn us any money.

Having said that, I firmly agree with the premise that a liberal arts education may not be for everybody, anymore than everyone is called to the priesthood or to a career as professor of philosophy. What every everyone needs for his salvation, however, is a proper catechesis in order to be formed in the knowledge and service of our Lord Jesus Christ through His Church (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church). What everyone needs to be more fully human, furthermore, is something that Mortimer Adler spent the last half of his life promoting, which is a basic grasp of the common wisdom of philosophy, not philosophy as a specialized discipline, but philosophy on the level of commonly accessible concepts by which to understand and talk about the world and human nature (see his Aristotle for Everybody).


[Hat tip to J.M.]