Introduction to Three Essays on Liberal Education

by Richard Kraus

The Honors College Faculty has chosen three texts for discussion at our 2005 New Student Orientation. Each explores the question, "what constitutes a liberal education?" Here are a few notes to put these short pieces in context.

William J. Cronon, "Only Connect"

William J. Cronon essay is a contemporary reformulation of the ideals of a liberal education. Like Plato, he finds liberal education to be less a matter of specific knowledge than a set of skills which heighten self-criticism, the development of social skills to interact effectively with the world, and an often skeptical capacity for critical inquiry.

Cronon's own scholarship brings environmental issues to our understanding of the American frontier. His books include Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature and Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Cronon is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

Plato's Apology

Plato's Apology re-enacts Socrates’ unsuccessful defense against charges of blasphemy and corruption of youth. Socrates, the Athenian teacher died by his own hand at the conclusion of his trial in 399 B.C.E. The most famous of Socrates' students was the philosopher Plato (427-327 B.C.E.), who wrote this account of the trial as seen through his teacher's eyes.

This was a political trial. In the turmoil which followed Sparta’s defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, many Athenian democratic leaders fled into exile. Socrates was connected to the anti-democratic elitist oligarchy, and when the democrats returned to power, they made an example of Socrates for his disrespect.

This Platonic dialog is of special interest because it dramatizes the final arguments on a great thinker. But it also highlights the role of persuasion and argument: Socrates is accused of being too persuasive, which he of course denies. Plato represents his teacher in full deployment of irony, sarcasm, and above all logic, reminding us that this is a locus classicus for the "Socratic method" of teaching through questioning and dialog. Plato's phrase, the "unexamined life is not worth living," is another celebrated justification for the critical inquiry of liberal arts education.

The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, Chapter 1

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) was a utilitarian philosopher and a leading intellectual in 19th Century Britain. The utilitarians, in the spirit of their leader, Jeremy Bentham, sought "the greatest good for the greatest number." This opening chapter of Mill’s Autobiography explores his radical home-schooling under the supervision of his father, James Mill, a celebrated historian of Britain's Indian Empire.

This education was relentlessly aimed at forging a brilliant and logical mind which could continue the father's own philosophical work. It probably contributed to young Mill's nervous breakdown at the age of 20. Mill subsequently learned to develop his aesthetic and emotional side.

However, John Stuart Mill did remain close to his father's interests. Indeed, his career was spent working for the East India Company which his father had chronicled. Mill was also an editor, and a Liberal Member of Parliament in the 1860s. His most influential writings include the System of Logic (1843), and Principles of Political Economy (1848). The Subjection of Women (1869) made a very modern argument for feminism, attacking the argument that women's rights must be limited by an imagined special "nature" which consigned women to a separate and inferior sphere.

In Chapter One of the Autobiography, Mill catalogs his exposure to the early 19th Century intellectual canon. Many of these authors are now read only by specialists. Fundamental were the classical Greek and Roman works which once marked the possession of higher learning, read in their original languages. But given his father's reformist enthusiasms, Mill also read modern economists, including Adam Smith, as well as family friends such as David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham. Few would advocate such a curriculum today, but it remains intriguing for its intense effort to embrace the whole world of knowledge of its time.

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