A provocative essay by Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University, on the meaning of college — and finding the meaning to life. Well-worth reading, but hard to summarize, but here’s two key thoughts:
… But despite their differences, all rest on a set of common assumptions, which together define a shared conception of humane education.
The first is that there is more than one good answer to the question of what living is for. A second is that the number of such answers is limited, making it possible to study them in an organized way. A third is that the answers are irreconcilably different, necessitating a choice among them. A fourth is that the best way to explore these answers is to study the great works of philosophy, literature, and art in which they are presented with lasting beauty and strength. And a fifth is that their study should introduce students to the great conversation in which these works are engaged – Augustine warily admiring Plato, Hobbes reworking Aristotle, Paine condemning Burke, Eliot recalling Dante, recalling Virgil, recalling Homer – and help students find their own authentic voice as participants in the conversation.
Though critics have attacked “great books” programs as a kind of indoctrination into a European-dominated intellectual canon, the students in my Directed Studies class respond in the opposite way. They become rambunctiously independent. For they learn that the greatest minds in the world are on their side – or aren’t, and feel entitled to quarrel with them. A college freshman who has read Descartes, and who crafts her own reasons to reject his invitation to doubt, is on her way to an independence of spirit that is surely one of the conditions to living a meaningful life.
Thanks much to dangerousmeta! for the link.