Liberal Education and Freedom

In chapter 4 of his recent book, Conscience and its Enemies, Robert P. George makes a useful statement on freedom and the liberal arts.  Some people think that the purpose of liberal education is to liberate one from conventional opinions so that one can be perfectly free to construct one’s “self” in accordance with one’s inner desires and passions. Against that view, and appealing to the soul rather than to the self, George argues that we enter into the conversation with the great minds (Augustine, Dante, Shakespeare, etc.) to appropriate truths that can “liberate us from what is merely vulgar, coarse, or base.”  MORE...