JAMES V. SCHALL, SJ Liberal Education The free man ought not to learn any study slavishly. Forced labors performed by the body don’t make the body any worse, but no forced study abides in a soul. —PLATO,THEREPUBLIC Liberal education is concerned with the souls of men S and therefore has little or no use for machines…. E Liberal education consists in learning to listen to V I still and small voices. T C —LEOSTRAUSS, “LIBERALEDUCATIONANDRESPONSIBILITY” E We are told that Alexander the Great took around P S with him a great number of authors engaged in R writing about his achievements. And yet, as he E stood beside the tombof Achilles at Sigeum, he ut- P tered these words: “Fortunate youth, who found Homer to proclaim your valour!” He was right; for, if the Iliadhad never existed, the tomb where The classical notion Achilles’ body was buried would have buried his memory as well. of justice is not —CICERO, “INDEFENCEOFTHEPOETAULUSLICINIUSARCHIAS” the modern idea of “social justice.” VERYFEW, IFANY, “IVY-CLADTOWERS” REMAIN Indeed, the latter in academia today. ’Tis a pity. The physical towers remain, no doubt. We can still see them may be inimical against the skies. But gone is the spirit that to the former caused them to be pilloried and laughed at as useless enclaves devoted, like Socrates in the view of the comic poet, to floating spaced-out among the clouds of vague knowing. We are, I think, in desperate need of a few genuine “ivy-clad towers.” Few students can matriculate through college or university today without spending considerable time concocting a “resume.” On this parchment, the student solemnly records the amount of “well-rounded” time that he or she has spent in community ser- vice, or economic, or political, or ecological, or Ever sensitive to the ancient criticism that social, or other such do-good and be-good ac- the privileged student is so separated from or- tivities. The poor almost seem to exist so that dinary life that he or she cannot talk its lan- academics can study them or so that univer- guage or understand its works, universities sity students can elevate their own conscious- have, in recent years, responded with “com- ness by serving them for a short period. munity help” programs of every description. “Volunteering” has become, ironically, an JAMES V. SCHALL, SJ, is professor of government at obligation for graduation. The university, it is Georgetown University. said, is to prepare for “life,” as it is called. No 44 LIBERAL EDUCATION FALL 2006 &“Social Justice” S E V I T C E P S glowingly into articulated “experience” either Georgetown R E of work or of service. Gone are the days when University P the college years were conceived to be set aside, to be protected from the town precisely so that what students were supposed to be about could take place. To pass these years as an active preparation for work or politics meant, in the older view, neglecting what the university was for in the first place. Indeed, it was thought that the best preparation for practical life consisted in studying the higher things, the life of the mind. Someone thus prepared would have little trouble with practi- cal things. But someone who spent his or her time largely with practical things would for- ever be mostly closed off from the higher things. Justice A liberal education is not an education whose primary concern is to prepare its graduates to live in the actual city, even when they do eventually live in that city and appreciate it. They really do not need academia for this “practical” preparation. Rather, the university is primarily an enclave wherein one is free to teach the truth, no matter in what city a uni- versity might exist. The “city” that the univer- sity looked to was one “in speech” or “in mind,” as Plato said. It alone enabled everyonein every culture to talk to everyone. Such an oc- cupation is, as we know from Socrates, often enough a dangerous business, and, lest we for- get, many of its most serious dangers come from within itself, within the souls of the dons themselves, not from the city. The city, like the parents of the potential philosophers in The Apology, does not like to hear that a con- flict can exist between polity and philosophy. longer do we find any barriers between town It does not enjoy being reminded that it has and gown. The purpose of the gown is the killed philosophers and prophets. Philosophy town, almost with a vengeance. One begins to does not particularly like to hear it either. wonder, with such orientations and implicit One of the perplexing things philosophers priorities, whether students learn anything study is justice, particularly justice as a virtue but the town. of individuals, who, in their relations with one Students work five, ten, twenty hours a week, another, learn to render what is due and to often on something that does not pay or pays tell the truth. What is now called “social jus- poorly. They learn to translate such activities tice,” however, can be studied, but it inhabits FALL 2006 LIBERAL EDUCATION 45 S Georgetown no soul. This latter is a theory of modernity, E University largely a product of Rousseau and Max Weber. V It seeks to remove justice from the soul and I T relocate it in the relationships that constitute C the polity. It is a last effort to prove Socrates E wrong and actually to construct the best P S regime among us. Thus “social justice” and R “democracy” are inexorably linked. E “[Social justice] thus takes for granted that P social reform is at least as important as per- sonal reform and that the just social order de- pends as such on institutions as on moral character,” Ernest Fortin wrote. It calls for a radical redistribution of mater- ial resources or, short of that, the establish- ment of a system that reduces as much as possible the distance separating the social classes. Its immediate goal, in short, is to produce happy rather than good human be- ings. [It is claimed] that all human beings had a right to happiness, and not just to the to pursue the highest things in all their vari- pursuit of virtue. In the final analysis, there ety. It means to live in and participate in a is one and only one just social order, whose polity that allows us, encourages us to pursue broad outlines are prescribed in advance the truth, and to be free to live it when found. and therefore are not a proper object of de- Moreover, “education” is not itself a subject of liberation on the part of wise and prudent study. Strictly speaking, one cannot study “ed- legislators. (1997, 273–74) ucation.” To be educated does not mean to The essence of classical political thought was learn about learning, but to learn something, precisely to deliberate on what actual regime to learn what is.Education means the “bring- is most suited to these people in their particu- ing forth” from within us; it means the ability lar polity. It was not to force all people into to address, in a proper manner, each reality the same regime in order to make them happy. before us. Philosophy is the quest for the Men become good, it is claimed, not because whole. The very word “university” means this of chosen acts and acquired personal habits, very whole. But it means that, at some time in but because of “structures.” To change the soul our lives, we have an intellectual beginning so we must change the “structures” through which that we might later spend our lives in this pur- the soul presumably acts. Aristotle had said, suit, whatever else we do that is practical. conversely, that the differing kinds of regime When we put the two words, “liberal” and reflect the differing kinds of souls that inhabit “education,” together, we mean that we, each it. He thought, like Plato, that changes in in our individual souls, are free to learn what regime followed changes in soul. “Social jus- is to be learned. It means that we are prepared tice” puts this orientation aside. The essential to learn it, and having learned it, to accept it. dynamism of society comes not from persons In the beginning, we just have a mind, a capac- with souls but from the almost automatic work- ity to know, but we know nothing until we use ings of the laws and institutions. “Reform” be- our knowing faculties. What is to be learned, comes a political cry, not a steady effort to however, is all that is. All that isincludes our- change our souls from within. selves learning what there is to learn. And it includes the various stages in our lives, as Liberal education Plato said, in which we are most prepared to The word “liberal” in the phrase “liberal edu- learn what is to be learned. We are to be free cation” means to be free, especially to be free even of “ourselves,” as Yves Simon (1980) in- of oneself, to be free of those passions and timated. That is, our own vices and choices habits within us that might deflect us from can prevent us from knowing what is there to grasping what is there. It also means to be free be known. So to be “free” to learn includes 46 LIBERAL EDUCATION FALL 2006 the capacity to rule ourselves so that we are free the politician can always kill the philosopher S to direct our fears or pleasures or interests in and in the Augustinian sense that the E such a way that we can really see what is there. philosopher himself, full of pride, may betray V I Does justice, especially what is now called the truth. T “social justice,” have any place in liberal edu- But the college or university was to be a C E cation? The classical notion of justice is not place wherein great things could be known P the modern idea of “social justice.” Indeed, the and studied in the souls of young men and S latter may be inimical to the former. What jus- women so that they could see what was noble, R E tice is itself comes under the discipline of what what was delightful, what was true. This won- P it is. That is, it is to be itself, not something der at what they beheld is what really pre- else, not friendship, not charity, not obedi- pared them to go into practical things out of ence. Justice is a virtue, one of the classical which, when they were older, they could re- moral virtues along with temperance, forti- turn to the issues that were of highest moment tude, and prudence, plus the minor virtues, as to human beings. it were, of ruling our wealth, our temper, our As Leo Strauss said, “liberal education con- wit, our social relation, our telling the truth. sists in listening to still and small voices” Justice as a virtue refers immediately “to oth- (1968, 25). If drama and tragedy once fled ers.” In this sense, it is “political” in that it im- from the city to the academy, thence to the plies an order, including a legal order, in which monastery, thence to the university, the ques- relations to others can take place. As such, like tion finally must be asked, when the univer- all virtues, we have to acquire it by individual sity itself flees back to the city, whether the acts of justice. A just man is someone who highest things do not again have to find an- freely rules himself in such a manner that, other place in which our souls are free to when he sees a situation demanding a just act seek what is. of his in relation to others, he will be free to How few of us there are who can, with perform it and choose to do so. He will “render Alexander, stand at the tomb of Achilles at what is due” and he will “tell the truth” of the Sigeum. We have not had time, in our busy relationship in which he is involved, be it of university life, to thank Homer for showing us paying a debt, of fulfilling an obligation, or of what valor really is before we needed it in our repairing damage he has caused. practical lives. “No forced study abides in the The question “what is something for?” is a soul.” We must strive, that our memories do utility question. The question “what issome- not bury the body of Achilles because we had, thing?” is a philosophical question, which in- in our studies, no time for the likes of the Iliad, cludes the “for-what-the-thing-is.” Until we which even a young emperor, concerned with know what a thing is, we cannot know what it his own fame, had read with admiration. ■■ is for. But we know what it is, by following what it does. Actio sequitur esse. To respond to this article, e-mail [email protected], Eric Voegelin (1957) says that at the execu- with the author’s name on the subject line. tion of Socrates, the souls of those who sought the truth had to flee from the city to the acad- emy. The Platonic academy itself was closed un- REFERENCES der the Emperor Justinian, the same year, 529 Fortin, E. L. 1997. Human rights, virtue and the com- AD, as Josef Pieper (1960) said, that the first mon good: Untimely meditations on religion and poli- tics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. monastery was founded in Italy by St. Benedict. Pieper, J. 1960. Scholasticism: Personalities and problems It was out of the monastery and the monastery of medieval philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill. schools that the medieval university was even- Simon, Y. 1980. A general theory of authority. Notre tually formed. The university was to be a place Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. where “everything” was to be freely addressed, Strauss, L. 1968.Liberalism: Ancient and modern. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. but after the manner of mind. Voegelin, E. 1957. Plato.Baton Rouge: Louisiana The university was also a student place. It was State University Press. to be protected from the polity. It did not have the same purpose as either the church or the civil society or the economy. The relationship is always tenuous both in the Socratic sense that FALL 2006 LIBERAL EDUCATION 47