Why Study The Liberal Arts?
Lessons From The First Debate About Liberal Arts Education
Why invest your time and money to study the liberal arts? Or for your son or daughter to study them? Before you answer this question, consider the ancient Greeks’ original reasons for liberal arts education, their debates about priorities, and the strengths and weaknesses of different sides in the debate.
Ancient Greek philosophers recognized that people need 3 things to be happy in life and successful in work:
Good Purposes: the willingness to seek and do what is truly good, with a sensitivity for what is worth doing at a given time
Knowledge and Wisdom: a firm grasp of reality and of good, effective action
Good Communication: the ability to converse about two things:
Good projects and realistic ways of accomplishing them
Things that people simply wonder about, e.g., the way the universe works, the ways of love and meaning of suffering
It didn’t take long for humanity to discover these keys to success. As soon as people discover something, they naturally have the desire to share that knowledge, and they often form institutions in order to do so. In the 6th century BC, the early Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus founded a school to share what he learned during a study trip to Egypt, and 150 years later a few rival schools existed in Athens. And where there’s rivalry, there’s debate, so an early debate about liberal arts education is no surprise.
There are various ways to state the question they debated: What education will make young people successful and make the society flourish? What do the youth really need to know? Or simply: What to teach?
The main protagonists in that debate, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, each recognize the importance of purpose, wisdom, and communication, but give different priority to one over the others. Plato is a strong advocate for reason and a firm grasp of reality. Isocrates prioritizes persuasive speech. Aristotle insisted on the willingness to do what is good, and to do it in a good way. It is notable that these three philosophers make room in their own positions for the true insights of their rivals, even as they articulate their own views.
PLATO argued that the main purpose of education is to teach youth to reason well. If they could reason well, they could distinguish reality from appearance and truth from falsehood and deception. With real knowledge, he thought, they would succeed at war, civil governance and trade. They would be able to investigate and discuss the kinds of philosophical questions that Thales posed about how the universe works, what it’s made of, and what human beings are like.
How does Plato think reason works? He thinks we understand the forms of things and use our knowledge of forms as a standard for judging all the particular things around us. This thing looks like a trout, so eat it; that looks like a worm, so don’t. This man possesses courage, so make him a soldier; that man possesses justice, so make him a judge. The most important form to grasp is the form, or Idea, of the Good because it sets the standard for knowing what goals are good to pursue in all the different areas of personal and social life. Here is an excerpt from Plato’s famous work, The Republic:
“[T]he Idea of the Good is seen finally and with difficulty, but once seen, it must be inferred that it is the cause of all things right and beautiful ... [and] that whoever intends to act wisely in public or private must see it.” The Republic 517c
Every truth a man or woman learns, Plato thinks, in some way also contributes to an understanding of “the Idea of the Good.” It takes a long time to learn what is good in all the areas of human life, but once you’ve got a firm grasp of this idea, you understand two important things: 1) what is good about anything you see and 2) good goals and wise ways of pursuing them.
Sounds good, right? But what do you think Plato’s rivals might say?
Knowledge isn’t enough. You must be able to communicate what you know, or you can’t share it. Without the ability to communicate, your knowledge does not have the positive impact on others that it could have, and as a result, you might feel frustrated. Worse, knowledge without eloquence opens a space for smooth talking bad actors to enter. In his famous “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato compared education to “bringing someone out of the cave,” from an intellect filled with shadowy notions of things, often based on merely on what people say, to an intellect filled with real, effective knowledge, based on careful examination of things themselves and conversation about what people observe. How can a person lead others out of the cave if that person cannot speak persuasively about what they observe?
It seems that Plato might have felt this frustration. He observes that sometimes the cave dwellers cling to their shadowy notions rather than make the effort to reason their way to knowledge. In the Allegory, the fault is on the cave dwellers for refusing to use their reason. But there is a similar danger for Plato’s philosopher: pride. Imagine the cave dwellers saying “Plato! We don’t like you. You explain these things but make us feel bad. You think you’re smarter than everyone else. We even suspect that you tell us we’re wrong even when we get it right ...” In other words, without virtue, a person is tempted to use knowledge to dominate others.
In Plato’s defense, we might say that good intentions and eloquence need knowledge to, as they say, keep it real. Also, the most effective antidote to a proud philosopher is a good reasoner.
ISOCRATES (not Socrates) argued that the main purpose of education is to teach people to speak persuasively. To his credit, he didn’t compromise on truth. In fact, he insisted that no one should seek to persuade others by speaking falsehood. But the decisive value of education for Isocrates was to help students acquire the ability to motivate people. With the following words, Isocrates argues that the key to a good life is to name good goals, to persuade others to pursue them too, and to develop good cultural practices and laws to achieve them together. He wrote:
“[E]ndowed with the power of persuading one another and revealing clearly to each other our purposes, we not only freed ourselves from living [like animals], but we united in founding cities, established laws for ourselves, and invented the arts. Logos is what allowed us to succeed in all these endeavors.” Antidosis 253-254
Isocrates doesn’t ignore reasoning ability, he just doesn’t give it the first place. In fact, he uses a Greek word, logos, that can mean both speech and reason. But he’s not as enthusiastic about the power of the human intellect as he is about our ability to discuss, debate, and resolve the conflicts and practicalities of life in society.
With the following words, Isocrates criticizes Plato’s energetic pursuit of knowledge by extensive investigation and debate into the sciences of their day:
“I believe that even the dynasts of disputation and the advocates of astronomy, geometry, and such like sciences do not harm their followers but benefit them, less than they promise but more than others suppose. The majority of mankind believes that such sciences are pastimes and distinction-mongering; because nothing about them is useful either in public or private affairs or is even remembered for any time by those who learn them, since these sciences are not a continuing part of life and do not bear upon its necessities.” Antidosis 261-262.
Like Isocrates, critics today argue that academic debates revolve pointlessly around distinctions about topics unrelated to people’s lives. But notice that Isocrates’ criticism is balanced: speculative philosophy does benefit students more than its critics suppose but less than the philosophers promise.
Isocrates makes a good argument, but there are also problems with emphasizing speech over reason and over the willingness to do something good.
First, we’re vulnerable to mistakes and self-deception. People can talk about the good they think they are doing, be quite wrong about it, and even convince themselves, against accumulating evidence, that they are right. To avoid this constant vulnerability, it takes a strong will and sound reasoning to uncover what their situation actually is and to know how to respond to it wisely.
In defense of Isocrates, we might say that, if a person has the will and intelligence to figure out what is truly good, then having the ability to persuade people is absolutely necessary for changing the direction of your team or community.
A second problem: Predicting what knowledge is useful and underestimating the messiness of solving hard problems. It’s difficult to know when philosophy benefits students more than its critics suppose or less than the philosophers promise. Here is an interesting example. The ancient Greeks debated the basic elements of the universe, and around 450 BC Empedocles proposed earth, air, fire, and water, while about the same time Democritus proposed that everything is composed of atoms. Empedocles view prevailed and was accepted for more than two thousand years. This debate might have seemed pointless and impractical to the people of their time, but modern physics retrieved and reinterpreted Democritus theory of atomic particles, leading to practical inventions that have transformed modern life. Sometimes you hear students say “I’m never going to need to know this,” but the fact is that you can’t predict what life will ask of you. The more you know, the better prepared you will be.
In defence of Isocrates, it must be said that great intellects sometimes have big egos and use important debates to establish their own reputations rather than the truth about realities important or interesting for humanity to know. Their debates seem pointless when we sense that their goal is to impress rather than inform. Indeed, their desire to impress can lead a debate anywhere, away from what is good for and matters to a society at a given time.
Not only Isocrates, but Aristotle saw this problem clearly. More than others, he insisted that virtue brings happiness, and we turn to him next.
ARISTOTLE argued that the purpose of education is to form virtuous souls. He agreed with Plato that sharp reasoning and accurate knowledge are essential, but he emphasized that knowledge without the willingness to make good use of it, remains ineffective.
In the following quote, Aristotle observes that all people seek happiness, all their lives, in all that they do. But people have different views of happiness, in part because people naturally desire different things, but in part because virtuous people have a better view of happiness. He wrote:
“... Happiness is an end, since all men deem [happiness] to be accompanied with pleasure and not with pain. This pleasure, however, is regarded differently by different persons, and varies according to the habit of individuals; the pleasure of the best man is the best, and springs from the noblest sources.” Politics 1337b36
The “noblest sources” that Aristotle has in mind are the virtues of the soul. By virtue, Aristotle means good habits of willing, thinking, choosing, and acting that together enable a person to perform well in all the different areas of human life. He imagines that the collection of all virtues place a person’s mind and heart in the happy state he calls contemplation. He says it this way in the Nicomachean Ethics:
“The human good turns out to be the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue … over a complete life.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.8
Notice that Aristotle’s “good activity of the soul” really means “the good life.” If Plato emphasized lifelong learning of the Idea of the Good, Aristotle emphasized the willingness to make lifelong learning support what is virtuous, and make the experience of doing what is good a source of lifelong learning.
What are the problems with emphasizing virtue? The willingness to do something good does not mean that you actually know what to do. You need knowledge for that. It gets worse. Sometimes bad people, or good people acting badly, know what they’re doing and cause harm. The silver lining is that indirectly they can teach you what you’re missing. Finally, once you do know what to do, if you can’t communicate persuasively, you cannot win them over to your view. For all these reasons some might say that a virtuous willingness to do something good is not the aim of education.
In Aristotle’s defence, we might respond that people who are willing to do something good are also willing to cultivate the necessary qualities in themselves. Reasoning and communication ability would be among them.
Conclusion
The first debate about the liberal arts shows us three basic qualities of human excellence: a firm grasp of reality through sharp reasoning, effective communication, and the willingness to do something good in a good way. The need for these qualities has not changed in the 2500 years since they said it. Your study of the liberal arts should help you develop these qualities in yourself.
This debate also shows us that great minds can disagree, or at least give different emphasis to one quality over another and give a variety of reasons for their views. They can sketch different approaches to study, all of which lead in one way or another to personal and professional happiness. You might find that you prefer thinking to speaking or vice versa, or figuring out the good life.
A liberal arts education will challenge you to learn from the masters of thought and apply their insights to life and work today.