The University of Bologna, the oldest continually operating university in the world, was founded nearly a millennia ago to train students in the arts of rhetoric, grammar and logic, for the purpose of developing their reason, intellect and eloquence. Universities were created to teach students how to think, not necessarily to teach students what to think, and it is a tragedy that our country is killing off this beautiful educational tradition.
More and more individuals throughout the United States are rejecting the idea that the Western Canon, that is, the set of literary and artistic works that until a few decades ago was a necessary part of a liberal education, is of any value to 21st century university students. The works of Aristotle, Virgil, Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo and Mozart, just to name a few, are often shoved aside or, if taught at all, are optional courses, written off as irrelevant for our postmodern sociocultural moment.
Often we think of university education as four years of learning just enough material to pass the next test, with a nice piece of paper as a reward at the end. This tragic view of education has led to the practical rejection of the humanities and the ideological rejection of education as a means of engaging all human faculties.
The humanities, and specifically the works of the Western canon, ought to be embraced instead of marginalized. Exposure to these works gives students the ability to both learn about the heritage of Western intellectual and artistic tradition– the basic building blocks of our society– and explore the rhetoric and beauty of these particular works. John Henry Newman, an Oxford academic and Roman Catholic Cardinal in the late 19th century, stated that “it is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them.”
In particular, the humanities challenges a student to think not only about the subject of a text, but also about how the text was presented, about the rhetoric and arguments behind the text and about the aesthetic value of the text. Students can learn from Plato and Aquinas how to reason and how to form an argument. Students can learn from Raphael and Beethoven how artistic beauty can affect the human person.
Cicero remarked that the capacity for reason and eloquence are what separate the human person from savage beasts. Aptly named, the humanities appeals to what it means to be human. The ancient Greek philosophers, the medieval scholastics, and the Renaissance artists were all searching for the true and the beautiful. A restoration of the humanities, of the rhetorical and artistic tradition, is necessary both to teach students how to think and form arguments, and to put the true and the beautiful back in society, two transcendental ideas sorely lacking in our postmodern world. All universities, including The University of Alabama, ought to reconsider their required courses to ensure that all students have exposure to the full breadth of the Western intellectual tradition so that they are not only forming graduates of an institution but also developing each individual’s inborn capacity to reason, thus engaging exactly what it means to be human.
Joe Puchner is a junior majoring in mathematics and Spanish. His column runs biweekly.
