In this time of renewed world strife, it might seem counter-intuitive or even irresponsible to argue that, more than ever, we need genuine old-fashioned liberal education whose ends are wisdom and virtue.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last week stunned the world, but perhaps what ought to be truly stunning is that almost everyone, across all political divides and national differences, recognizes the invasion as wrong. In antiquity, such attacks were entirely unremarkable. For example, when Odysseus and his men are on the way home from Troy, they see a city close to the shore and attack it. Why? For the usual reasons: treasure, women—anything they can seize because they are stronger. (They get crushed the next day, by the way.) Among cartels and rogue states, the same thinking still applies. Why wouldn’t the stronger plunder the weaker if there is some advantage to gain? Look at what David does to Uriah. As Nietzsche argued (perhaps leavening the German people for the Third Reich), why should we deny the inborn will to power or be hampered by some weak notion of “justice.”
Given the rather Darwinian “naturalness” of this perspective, it should stun us that Socratic and Christian teachings are so prevalent across the world. Most people seem to believe that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it—not that they believe that injustice should go unpunished. We sense everywhere a shared horror at Putin’s unprovoked attack and a shared admiration for Zelensky’s defiance.
In part, of course, the sense of outrage could simply be the natural response to a bully. But something more important underlies the sense of injustice—the inheritance that informs Western civilization as a whole and therefore our work at Wyoming Catholic College. From the beginning of our literary and philosophical tradition, figures like Putin have been anticipated, analyzed, and understood, if not entirely neutralized. Socrates speculates at length about the tyrant in the Republic, and in other dialogues, he tries to temper the great but unruly nature of Alcibiades. Socrates’ disciple Plato attempted to reform the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius. Philosophers want to believe that they can enlighten such men and turn their elemental energies toward the good. When Martin Heidegger became Rector of the University of Freiburg and joined the Nazi party in 1933, he surely thought he could influence Adolf Hitler. When he resigned his rectorship a year later, a colleague saw him and quipped, “Back from Syracuse?”—an allusion to Plato’s return to Athens after failing with Dionysius.
Perhaps a liberal education will not necessarily restrain someone in the class of men that Abraham Lincoln called “the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle”—a Napoleon, a Caesar, or an Alexander (not that Vladimir Putin merits such comparisons). But good education will inform the free men and women who resist such a figure. Russell Kirk, one of the fathers of American conservatism, emphasizes the difference between a “liberal” education—liberal in a sense long predating contemporary politics, meaning “for free people”—and a servile education aimed at training for a particular sphere of work. Drawing upon Cardinal John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University, Kirk writes that liberal education “gives to society a body of young people, introduced in some degree to wisdom and virtue, who may become honest leaders in many walks of life.”
By contrast, he argues, “Our educational apparatus has been rearing up not a class of liberally educated young people of humane outlook, but instead a series of degree-dignified elites, an alleged meritocracy of confined views and dubious intellectual and moral credentials.” In this latter class, of course, fall the super-rich technological elites who control media and exert tremendous political influence without any real understanding of political liberty or respect for the forms of government.
In this time of renewed world strife, it might seem counter-intuitive or even irresponsible to argue that, more than ever, we need genuine old-fashioned liberal education whose ends are wisdom and virtue. Kirk remembers the education that characterized the founding generation in America, and he believes that we can once again have “really educated people, [who] rather than forming presumptuous elites, will permeate society, leavening the lump through their professions, their teaching, their preaching, their participation in commerce and industry, and their public offices at every level of the commonwealth. And being educated, they will know that they do not know everything; that there exist objects in life besides power and money and sensual gratification; they will take long views; they will look forward to posterity and backward toward their ancestors.”
Kirk’s description applies most completely to America and the nations of Europe forgetful of their heritage. Ironically, some people make the argument that Putin is looking backward to the ancient origins of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kyiv in 988 and forward to a restored Christendom in which he has countered the influence of the secular West. Yet he has been rather liberal (not in the good sense) in silencing dissent and revising history to suit his ends. Are we witnessing an invasion in which Putin’s understanding of Christianity is the justification for the destruction? Certainly, the answer must be informed by a better understanding than Putin’s of what it means to take up the cross daily—words in today’s Gospel that do not mention attacks on a peaceful neighbor. Could even a saint or a Socrates change his heart? There might also be a better understanding than Pres. Biden’s of what it means to be Catholic. Yesterday, pressed about his stand on abortion, Pres. Biden told an EWTN reporter, “I don’t want to get into a debate with you about theology.”
Is it theology or natural law we need to discuss? Maybe that’s the debate we need to have, and as Kirk says, “the more people who are humanely educated, the better.” May God help us toward holiness and wisdom in this Lent of a darkening world.
Republished with gracious permission from Wyoming Catholic College.
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