Liberal Education in the Modern World

The average person has access to the freedom and comforts of an ancient aristocrat; and as such will probably be better and happier off if educated like one

This is the second part in a series on liberal education. Part one looked at the historical origins of western liberal education. Part three will consider some potential pitfalls and criticisms of liberal education.

Liberal education originated in the ancient world among landed aristocrats, and began with physical training and leisure time, as a way for free citizens to develop self-mastery, and participate in the civic politics of city-states. In addition to educating free citizens, it also offered a way for the self-mastered individual to literally gain more freedom and agency over oneself, by orienting the soul towards excellence. Although the form, shape, and emphasis of liberal education has changed over time, the canon of classical literature and philosophical terms and concepts at its heart represents a cohesive tradition that can still be studied and lived in today. Terms like virtue and excellence, the cardinal virtues, telos and eudaimonia, and the pursuit of the three Transcendentals (Truth, Goodness, Beauty) help define this long and durable tradition. I would like to argue that this tradition remains relevant today, and can be of very great use even in the modern world. Perhaps even especially in the modern world.

The modern world isn’t like the pre-modern past of course, and applying traditional liberal education to it may require some “translation” across time, place and culture. 

Although I will take my high school freshman outside for a day of hoplite “drill” with wooden shields they’ve made for extra credit, we are not Greek aristocrats. Reviving classical liberal education today doesn’t mean we must recreate ancient city-states and aristocratic hierarchies, and I think that fears of classical education representing something toxic or dangerous are misplaced. Rightly understood, a classical liberal arts education seeks to hone and cultivate souls that are both well-mannered and spirited (“polished” and “polite” share the same root meaning). I do think, with C.S. Lewis, that we need more young men and women with chests (heart). I also think that in a modern world which is ever bigger, more complex, and beset by more forces and temptations than ever (this is not a moral judgment about the world being better or worse than in the past, but a neutral observation about how abundance and wealth create new opportunities and temptations), that self-control and self-mastery are essential tools for a life well-lived today. 

If Plato thought that books were a double-edged sword that eroded the importance of memory, one can only imagine what he would have thought about a world where we have supercomputers in our pockets which can instantly satisfy our appetites and give vent to our every emotion. Plato’s famous cave analogy, in which souls are trapped in ignorance and illusion, while false images are displayed as shadows on the wall, is perhaps a little too close for comfort to a world where we stare at screens and consume content increasingly chosen for us by others. The future may be one where our souls are either ruled by ourselves, or by the algorithm. At the extreme, if one worries about a dystopian future, I personally am much more concerned about a Brave New World scenario, rather than Orwell’s 1984, as the former tyranny overwhelms free minds through pleasure and by satiating the appetites. To the extent that we can cultivate self-mastery and make our time our own, we can live that little bit more freely.

Prior to the modern world, only a small segment of society possessed both the opportunity and the challenge of pursuing a life of greater freedom and agency; the average peasant farmer had much of his life “chosen” for him already by the impositions of his environment, station, and culture. This was probably by turns both a comfort and a straight-jacket, as the demands of subsistence farming were by no means easy (quite the contrary), but were essentially straight-forward. It’s probably only a partial oversimplification to say that life for a great many pre-modern farmers was “learn how to run the farm or household, choose a spouse from one of ten other eligible families in the village, and observe the proper sacred rituals and festivals.” For most of history, a person with a strong back, physical stamina, and high tolerance for discomfort could provide adequately for a family, and usually had a clear set of cultural expectations to serve as a roadmap. 

Today, however, a very normal middle class individual has an incredible range of choices to make throughout their life, in regards to schooling, relationships, leisure, higher education, choice of career, marriage and family, and where they will live. The demands and opportunities placed on a modern individual are far broader and more varied, and while the extraordinary abundance and wealth of modern society makes absolute privation quite rare, it’s both more important and more feasible for someone to attain a life of relative comfort and security. Even the old industrial model of “graduate high school and learn a physical trade or factory job” is in decline, as many individuals frequently switch careers or retrain in new fields. 

A broad knowledge-base, curiosity and wonder, and facility at learning new skills are all valuable traits, and ones that Aristotle or most any other ancient philosopher would have valued. In the ancient world, Ciceronian rhetoric became the template for good communication, and the rediscovery of Cicero’s letters in Medieval Italy was one of the catalysts for the Renaissance, as Italian bankers sought to hone their letter-writing to clients, patrons, and business contacts. Today, clear, effective, and persuasive writing and speaking ability are core competencies for success in a great many fields. Paradoxically, a world where AI can write a college-freshman level essay is probably a world where the ability to write well will become even more exceptional.

Historically, intellectual attainment wasn’t always even an important status-symbol, as book learning and writing were often the domains of specialist scribes, tutors, and monks. Such clerical skills were important, but often separate from the social and political virtues of military prowess, diplomacy, law-giving, and rhetoric. Today, however, an increasingly large number of careers reward higher-level cognitive ability and knowledge. The open-ended pursuit of knowledge and wisdom that lies at the heart of liberal education is arguably better suited to the future of work than the old 20th century progressive-education model of training for specific careers and tasks. 

Of course, liberal arts education traditionally turned up its nose at mere economic productivity, and many philosophers and religious teachers have reminded us that man does not live by bread alone. This is true, and if the case for a modern liberal arts education rested solely on college-preparation and future earnings potential, something would be missing from its classical inspiration. However, plenty of Roman senators hired Greek tutors for their children because it was “fashionable,” and important for a political career. Even in the ancient world, most liberal arts students did not become purified philosophers detached from worldly concerns and focused solely on contemplating the Good Life. It may perhaps be the busiest, loudest, and most ambitious individuals who most need to be reminded of what’s truly important.

But even normal individuals today find themselves closer to ancient aristocrats than we might realize. We do not work from sunup to sundown six days a week, and even very busy individuals spend hours each week socializing and engaging in hobbies and entertainment. The average American today eats fewer meals at home, goes on more vacations, and spends more on entertainment and play than at any time in history. Non-essential leisure activities make up an increasingly large component of people's lives, and so how we spend that time has an even larger impact on our overall health and happiness. For many farmers in history, becoming overweight was physically impossible; today, avoiding it requires intentional exertions of will and temperance. We are buried in mountains of low-quality food, media, and entertainment, even as the greatest works of art are more accessible than ever. It has never been easier, nor the rewards higher, to cultivate excellent tastes in music, food, and art. 

Furthermore, how we make use of our leisure time may actually involve higher stakes. A person with little surplus, little opportunity, and little leisure time will probably work hard enough to survive, even as we regard his or her lack of opportunity as unfortunate. But a person with wealth and leisure who wastes, squanders, and abuses their abundance is worthy of condemnation, as in the parable of the servant who hides their talent underground. Medieval and Renaissance philosophers recognized this potentiality in human nature; the distance between a “good” and “bad” animal is vastly smaller and less terrifying than the moral gulf between a virtuous and evil person. With more leisure time, more power, more wealth, and more agency, comes the potential for both greater virtue, and greater vice. A poor farmer may be pitiable, but the emperor Nero is reprehensible. And unlike most ancient farmers, it’s very possible for we moderns to become petty middle-class Nero’s ruled by our vices and appetites.

The most potent critiques of the modern world (that can be found, in different guises, on all sides of the political aisle), tend to involve some version of the claim that modern society is alienating, atomistic, and deracinating, as authentic human relationships and genuine living are torn apart and subsumed by late-stage capitalism, inhuman technology, identity-politics, or cultural decadence. If ancient citizens feared the imposition of tyranny by one-man rule, many moderns fear an impersonal tyranny of vast forces outside of our control. For those afflicted by this crisis of meaning, anxiety, depression, and loss of agency sap the will and trample the spirit under. One may argue about the validity of these critiques and how healthy the modern world is to live in, though I would take caution from Thucydides’ admonition that there are at times truly great and unprecedented historical events, but also that there is a tendency for individuals to exaggerate the significance of events in the moment (Bk 1.1.21). While Thucydides was brilliant enough to know which was which, I am not Thucydides.

But regardless of how good or bad the modern world is, my answer to it is exactly the same. We have access to a tradition which can teach us how to live well and pursue excellence, and that it has never been easier to build the communities necessary to sustain and foster this habit of excellence. We are not medieval monks who have to painstakingly copy out rare books by hand, and we are not ancient aristocrats who require a multitude of someone else’s labor (often unfree) to support our leisure-time. No serf needed to get up at four in the morning to chop the firewood to illuminate my classroom. Also, I am not a serf; statistically, I almost certainly would have been one a thousand years ago.

A modern middle class teenager in suburban America can train the body through athletics, teach the mind to reason through logic and philosophy, and nourish the soul and spirit on beautiful stories and artwork. The greatest works of literature, music, and art are all available at our fingertips, are functionally free, and we have more leisure time with which to enjoy them than at any point in history. The only thing keeping us from reading Shakespeare every day instead of scrolling social media is that we haven’t yet cultivated the necessary habits, and as the Stoics would both depressingly and hopefully remind us, that problem rests entirely within ourselves. What was once the provenance of a small coterie of (mostly though not always male) scribes and aristocrats can now be held and cherished by the majority of society (male and female). The average person has access to the freedom and comforts of an ancient aristocrat; and as such will probably be better and happier off if educated like one.