When it comes to higher education, many conservatives talk about Great Books programs as if they are a panacea for all that ails the liberal academy. But anyone who has actually read those texts will likely agree with Patrick Deneen’s contention that “a curriculum of great books probably cannot do anything but promote a more fundamental relativism unless it takes place within a distinctive theological and political worldview.” As Deneen notes:
The Great Books have long been recommended by figures ranging from Allan Bloom to William Bennett as the basic texts of a liberal education and for containing essential knowledge about the Western tradition. An education in the Great Books was seen as essential in the cultivation of the educated person, and as the source of ideas that gave rise to many of the treasured inheritances of the West – including constitutionalism, liberal democracy, separation of Church and State, individual rights, a free-market economy, and the dignity of the human person. Knowledge of the constitutive texts of the West was seen by many of its defenders as the prerequisite for the informed citizen, someone not only who would believe in the traditions of the West, but be able to muster an articulate defense of the same.
However, for anyone with even passing familiarity with those constitutive texts, it is readily evident that these texts provide nothing of the sort. These texts are hardly primers on liberal democracy or any other political, ethical or economic system, but rather contain a wide and ranging set of debates over the nature of the good and best life, the good and best polity, the good and best economic system, and so on. The texts typically listed in such a course of study are marked by severe and profound disagreements. For example, on the list of books provided by Kronman that have been recently assigned in the Yale Directed Studies Program, they have included such radically distinct books as The Hebrew Bible, The New Testament, Aristotle’s Politics, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Machiavelli’s Prince, Rousseau’s Social Contract, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, the Federalist Papers, Mill’s On Liberty, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Thus (to be somewhat reductionist), students are exposed to arguments on behalf of Judaism, Christianity, Teleology, Pessimism, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Utilitarianism, Progressive Liberalism, Communism, Deontology, and Nihilism (among many other alternatives). On point after point and issue after issue, basic elements of each theology or philosophy contradict some fundamental aspect of all the other philosophies listed here (and others that go unlisted). An education in the Great Books is a potpourri of conflicting views, a set of strongly articulated arguments that continuously strive to refute other views that purportedly comprise a single “tradition.” The “Western tradition” is a ferocious and ongoing set of disagreements about the most basic human beliefs.
The entire essay is persuasive, but I found this caution particularly compelling: “Given that most students today have deeply ingrained progressive worldviews (that is, the view that history has been the slow but steady advance of enlightenment in all forms, culminating in equal rights for all races, all genders, and all sexual preferences), a curriculum that begins with the Bible and Greek philosophy and ends with Nietzsche subtly suggests that Nietzsche is the culmination of Enlightenment’s trajectory.”
Despite those qualms, I still believe the Great Books curriculum should be the foundation for a liberal education—provided, as Deneen says, that they are approached from a distinctively Christian worldview. As an evangelical, I’m partial to the Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute, headed by my friend (and Evangel co-blogger) John Mark Reynolds. But there are surely at least a half-dozen schools that present the Great Books within their proper context. What other worthy programs could be recommended to conservative Christian parents and students?
(Via: Front Porch Republic)
April 7th, 2010 | 9:32 am
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April 7th, 2010 | 10:10 am
Well, being an alumnus of one such college, I have to admit I’m a bit partial to it– Thomas Aquinas College in CA has been highly rated by a number of different college guides, books written about it, etc. To tell you the truth I pay very little attention to the recognition it’s received, so I can’t be more specific, but I’d say the place absolutely fits the bill for the sort of school you’re asking about. Granted, the approach to the Great Books is through the lens of Catholic Church teaching and theology (especially that of its namesake), but there were many non-Catholics and non-Christians in attendance that found it to be a suitable environment in which to pursue their education.
April 7th, 2010 | 10:26 am
Thomas Aquinas College has a great books program rooted in orthodox Catholic teaching: http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
April 7th, 2010 | 10:50 am
Interesting. I find myself sympathetic to many proponents of the “Great Books” but also a bit more skeptical than they are about the inherent value of that approach to education.
Here’s what I think are strengths of the Great Books approach:
1) A bias toward reading full texts rather than selections. This builds intellectual muscles (its HARD to maintain concentration on a text that’s long and dense) and protects the currciulum from some of the potential bad influence of biased instructors.
2) A serious engagement with Western civilization over time. Much “multi-cultural” education misses entirely the fact that the past is another culture. If its enlightening for American suburban teenagers to be exposed to Lao Tze then surely its equally valuable for them to be exposed to Augustine, whose thought process is about as alien from contemporary America’s as is the Chinese sage.
3) Its inherently self-policing on the quality front. If you meet a graduate of a Great Books program he might be a fool and he might be an ass, but you at least know that he’s successfully wrestled with a bunch of difficult material. This is similar to the phenomenon of businesses hiring a lot of Engineering graduates from non-Engineering jobs – they may be green but at least you know that they know how to work hard, push themselves and drive to a conclusion where there is a right and a wrong answer.
Here are some weaknesses though:
1) The citizen/believer/professional will almost always devote the vast majority of his or her lifetime reading to contemporary works. A curriculum focused almost exclusively on works that are centuries old can leave the student extraordinarily well prepared to enage the arguments of Kant and relatively ill prepared to enage the arguments of contemporary scholars, politicians, theologians, etc.
2) There’s a risk of fetishization of the books themselves – the idea that because The Aeneid is “Great” it must somehow be “wise” and “correct” in ways that contemporary works are not. Deneen demonstrates why this is not necessrily the case (i.e. the Great Books themselves say wildly different things).
3) There are some very interesting and powerful ideas that are not really best captured in “books” where “books” means long-form stand-alone works on a single topic. Think about the social sciences over the last 100 years. Some truly provocative ideas (some likely “right,” some horribly “wrong” but engaging and important in any event) that are codified in journal article, essays, etc. Great Books programs tend to have a hard time dealing with these types of materials because they don’t fit the paradigm.
April 7th, 2010 | 11:04 am
The Great Books give students a traditional framework and a common vocabulary. When one becomes familiar with the Western intellectual tradition, it becomes apparent that we do not have a long tried-and-true set of dogmatic truths. Instead, we have a set of perennial questions. What is justice? What is the best sort of polity? What is divinity? What is knowledge? That there are such things is the precondition for any serious inquiry. If many see room for relativism, one may also, if he applies himself properly and under the right teachers, also come to understand the absurdity involved in holding this position. One familiar with the classical and modern notions of relativism through study of the Great Books will understand it properly- as the position of the idiot. Where modern teachers may see divergent answers to questions as relativism, students of the Great Books see it as an opportunity for correcting the understanding- and an opportunity for true education.
April 7th, 2010 | 11:37 am
Boston College tries to do this with its “Perspectives in Western Culture” class. But in my experience the problem is not the curriculum but rather the students themselves. As was mentioned, the liberal progressive view is so ingrained as to be reflexive.
The tendency among students in my class is to view disagreements amongst thinkers not as part of a “great conversation” of western civilization but rather as a series of irreconcilable viewpoints that are all equally valid. Combine that with a good dose of western self-loathing and you get students who believe that every society has something useful to say *except* the west because the west has the audacity to believe that they are saying something useful. Our class discussions can end up being bizarre.
April 7th, 2010 | 11:42 am
What, pray tell, is the alternative to this “potpourri of conflicting views”? To expose students to a homogenous set of ideas? If so, whose? Karl Marx’s?
Bad idea.
April 7th, 2010 | 11:52 am
I would recommend the Great Books program at the University of Dallas, which also exists at the graduate level, as the best in the country at exposing students to the tradition with the Church as the guide and yet also at allowing them to find professional expertise (through majors) within the disciplines and even in non-liberal fields (like business). Thus, formed, enlightened students are enabled to take the tradition right into the belly of the enemy.
April 7th, 2010 | 12:23 pm
Yours is just one view among many views which you yourself believe are all equally invalid; so why would anyone listen to you?
April 7th, 2010 | 12:44 pm
Who says I believe they’re all equally invalid? You’re fantasizing.
April 7th, 2010 | 2:27 pm
I offer here my perspective, for what it’s worth: I teach composition at a college. Students today struggle mightily to think through ideas and arrive at sound judgment. After all, they’ve been taught that judgment is bad… Those who do wrestle with ideas and think them through are either those who learned to do so in spite of their education or those who were home-schooled. In my experience, students who attended public or private primary and secondary schools have been generally less equipped to think than homeschooled students.
I can’t prove causality, but I can say that students who read generally (yes, many college students freely admit that they don’t read) and read the Great Books particularly perform at higher levels in my classes. I give my students a survey at the beginning of each semester to learn about their reading habits, which, when compared to the papers they write, tends to confirm a correlation.
My own daughter is a student at Thomas Aquinas College, an institution which grants only one degree based on a Great Books curriculum. About 50% of students who graduate from Aquinas go on to graduate study, many of whom earn doctorates. That alone surely must say something about the difference between a curriculum based on secondary sources — those on offer at a college like the one at which I teach — and the curriculum offered at Aquinas, the University of Dallas, and a handful of other schools. I think it suggests that the Great Books curriculum is a better curriculum.
But I’ll add this as well: any curriculum in the hands of a relativist becomes relative, and any curriculum in the hands of a truth-seeker becomes the lamp that lights the path. To that end, I recommend that parents who want to help their students choose a good college bear that in mind; then check out ISI’s All-American Colleges guide for information about colleges that adhere to the mission of helping students seek truth.
FYI: I am a Christian of the protestant variety; but if I could go back to school for an undergraduate curriculum, my first choice would be Thomas Aquinas College and my second would be University of Dallas — two of the finest Roman Catholic institutions of higher learning in America.
April 7th, 2010 | 3:01 pm
“Most curricula in the Great Books offer the various philosophies as inherently coherent and valid systems, suggesting to each student that there is finally no basis on which to decide which philosophy to adopt other than mere preference. One must simply decide.”
Deneen gives no evidence, even anecdotal evidence, for this claim. It may very well be true, but I don’t know how he knows it. I’ve been in three different Great Books programs and interviewed at a fourth, and I certainly agree that there is a case to be made against a naive view, where the adoption of a set of readings is taken to be sufficient to constitute a solid education and ward off relativism, etc. But there are two responses to this: on the one hand, there are Great Books institutions and curricula that explicitly adopt a certain guiding philosophy and/or theology – others have mentioned Thomas Aquinas College and UD. And further, all relativisms are not created equal. Students may come to the conclusion that one just has to “decide” between competing worldviews, but at the least they will have more ability to understand those worldviews. Isn’t it an improvement to have students able to understand the kind of philosophical framework Deneen is talking about, rather than to see it as a pathology of some bigoted subset of the population?
And that’s the worst-case scenario, in a way, one in which the students come to think of their activity in discussing and studying these works as ultimately fruitless in providing rational guidance between various options. But to conclude that this will always happen is to ignore the role of habituation. It is to suppose that having tasted of the intellectual life, they will conclude that they should just make their choice and leave the process of rational inquiry behind. That doesn’t seem a justified supposition to me. True, they may end up as skeptics like Bloom, but again, isn’t that still a vast improvement? My impression is that those who are serious about starting Great Books programs from scratch these days are typically not proponents of the naive view, anyway.
I’m all for cautioning people against a naive view of what a Great Books curriculum can do, but it’s just as important to realize how much even a naively implemented program like this can improve upon the education most students get today. Deneen runs the danger of making the perfect the enemy of the good here.
April 7th, 2010 | 3:17 pm
Another point: Deneen says, on the one hand, that the Great Books are really a set of ferocious disagreements and arguments on basic human questions, but then he turns around and says that a Great Books education presents differing positions on these questions as hermetically-sealed, internally consistent but mutually incompatible options. Which is it? Is it a dispute, or are they just talking past each other? His points about relativism hold only to the extent to which the different positions or worldviews talk past each other. He just helps himself to the assumption that they always do so (or always appear to do so in a standard Great Books program). But any student in such a program realizes that Aristotle is arguing with Plato, that Descartes is arguing with Aristotle, and they have been equipped to realize that when Nietzche disagrees with both, he does so in a different way.
I take his point about the pitfalls of a purely chronological ordering (not coincidentally, this is not the order of the curriculum at Thomas Aquinas College), but even in the Integral Program at St. Mary’s College of California, where the curriculum is very close to that of St. John’s, the final seminar reading is not Nietzsche, but Plato’s Phaedrus. The final perspective suggested is not “decisionism” but the need to go on seeking the truth in friendship.
In general, Deneen neglects the possibility of starting in the midst of a conversation, coming rationally to the conclusion that only from a certain set of presuppositions can the disputes be resolved, and thus (rationally) adopting those presuppositions as principles. It would be naive to count on this to happen always or even much of the time without any guidance, but Deneen is on the other extreme – he doesn’t even acknowledge the possibility of such a progression.
April 7th, 2010 | 3:25 pm
I can’t stop myself: one more comment.
Deneen says a Great Books curriculum can probably do nothing more than promote a “more fundamental” relativism. What does he mean by “fundamental” there? Does he mean a relativism that is harder to combat or correct? Or does he mean one that is actually more thought out and reasonable? It makes a big difference! I suppose he may think that it’s both, but that would be worth making explicit.
April 7th, 2010 | 3:35 pm
In general, parents and prospective students who want to hear about colleges fitting this description should just look at the ads in the print version of First Things…
April 7th, 2010 | 3:54 pm
Let it be noted that Chesterton is not a great books author.
April 7th, 2010 | 5:30 pm
A quote from my late colleague Mortimer Adler:
“It is mistakenly thought by many that the great books are recommended for reading and study because they are a repository of truth. On all the fundamental subjects and ideas with which the great books deal, some truths will be found in them, but on these very same subjects and ideas, many more errors or falsities will be found there. The authors not only contradict each other; they often are guilty of contradicting themselves. No human work rises to the perfection of being devoid of logical flaws.
On any subject being considered, the relation between truth and error is that of one to many. The truth is always singular, while the errors it corrects are manifold. This fact should not be thought as invidious to the worth of reading the great books. On the contrary, it is of the greatest positive importance. No truth is well understood until and unless all the errors it corrects are also understood and all the contradictions found are resolved. It is in the context of a plurality of errors to be corrected and of contradictions to be resolved that the brilliance of the truth shines out and illuminates the scene.
April 7th, 2010 | 9:28 pm
In my view, the essential purposes of a liberal education are to teach a person how to think critically, about any issue, and to expose the person to the wide variety of thoughts that exist. The former can occur best by exposure to the latter. Frederick Copeleston, the great historian of philosophy, noted that it’s possible to learn philosophy without knowing its history, but by knowing its history one avoids hurdles that the giants of the past encountered and overcame.
April 8th, 2010 | 2:16 pm
As I have been getting older (38yo) I am realizing that I know absolutely nothing; and i have a degree. I also know that my perception of right and wrong is just what has been told to me…however I cannot reason it out. Can anyone please direct me to books maybe even a syllabus or a place on the internet where I can educate myself?
April 8th, 2010 | 6:44 pm
This is what I get for sleeping in Wednesday and living on the Left Coast. My friends Nick, Joe, Dr. Z, and Sean beat me to it in recommending Thomas Aquinas College. Sean ought to provide context and argument for his assertion, though. I also find Dr. Z’s example of the placement of the Phaedrus in multiple Great Books programs somewhat disingenuous. The seminar portions of the programs discussed are arranged somewhat chronologically, with the Phaedrus more the period at the end of the sentence than the climax at the end of the symphony (not that it’s not a great read). We read it after lots of Kant and Nietzsche senior year. A better example is Porphyry, who wrote after Aristotle, but whom we read as an introduction to Aristotle.
To Michael P.’s question, as someone who has spent the past several months reexamining my moral values in one limited area, I value this implicit advice by Descartes, of all people. When he set out to try to begin at the beginning with his philosophy, questioning everything, even his perceptions, he resolved he would still stick to his former beliefs on moral matters. If, Michael, you feel what you have been taught is good or correct, you just want the reasons behind it, I suggest you follow Descartes’ moral practice as you begin your studies. If you feel your opinions on what is right and wrong are incorrect or false, I’d start with Exodus 20 and the Sermon on the Mount.
Reviewing Thomas Aquinas College’s curriculum for ideas, I am reminded that the works we read dealing primarily or largely with ethics were the Bible, Epictetus’s Enchiridion, Cicero On Duties, St. Augustine’s Confessions, the first half or so of Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle’s Ethics. It is, however, my personal belief that ethics are learned as much, if not more, through literature as through treatises like Aristotle’s Ethics. History, too gives us examples of very good and very bad men and deeds. Accordingly, I would recommend all the histories and literary works in the Thomas Aquinas College seminar curriculum.
April 8th, 2010 | 8:05 pm
I see now that my friend Dr. Z was making a point unique to the St. Mary’s program in bringing up the Phaedrus, and my comments were about about the Thomas Aquinas College program, which also ends with the Phaedrus. I apologize for the confusion.
April 8th, 2010 | 10:26 pm
Michael P,
At 35, I’ve come to the same conclusion about myself. I believe Catholic morality is the best understanding of right and wrong, but cannot reason much, perhaps most, of it out. This seems to me to be the result of not having been taught to think critically, and so I’m “homeschooling” myself. May I suggest that no matter what else you do, purchase the book “How to Read a Book”. Get the study guide for it called “How to Read ‘How to Read a Book’”, and work through them. After that, look at homeschooling web sites and concentrate on materials that will help build critical thinking skills. And you can always take more college classes to help you do the same. This is what I’m doing, and it’s helping me. Perhaps you will find it useful, too.
April 8th, 2010 | 10:56 pm
In my view, any great books program would include Thomas Aquinas, his Summa Theologiae, and Anthony Kenny makes a great suggestion: to read it from beginning to end, otherwise, one misses key nuances in Aquinas’s thought. I have not done this yet, but it’s a goal! As Kenny has pointed out, aquinas has a remarkably modern insight into the philosophy of mind, for example.
April 9th, 2010 | 1:02 pm
What Chase says reminds me of a story one of my TAC tutors told. Before teaching at TAC, he taught at St. John’s College. St. John’s College has a Great Books program, but without the foundation in Roman Catholic faith (or Thomistic thinking) that TAC has. I do not know what the reading was, perhaps Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Ethics, but, my tutor says, he listened as one of his students argued out the whole outline of Catholic morality from the observations and principles of the non-Catholic text. At the end of class, he said something like, “I’ve heard a lot of questions for Mr. X, but I haven’t heard anyone refute him.” A student responded, “We agree with Mr. X’s arguments, but if we believed them, we’d have to change our lives, and we don’t want to do that.”
This anecdote may on its own be refutation of Deneen. Even without a moral and intellectual foundation in Christian faith, those Johnnies could discern the truth of Christian morals using dialectic abilities honed by studying the Great Books. The Charity and Faith to act on those truths is by Grace.
This is one anecdote, but I have several friends who went to St. John’s, and their Catholic faith is deepened by their learning there.
[If any of my college friends remember this story better, I'm happy to have the details corrected.]
April 9th, 2010 | 2:19 pm
I took this from a blog post I wrote on something related:
Another blog, discussing “What’s so Great About Great Books,” posits the problem that these so-called great books are not repositories of Truth as many would claim, but instead confuse the reader with conflicting and conflicted perspectives. I say, yes! That is the point! Out of the chaos, is there not some connective tissue, some pattern that students should learn to identify. A comment on the article states that the best students in freshman writing have often been exposed to Great Books. Well, of course they are. They have been forced to confront different and challenging perspectives, ideas, narratives, emotions, reactions, solutions. And they will either change their own narratives or reinforce them. Either way, the student has looked at patterns within the literature and come up with a way to make sense of them.
http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/2010/04/reading-great-books-ultimate-pattern.html
April 12th, 2010 | 10:37 pm
RS’s story above, reminds me that the will of a person is often stronger than the intellect. We may know the truth, but we don’t like the truth, so we will not alter our lives to conform with the truth. Incidently, this shows that the aristotilian/thomistic conception, that there’s a clear distinction between knowing the truth, and acting on it, is more plausible than Socrates and Plato’s claim that if one knows the truth, one will necessarily act in accorance with that truth.
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