I occasionally ponder the value of a liberal arts education. It's something that readers and semi-bookish people like myself understand is important, but would be hard pressed to articulate why in any practical way. Kudos to Arts & Letters Daily, or perhaps more accurately, Mark Edmundson for coming to the rescue.
In an essay published on the Oxford American website, Mr Edmundson provides the answer. Witness:
"You’ll also, if my father and I are right, be truly and righteously screwed. The reason for this is simple. The quest at the center of a liberal-arts education is not a luxury quest; it’s a necessity quest. If you do not undertake it, you risk leading a life of desperation—maybe quiet, maybe, in time, very loud—and I am not exaggerating. For you risk trying to be someone other than who you are, which, in the long run, is killing."
and then...
"For the power that is in you, as Emerson suggested, may be new in nature. You may not be the person that your parents take you to be. And—this thought is both more exciting and more dangerous—you may not be the person that you take yourself to be, either. You may not have read yourself aright, and college is the place where you can find out whether you have or not. The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated, or more articulate, or to be someone who, at a cocktail party, is never embarrassed (or who can embarrass others). The best reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected thoughts flowing back to you with an “alienated majesty.” Reading the great writers, you may have the experience that Longinus associated with the sublime: You feel that you have actually created the text yourself. For somehow your predecessors are more yourself than you are."
I don't know that I can say that my B.A. in Political Science helped me discover who I really am. I think my LB, and the Marine Corps probably did more for me in that regard. But university put me in touch with both, and for that I am grateful.
To current and future wards of academe, Edmundson offers both a warning and a way forward:
"Your professors will give you some fine books to read, and they’ll probably help you understand them. What they won’t do, for reasons that perplex me, is to ask you if the books contain truths you could live your lives by."
One of the best things I've read.
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