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In the past few months, tens of thousands of young men and women havebegun their college careers. They have worked hard to get there. A letter.of admission to one of the country’s selective colleges or universities hasbecome the most sought-after prize in America.
The students who have won this prize are about to enter an academicenvironment richer than any they have known. They will find coursesdevoted to every question under the sun. But there is one question for whichmost of them will search their catalogs in vain: The question of the meaningof life, of what one should care about and why, of what living is for.
In a shift of historic importance, America’s colleges and universities havelargely abandoned the idea that life’s most important question is anappropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed theirstudents by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way,before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgentbusiness of living itself.
Over the past century and a hall our top universities have embraced aresearch-driven ideal that has squeezed the question of life’s meaning fromthe college curriculum,limiting the range of questions teachers feel theyhave the right and authority to teach. And in the process it has badlyweakened the humanities, the disciplines with the oldest and deepestconnection to this question, leaving them directionless and vulnerable tobeing hijacked for political ends.
But the encouraging news is that there is, today, a growing hungeramong students to explore these topics. As questions of spiritualurgency--creationism6, the destruction of the environment--move to thecenter of debate in our society, America’s colleges and universities havea real opportunity to give students the tools to discuss them at ameaningful level.
What our society now desperately needs is what it once had: Analternative approach to a college education that takes these mattersseriously without pretending to answer them in a doctrinaire way.
For this to happen, teachers of the humanities must reconsider thenature and value of their work, and confront the ways in which themodern research ideal has deformed it. That will require real boldnesson their part. But the stakes are high.
Before the Civil War, America’s colleges were small institutions withreligious roots, training students for the higher professions of medicine,teaching, ministry,and law. Only a fraction of Americans attendedcollege, and the education they received was based on beliefs whosetruth was taken for granted. The Puritan divines who founded HarvardCollege in 1636 understood their task to be the education of Christiangentlemen, schooled in the classics and devoted to God.They knew theanswer to the question of what living is for, and saw that their studentslearned it.
In the years after the Civil War, however, American higher education underwent a fundamental transformation. Thousands of Americaneducators had gone to Germany earlier in the century to pursueadvanced study in their fields, and they returned with a new conceptionof what institutions of higher learning were for. The German universityof the 19th century was based on a novel assumption with no precedentin the history of education. This was that universities exist primarily tosponsor research—that their first responsibility is to provide the space,books, and other resources that scholars need toproduce new knowledge.
In the 1860s and 1870s, a handful of olderAmerican colleges, including Harvard, begantransforming themselves into researchuniversities, and a number of new schools, suchas Cornell and Johns Hopkins, wereestablished to promote research. The researchideal began to gain influence in every area ofstudy and teaching. Faculty divided intodepartments, and then into more specialized units of work.Departments of philosophy appeared for the first time, followed bydepartments of English. In 1893, the department of biology at theUniversity of Chicago was reorganized into five departments ofzoology, botany, anatomy, neurology, and physiology.Increasingly, our colleges and universities, especially the most elite,became secular and specialized institutions.
In the process, the world of higher education assumed theshape it has today. Graduate schools were created; scholarly journalswere established to publish research, Centralized control of fundsfor research became increasingly important. College teachers wereexpected to have some specialized knowledge of a particulardiscipline. And students were expected to specialize too, by"majoring" in a particular subject.
In the sciences, the adoption of the research ideal has producedastounding results. Our knowledge of the natural and socialworlds, and ability to control them, is a direct result of the modernsystem of academic research.
In the humanities, however, the legacy of the research ideal hasbeen mixed. We know vastly more today than we did even 50years ago about the order of Plato’s dialogues, the accuracy ofGibbon’s citations, and how Benjamin Franklin spent his time inParis. But the research ideal has excluded the question of life’smeaning from serious academic concern as a question too large,too unformed, too personal, to be a subject of specialized research.A tenure-minded junior professor studying Shakespeare or Freudor spinoza might reinspect every scraP of his subject’s work with thehope of making some smaU but novel discovery--but WOUld be eithervety brave or very foolish to write a bOOk about Spinoza’s suggestionthat a free man thinks only of life，never of death；or about Freud’sapPealing，if enigmatic，statement that the meaning of life is to befound in work and love．
As this new vision of higher education took hold in America,faCUlty members ceased to think of themselVes as shaPers of SOUls． Today’s students are thus denied the opportunity to exPlore thequestion of life’s meaning in an organized way under the guidance ofteachers who seek to acquaint their students with the answers contained in the rich tradition whose transmission was once the special duty of the humanities．
It has also Put the humanities in the shadow of the natural and social sciences．Judged by the standards of these latter disdplines，research in the humanities is bound to seem less conclusive，less accretiVe，less quantifiable．24 In Philosophy,one can reasonably claimthat there has been no meaningful progress since Plato．For a physicistto say the same thing about Newton WOUld be absurd．Teachers of the humanities who judge their WOrk strictly from the standpoint of the research ideal condemn themselVes to an inferior position in thehierarchy of academic allthority and prestige．
There were humanists who believed that the question of life’s meaning can be studied in a discjplined but nonreligious way one ofthe most foroeful proponents of this View was Alexander Meiklejohn，a distinguished professor of government and constitutional law andthe President of Amherst College from 1912 to 1924．Meiklejohninsisted that undergraduate education be more than a preParation for a career．He thought it Vital that students also exPlore what he caIled"the art of 1iVing,"the spiritual question of how they OUght to livetheir lives．
In the first half of the 20th century，many colleges and universitieshad Programs that sought to implement Meiklejohn’s ideal．Most have disappeared，though some surviVe today Columbia University has a core curriculum consisting of four courses devoted to the masterpieces of Western literature，philosophy,music，and art．At Yale，where Iteach, incoming freshmen can apply to the Directed Studiesprogram, which begins in the fall with Homer, Plato, andconcludes in the spring with Wittgenstein, T.S.Eliot, andHannah Arendt.27 These programs differ in many ways, andinevitably reflect the culture of their schools; some aremandatory and others are elective. But despite theirdifferences, all rest on a set of common assumptions, whichtogether define a shared conception of humane education.
The first is that there is more than one good answer to thequestion of what living is for. A second is that the number ofsuch answers is limited, making it possible to study them inan organized way. A third is that the answers areirreconcilably different, necessitating a choice among them.29A fourth is that the best way to explore these answers is tostudy the great works of philosophy literature, and art inwhich they are presented with lasting beauty and strength.And a fifth is that their study should introduce students tothe great conversation in which these works are engaged andhelp students find their own authentic voice as participantsin the conversation.
Much depends on this. Infusing higher education with anew and vibrant humanism will produce benefits not onlyfor the future leaders of government and business, but forsociety at large A richer and more open debate aboutultimate values; an electorate less likely to be cowed intothinking that only the faithful have the right to invoke them;a humbler regard for the mystery of life in a worldincreasingly dominated by technocratic reason.32
The most immediate beneficiaries33 of any suchrevival however, would be the young men andwomen in school today. Instead of offering adisorganized reprieve between the hard work ofhigh school and the challenges of a career, theircollege education will endow them with pricelessmaterials for a lifetime of struggle with the mostimportant question anyone ever asks.
The students who have won this prize are about to enter an academicenvironment richer than any they have known. They will find coursesdevoted to every question under the sun. But there is one question for whichmost of them will search their catalogs in vain: The question of the meaningof life, of what one should care about and why, of what living is for.
In a shift of historic importance, America’s colleges and universities havelargely abandoned the idea that life’s most important question is anappropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed theirstudents by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way,before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgentbusiness of living itself.
Over the past century and a hall our top universities have embraced aresearch-driven ideal that has squeezed the question of life’s meaning fromthe college curriculum,limiting the range of questions teachers feel theyhave the right and authority to teach. And in the process it has badlyweakened the humanities, the disciplines with the oldest and deepestconnection to this question, leaving them directionless and vulnerable tobeing hijacked for political ends.
But the encouraging news is that there is, today, a growing hungeramong students to explore these topics. As questions of spiritualurgency--creationism6, the destruction of the environment--move to thecenter of debate in our society, America’s colleges and universities havea real opportunity to give students the tools to discuss them at ameaningful level.
What our society now desperately needs is what it once had: Analternative approach to a college education that takes these mattersseriously without pretending to answer them in a doctrinaire way.
For this to happen, teachers of the humanities must reconsider thenature and value of their work, and confront the ways in which themodern research ideal has deformed it. That will require real boldnesson their part. But the stakes are high.
Before the Civil War, America’s colleges were small institutions withreligious roots, training students for the higher professions of medicine,teaching, ministry,and law. Only a fraction of Americans attendedcollege, and the education they received was based on beliefs whosetruth was taken for granted. The Puritan divines who founded HarvardCollege in 1636 understood their task to be the education of Christiangentlemen, schooled in the classics and devoted to God.They knew theanswer to the question of what living is for, and saw that their studentslearned it.
In the years after the Civil War, however, American higher education underwent a fundamental transformation. Thousands of Americaneducators had gone to Germany earlier in the century to pursueadvanced study in their fields, and they returned with a new conceptionof what institutions of higher learning were for. The German universityof the 19th century was based on a novel assumption with no precedentin the history of education. This was that universities exist primarily tosponsor research—that their first responsibility is to provide the space,books, and other resources that scholars need toproduce new knowledge.
In the 1860s and 1870s, a handful of olderAmerican colleges, including Harvard, begantransforming themselves into researchuniversities, and a number of new schools, suchas Cornell and Johns Hopkins, wereestablished to promote research. The researchideal began to gain influence in every area ofstudy and teaching. Faculty divided intodepartments, and then into more specialized units of work.Departments of philosophy appeared for the first time, followed bydepartments of English. In 1893, the department of biology at theUniversity of Chicago was reorganized into five departments ofzoology, botany, anatomy, neurology, and physiology.Increasingly, our colleges and universities, especially the most elite,became secular and specialized institutions.
In the process, the world of higher education assumed theshape it has today. Graduate schools were created; scholarly journalswere established to publish research, Centralized control of fundsfor research became increasingly important. College teachers wereexpected to have some specialized knowledge of a particulardiscipline. And students were expected to specialize too, by"majoring" in a particular subject.
In the sciences, the adoption of the research ideal has producedastounding results. Our knowledge of the natural and socialworlds, and ability to control them, is a direct result of the modernsystem of academic research.
In the humanities, however, the legacy of the research ideal hasbeen mixed. We know vastly more today than we did even 50years ago about the order of Plato’s dialogues, the accuracy ofGibbon’s citations, and how Benjamin Franklin spent his time inParis. But the research ideal has excluded the question of life’smeaning from serious academic concern as a question too large,too unformed, too personal, to be a subject of specialized research.A tenure-minded junior professor studying Shakespeare or Freudor spinoza might reinspect every scraP of his subject’s work with thehope of making some smaU but novel discovery--but WOUld be eithervety brave or very foolish to write a bOOk about Spinoza’s suggestionthat a free man thinks only of life，never of death；or about Freud’sapPealing，if enigmatic，statement that the meaning of life is to befound in work and love．
As this new vision of higher education took hold in America,faCUlty members ceased to think of themselVes as shaPers of SOUls． Today’s students are thus denied the opportunity to exPlore thequestion of life’s meaning in an organized way under the guidance ofteachers who seek to acquaint their students with the answers contained in the rich tradition whose transmission was once the special duty of the humanities．
It has also Put the humanities in the shadow of the natural and social sciences．Judged by the standards of these latter disdplines，research in the humanities is bound to seem less conclusive，less accretiVe，less quantifiable．24 In Philosophy,one can reasonably claimthat there has been no meaningful progress since Plato．For a physicistto say the same thing about Newton WOUld be absurd．Teachers of the humanities who judge their WOrk strictly from the standpoint of the research ideal condemn themselVes to an inferior position in thehierarchy of academic allthority and prestige．
There were humanists who believed that the question of life’s meaning can be studied in a discjplined but nonreligious way one ofthe most foroeful proponents of this View was Alexander Meiklejohn，a distinguished professor of government and constitutional law andthe President of Amherst College from 1912 to 1924．Meiklejohninsisted that undergraduate education be more than a preParation for a career．He thought it Vital that students also exPlore what he caIled"the art of 1iVing,"the spiritual question of how they OUght to livetheir lives．
In the first half of the 20th century，many colleges and universitieshad Programs that sought to implement Meiklejohn’s ideal．Most have disappeared，though some surviVe today Columbia University has a core curriculum consisting of four courses devoted to the masterpieces of Western literature，philosophy,music，and art．At Yale，where Iteach, incoming freshmen can apply to the Directed Studiesprogram, which begins in the fall with Homer, Plato, andconcludes in the spring with Wittgenstein, T.S.Eliot, andHannah Arendt.27 These programs differ in many ways, andinevitably reflect the culture of their schools; some aremandatory and others are elective. But despite theirdifferences, all rest on a set of common assumptions, whichtogether define a shared conception of humane education.
The first is that there is more than one good answer to thequestion of what living is for. A second is that the number ofsuch answers is limited, making it possible to study them inan organized way. A third is that the answers areirreconcilably different, necessitating a choice among them.29A fourth is that the best way to explore these answers is tostudy the great works of philosophy literature, and art inwhich they are presented with lasting beauty and strength.And a fifth is that their study should introduce students tothe great conversation in which these works are engaged andhelp students find their own authentic voice as participantsin the conversation.
Much depends on this. Infusing higher education with anew and vibrant humanism will produce benefits not onlyfor the future leaders of government and business, but forsociety at large A richer and more open debate aboutultimate values; an electorate less likely to be cowed intothinking that only the faithful have the right to invoke them;a humbler regard for the mystery of life in a worldincreasingly dominated by technocratic reason.32
The most immediate beneficiaries33 of any suchrevival however, would be the young men andwomen in school today. Instead of offering adisorganized reprieve between the hard work ofhigh school and the challenges of a career, theircollege education will endow them with pricelessmaterials for a lifetime of struggle with the mostimportant question anyone ever asks.