Reading the great books has been for nought unless we are concerned with bringing about a good society. Everyone wants to live in it, but few seem willing to work for it.
Let me say briefly what I mean by a good society. It is simply the enlargement of the community in which we live with our friends. We live together with our friends in peaceful and intelligent association. We form a community to the extent that we communicate, share common ideas and purposes. The good society, in the large, must be an association of men made friends by intelligent communication.
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Where men lack the arts of communication, intelligent discussion must languish. Where there is no mastery of the medium for exchanging ideas, ideas cease to play a part in human life. When that happens, men are little better than the brutes they dominate by force or cunning, and they will soon try to dominate each other in the same way.
The loss of freedom follows. When men cannot live together as friends, when a whole society is not built on a real community of understanding, freedom cannot flourish. We can live freely only with our friends. With all others, we are constantly oppressed by every sort of dread, and checked in every movement by suspicion.
Preserving freedom, for ourselves and our posterity, is one of our major concerns today.
A proper respect for liberty is the heart of sound liberalism. But I cannot help wondering whether our liberalism is sound. We do not seem to know the origins of liberty or its ends. We cry out for all sorts of liberty—freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly—but we do not seem to realize that freedom of thought is the basis for all these others. Without it, freedom of speech is an empty privilege, and a free conscience nothing but a private prejudice. Without it, our civil liberties can be exercised only in a pro forma way, and we are unlikely to retain them long if we do not know how to use them well.
As President Barr, of St. John's College, has pointed out, American liberalism today asks for too little, not too much. We have not demanded, as our ancestors did, a mind freed from ignorance, an awakened imagination, and a disciplined reason, without which we cannot effectively use our other freedoms or even preserve them. We have paid attention to the external uses of liberty rather than its essence. The reigning educational system suggests, moreover, that we no longer know how free minds are made and, through them, free men.
It is not just a play on words to connect liberalism and liberal education, or to say that training in the liberal arts liberalizes— makes us free. The arts of reading and writing, listening and speaking, are the arts which make it possible for us to think freely, because they discipline the mind. They are the liberating arts. The discipline they accomplish frees us from the vagaries of unfounded opinion and the strictures of local prejudice.
They free our minds from every domination except the authority of reason itself. A free man recognizes no other authority. Those who ask to be free from all authority—from reason itself—are false liberals. As Milton said, "license they mean, when they cry liberty."
I was invited last year by the American Council 6n Education to address its annual meeting in Washington. I chose to speak about the political implications of the three R's, under the title "Liberalism and Liberal Education." I tried to show how false liberalism is the enemy of liberal education, and why a truly liberal education is needed in this country to correct the confusions of this widely prevalent false liberalism. By false liberalism, I mean the sort which confuses authority with tyranny and discipline with regimentation. It exists wherever men think everything is just a matter of opinion.
That is a suicidal doctrine. It ultimately reduces itself to the position that only might makes right. The liberal who frees himself from reason, rather than through it, surrenders to the only other arbiter in human affairs—force, or what Mr. Chamberlain has called "the awful arbitrament of war."
The political implications of the three R's, or the liberal arts, are not far to seek. If democracy is a society of free men, it must sustain and extend liberal education or perish. Democratic citizens must be able to think for themselves. To do this, they must first be able to think, and have a body of ideas to think with. They must be able to communicate clearly with one another and receive communications of all sorts critically. It is for such ends that skill in reading and reading the great books are obviously only means.
In Shakespeare's Henry VI, the following speech occurs: Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill.
Reading and writing looked like high treason to the tyrant. He saw in them the forces which might shake him from his throne. And for a while they did, in the gradual democrati-zation of the Western world through the spread of learning and the growth of literacy. But we see today a different turn in human affairs. The means of communication which once were used by liberators to free men are now used by dictators to subdue them.
Today the pen is as potent as the sword in the making of a despot. Tyrants used to be great generals. Now they are strategists in communication, beguiling orators or propagandists. Their weapons are the radio and the press, as much as secret police and concentration camps. And when men are pushed about by propaganda, they are as servile as when they are coerced by brute force. They are political puppets, not free men democratically ruled.
Hobbes was suspicious of democracy because he feared its tendency to degenerate into an oligarchy of orators. Though our aims be different from his, we must admit that recent history supports his point. We have seen abroad how the leading orator in the land can become its tyrant. We must save democracy from these inherent weaknesses by closing such roads to despotism. If we are being oppressed by organizations of force, we fight to disarm them. So we must disarm the orators, and we must do so in advance of the day when their spell begins to bind. There is only one way of doing that in a land where free speech is everybody's privilege. The citizens must become critical of what they read and what they hear. They must be liberally educated. If the schools fail to give them such education, they must get it for themselves by learning to read and by reading.
But, for their children's sake, they may ultimately realize that something will have to be done about the schools.
The fact that liberally disciplined minds make it harder for those who try to misuse the means of communication is a negative point. There are positive advantages as well. A democracy needs both competent leaders and responsible followers. Neither is possible unless men can exercise free judgment and are in possession of principles which direct action to the right ends. A democratic citizen is an independent subject, because he is ultimately subject to his own free choices. A democratic leader rules only by guiding, not imposing upon, that freedom.
Just as a good teacher tries to elicit active learning on the part of his students, so the art of ruling in a democracy is one of inviting active participation on the part of citizens.
But just as good teaching cannot succeed unless the students have the art of being taught—the skills involved in learning actively from a teacher—so democratic ruling fails unless the citizens possess the reciprocal art of being ruled. Without the art of being taught, students must receive instruction passively. They can learn only through being indoctrinated, in the vicious sense of that word. As we have seen, we are properly teachable, or docile, only to the extent that we have the mental discipline to learn by the active and fr"e use of our powers. Similarly, without the art of being ruled, we can be governed only by force or imposition.
A democracy, in short, depends on men who can rule themselves because they have the art of being ruled. Whether they occupy the offices of government or merely the rank of citizens, such men can rule or be ruled without losing their integrity or freedom. Brute force and insidious propaganda are evils with which they are prepared to cope. To maint
ain the reciprocity between ruling and being ruled is to guarantee political and civil liberty. They do not suffer because all men are not in the government or because just laws must be enforced.
The art of being ruled and the reciprocal art of ruling, like the arts of being taught and of teaching, are arts of the mind. They are liberal arts. The democratic ruler must move us by rational persuasion. If we are good democratic citizens, we must be capable of being moved that way—and only in that way. The appeal to fact and reason distinguishes rational persuasion from vicious propaganda. Men who arc moved by such persuasion remain free because they have moved themselves. They have been persuaded knowingly.
To know how to be ruled is thus the primary qualification for democratic citizenship. A liberal education is needed to qualify men for their political duties as well as for their intellectual life. The art of reading is related to the art of being ruled as well as to the art of being taught. In both cases, men must be able to engage in communication actively, intelligently, critically. Democratic government, more than any other, depends upon successful communication; for, as Walter Lippmann has pointed out, "in a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable." The consent of the governed is fully realized only when, through intelligent debate of issues, all colors of political opinion share in the formation of decisions. Debate which is not founded on the communication of all parties is specious.
The democratic process is a sham when men tail to understand each other. We must be able to meet other minds in the processes of government and social life as well as in the processes of learning; and, in both cases, we must be able to make up our own minds and act accordingly.
We must act, however. That is the final word in every phase of human life. I have not hesitated to praise the reading and discussion of great books as things intrinsically good, but I repeat: they are not the ultimate ends of life. We want happiness and a good society. In this larger view, reading is only a means to an end.
If, after you have learned to read and have read the great books, you act foolishly in personal or political affairs, you might just as well have saved yourself the trouble. It may have been fun at the time, but the fun will not last long, Unless those who are well read can act well also, we shall soon find ourselves deprived of the pleasures we get from these accomplishments. Knowledge may be a good in itself, but knowledge without right action will bring us to a world in which the pursuit of knowledge itself is impossible—a world in which books are burned, libraries closed, the search for truth is repressed, and disinterested leisure lost.
I hope it is not too naive to expect the contrary from genuinely liberal education, in school and out. I have some reason to believe that those who have really read the great books will probably think well and soundly on the issues we face today. The man who thinks clearly about practical problems certainly knows that they are well solved only by right action. Whether he will respect the obligation to act accordingly is, of course, beyond the province of the liberal arts. Nevertheless, they prepare for freedom. They make free minds and form a community of friends who share a common world of ideas.
Beyond that the responsibility for acting like free men is ours to accept or shirk.
Authors and Titles in
GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD
ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY WITHIN CATEGORIES
Imaginative Literature
HOMER,
The Iliad, The Odyssey
AESCHYLUS,
Complete Plays
SOPHOCLES,
Complete Plays
EURIPIDES,
Complete Plays
ARISTOPHANES,
Complete Plays
VIRGIL ,
The Eclogues,
The Georgics,
The Aeneid
DANTE ,
The Divine Comedy
CHAUCER ,
Troilus and Criseyde,
The Canterbury Tales
RABELAIS ,
Gargantua and Pantagruel
SHAKESPEARE,
Complete Plays,
Sonnets
CERVANTES ,
Don Quixote
MILTON,
English Minor Poems,
Paradise Lost,
Samson Agonistes,
Areopagitica
SWIFT ,
Gulliver's Travels
FIELDING ,
Tom Jones
STERNE ,
Tristram Shandy
GOETHE,
Faust
MELVILLE,
Moby Dick
TOLSTOY,
War and Peace
DOSTOEVSKY,
The Brothers Karamazov
HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
HERODOTUS,
The History
THUCYDIDES,
The History of the Peloponnesian War
PLUTARCH,
Complete Lives
TACITUS,
The Annals,
The Histories
MACHIAVELLI,
The Prince
MONTAIGNE,
Complete Essays
HOBBES,
Leviathan
MONTESQUIEU,
The Spirit of Laws
ROUSSEAU ,
A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,
A Discourse on Political Economy,
The Social Contract
SMITH ,
The Wealth of Nations
GIBBON,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Declaration of Independence,
Articles of Confederation,
The Constitution of the United States of America
BOSWELL,
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
HAMILTON, MADISON, and JAY,
The Federalist
MILL ,
On Liberty,
Representative Government,
Utilitarianism
MARX,
Capital
MARX and ENGELS,
Manifesto of the Communist Party
NATURAL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS
HIPPOCRATES,
Complete Works
EUCLID,
Elements
ARCHIMEDES,
Complete Writings
APOLLONIUS OF PERGA,
On Conic Sections
NICOMACHUS,
Introduction to Arithmetic
GALEN,
On the Natural Faculties
PTOLEMY,
The Almagest
COPERNICUS,
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
GILBERT,
On the Loadstone
GALILEO,
Two New Sciences
KEPLER ,
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy,
The Harmonies of the World
HARVEY,
Medical Writings
HUYGENS,
Treatise on Light
NEWTON,
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Optics LAVOISIER,
Elements of Chemistry
FOURIER,
Analytical Theory of Heat
FARADAY,
Experimental Researches in Electricity
DARWIN,
The Origin of Species,
The Descent of Man
JAMES,
The Principles of Psychology
FREUD, Major Works
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
PLATO,
Complete Dialogues,
The Seventh Letter
ARISTOTLE,
Complete Works
LUCRETIUS,
On the Nature of Things
EPICTETUS,
The Discourses
MARCUS AURELIUS,
The Meditations
PLOTINUS,
The Six Enneads
ST . AUGUSTINE ,
The Confessions,
The City of God,
/> On Christian Doctrine
AQUINAS ,
Summa Theologica
BACON,
Advancement of Learning,
Novum Organum,
New Atlantis
DESCARTES,
Philosophical Works,
The Geometry
PASCAL,
The Provincial Letters, Pensees,
Scientific Works
SPINOZA,
Ethics
LOCK . E,
A Letter Concerning Toleration,
Concerning Civil Government,
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
BERKELEY ,
The Principles of Human Knowledge
HUME ,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
KANT,
Major Philosophical Works
HEGEL ,
The Philosophy of Right,
The Philosophy of History
Authors and Titles in
GATEWAY TO THE GREAT BOOKS
ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY WITHIN CATEGORIES
IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE
SHERWOOD ANDERSON,
I'm a Fool
ANONYMOUS,
Aucassin and Nicolette
LUCIUS APULEIUS,
"Cupid and Psyche" (from The Golden Ass)
HONORE DE BALZAC,
A Passion in the Desert
IVAN BUNIN,
The Gentleman from San Francisco
SAMUEL BUTLER,
"Customs and Opinions of the Erewhonians" (from Erewhon) ANTON CHEKHOV,
The Darling,
The Cherry Orchard
JOSEPH CONRAD,
Youth
STEPHEN CRANE,
The Open Boat
DANIEL DEFOE,
Robinson Crusoe
CHARLES DICKENS,
"A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell Against Pickwick" (from The Pickwick Papers)
ISAK DINESEN,
Sorrow-Acre
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY,
White Nights
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