What a Liberal Arts class ought to be like

I’ve been reading Why Read? by Mark Edmundson. In the first part of the book, he criticizes humanities classes for catering to students’ demands to be entertaining. He then goes on to claim that “the function of a liberal arts education is to use major works of art and intellect to influence one’s Final Narrative, one’s outermost circle of commitments.”(31) In other words, a proper class within the humanities ought to use the literature of its topic (philosophy, history, whatever) in order to challenge and shape a student’s core values.

We (and certainly I) mostly fail at this. Instead, I have taken it to be enough to present various thinkers views, to talk about whether they work (and in particular, what their failings are), and move on. In fact, half the time all I really do is try to get the view right, and save analysis of whether it works to the student on an essay. And I’ve been thinking for a while, what’s the point of all this? I think Edmunson has given an answer, and I think it’s a valuable one. It’s not enough to simply present these views: we must defend them in a way that actually challenges the student to have to evaluate his/her own views on the topic. We must force them to engage in a proper examination of their own views. The point of all of it is that these are core values, the most important values that the student has. If they are not uncomfortable with our line of questioning, we must press harder, dig deeper, until they are.

It’s not clear to me exactly how to do this with my Philosophy of Art class that I’ll have in the summer, but I will certainly try. In any case, I’m reinvigorated in the purpose of it all.