the liberal arts college and humanist learning
TRANSCRIPT
The liberal arts college and humanist learning
Rene V. Arcilla
Published online: 4 December 2013
� Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2013
Abstract What is liberal education? How do its aims
differ from those of either grammar or vocational educa-
tion? Does it truly deserve its own supporting institution?
In response to these questions, Arcilla develops a defense
of the liberal arts college. He observes that all projects of
formal learning presuppose that the learner possesses
answers to three fundamental, existential questions: What
is one’s nature? What is the good for beings of this nature?
What facilitates this good? We develop better responses to
these questions by engaging in liberal learning. The mis-
sion of the liberal arts college, then, is first and foremost to
support this learning. With this idea of liberal learning and
its college in mind, we may nonetheless wonder whether
the existential knowledge it seeks is really something that
can be learned. Arcilla articulates a version of humanism
that illuminates the conditions of possibility for liberal
learning and affirms this learning’s intrinsic value. At the
same time, this philosophical theory requires for its veri-
fication that we engage in liberal learning. Arcilla calls the
symbiotic partnership formed by liberal learning and
humanism ‘‘humanist learning,’’ and he points out that it is
this learning, which is crucial to our other kinds of edu-
cation, that would be lost if society ceased to support
genuine colleges of the liberal arts.
Keywords Higher education � Liberal arts �Humanism � Existentialism
Imagine you are being given a college tour on an alien
planet. The Minister of Education is explaining to you that
schooling here has two general stages. In the first, which
lasts from infancy until youth, pupils become sufficiently
literate in the practical languages that hold their commu-
nity together as a whole. They all acquire the mathemati-
cal, linguistic, logical, analytical, expressive, athletic, and
other cultural abilities they need to participate in the gen-
eral society and gain access to its common stock of his-
torical, scientific, religious, and artistic facts. Furthermore,
they learn how to expand their knowledge of these facts
and skills as they desire and as the stock changes. In the
second stage, stretching from youth into adulthood, stu-
dents receive training in specialized techniques and mores
that match their individual talents and choices to rewarding
and productive occupations. They each gain responsible
control over their own lives and an expertise to contribute
to the common welfare. College, the minister continues, is
the place where the first kind of education comes to an end
and the second begins. She then adds with a smile, ‘‘Of
course, things are different on your world.’’
Some of us know what she would have meant. We are
apt to consider the task of polishing students’ cultural lit-
eracy the principal province of grammar and high school
and that of training experts in a rewarding line of work the
mission of vocational or professional schools. These should
not preclude another educational project of which the
college is the special, traditional home. It is in this insti-
tution, where students are on a moratorium that typically
separates them from home and frees them from full-time
work obligations, that one is supposed to be exposed in a
sustained and guided fashion to something called liberal
learning.
But what exactly is liberal learning and how do its aims
really differ from those of either grammar or vocational
R. V. Arcilla (&)
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the
Professions, Steinhardt School, New York University,
246 Greene Street, Room 317, New York, NY 10003, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2014) 15:21–27
DOI 10.1007/s12564-013-9293-6
education? Does it truly deserve its own supporting insti-
tution? Or would it be all the same to us if our colleges
resembled those of the ‘‘alien’’ world above? These are the
questions I would like to explore in this essay. Along the
way, I hope to establish that the distinctive mission of the
liberal arts college emerges in an especially clear fashion
when we grasp the symbiosis between liberal learning and
humanism.
A first step is to consider whether there is a kind of
knowledge that is implicit in every project of learning in
which we engage. I can get at this by defining what I mean
by ‘‘learning.’’ The term refers to a person’s acquisition of
a piece of knowledge that he or she does not yet possess.
Sometimes, this acquisition is understood to be a relatively
passive, even involuntary process. For example, the phrase
‘‘he really learned a lesson’’ implies that the man had little
idea he lacked the knowledge in question, let alone was
searching for it; the learning took him by surprise. In set-
tings designed for education, however, learning is usually
understood to involve a series of actions that require
decision, effort, organization, and judgment on the part of
the learner, in addition to a teacher’s guidance. These
actions can be standardized into practices. Because the
actions and practices are directed at a goal distinct from the
simple performing of them—because, that is, we do not
normally engage in learning for its own sake—we can
characterize learning as an instrumental practice. Even
when the activity is fun, we are conscious we are learning
for the sake of the knowledge to which that activity gives
us access.
The reason we consider it good to engage in learning,
then, is bound up with the value of the knowledge being
learned. If we compare learning how to do brain surgery
with learning about a celebrity’s latest arrest, the differ-
ences between these activities are more significant than
their similarities, largely because of the differences in the
knowledges they are after. We particularly treasure
knowledge that helps us achieve desired ends. Our judg-
ments about what to learn and how much time, energy, and
money to expend on this learning thus turn on the impor-
tance we ascribe to the objects of the learning relative to
other desired objects. Nothing is more essential for the
sensible, self-directed learner than a clear idea of what he
or she most wants and of whether, why, and how the
knowledge learned will conduce to it.
Of course, one’s idea of what is supremely desirable and
worth pursuing depends on who one is. Judgments about
the good are tied to understandings of identity. (An
extended argument that backs up this claim may be found
in Taylor 1989, 3–107.) For instance, if I do not at all think
of myself as an athletic person, I will be less likely to prize
knowledge of how to excel in tennis and to sign up for
lessons. Conversely, I may decide that I need to give
medieval theology a second look because I am reconsid-
ering my atheism. Learning that is not accidental, learning
that is deliberately undertaken as a project, then, entails
that the learner have some understanding of who he or she
is as well as of what, for someone of this nature, is espe-
cially important—of what is the good. Often, these notions
are latent, inchoate, and wavering, but the more lucid and
convincing we can make them, the more determined we
can be to do what this learning demands.
I can summarize the relations between one’s belief that
one should engage in such-and-such learning, one’s belief
that such-and-such is the good, and one’s belief that one
possesses such-and-such a nature, in the following trian-
gular figure which I have adapted from Chris Higgins. (I
first use this figure in Arcilla 2010, 100; as I indicate there,
I am drawing on a line of thinking articulated in Higgins
1998, 78–112). Each point of the triangle refers to the kind
of question for which the above beliefs constitute replies.
And each stands in relation to the others to form together a
coherent, consistent understanding of the purpose of this
learning. Accordingly, in order for me to answer the
question of what I should learn, I have to possess answers
to the question of my nature and to that of what is the good
for beings of this nature (Fig. 1).
I call these questions, which each imply the others,
existential because they are apt to be provoked by an
experience of the uncanniness of being alive. In the middle
of going about my business, it may suddenly occur to me to
wonder: What am I doing here? Who am I? What is
important for me? In other words, what is the meaning of
my existence? My answers may not convince everyone, but
unless they satisfy me I am liable to drop what no longer
seems worth doing, even, not to be too dark about it, at the
cost of a life that no longer seems worth living.
Now how do we know how to reply to these existential
questions? Where does this knowledge come from? My
thesis is that we acquire it by engaging in liberal learning.
Liberal arts colleges exist in order to support this engage-
ment. And once more, we need the knowledge that is the
object of this learning because it is a prerequisite for pur-
suing determined projects in grammar and vocational
education; our very sense of purposefulness requires it.
This claim in effect urges these colleges to concentrate
on their core mission. Other kinds of knowledges in which
they are increasingly trafficking, including the fundamental
thinking skills and dispositions commonly associated with
a general education, should be regarded as supplementary
at best and at worst as obfuscations of the college’s dis-
tinctive reason for being. Alternatively, institutions whose
principal business is to remediate the shortcomings of
grammar schools, or to give one an early jump in one’s
professional training, should not brand themselves liberal
arts colleges.
22 R. V. Arcilla
123
Someone may object, though, that if liberal learning is
the province of college, then how should we account for
our accomplishments in grammar school that precede col-
lege and necessarily prepare us for it? Think of a fifth-
grade boy learning Korean history. He has likely not yet
reflected deeply on his identity and ethical commitments,
not yet asked himself existential questions, but he is
nonetheless quite capable of memorizing facts and grasp-
ing some relations between events. It would seem that he
does not need liberal learning after all in order to devote
himself to improving his understanding of history. Fur-
thermore, it seems obvious that liberal learning is simply
not possible without some historical literacy and a mastery
of essential language skills. Were we wrong, then, to assert
that all forms of learning presuppose liberal learning? At
least with respect to grammar education, should not the
priority be reversed?
What enforces the priority of liberal learning, I contend,
is the rough distinction between knowledge and belief. For
a schoolboy to invest himself willingly in learning, he must
indeed possess beliefs about his identity and the good. His
efforts may be effectively motivated by the idea that he is a
dutiful son who wants to make his parents happy with his
grades. Virtually, everyone is socialized into notions like
these. But for many of us, as with Rene Descartes, there
comes a time when we discover contradictions among
these beliefs and are seized by the desire to extirpate the
erroneous ones and grasp the certainties. What is my true
nature? For someone of this nature, perhaps like the people
around me in some respects but unlike in others, what is
genuinely important? If I could answer these questions by
simply reciting the opinions that others have happened to
instill in me, I would not be asking them in the first place.
Moreover, although the mere raising of the questions
entails that one has attained a not inconsiderable degree of
literacy, once raised, the questions have the power to void
all of that knowledge if they remain without satisfactory
answers. Part of what is at stake in an existential crisis is
the very substance of one’s previous learning and life, the
sense that it makes a real difference.
Strictly speaking, then, we may maintain that all of our
learning projects presuppose the knowledge that is the
object of liberal learning while acknowledging that some of
these projects, particularly in grammar school, proceed
proleptically with respect to liberal learning. The history
pupil above believes without much thought that he is a
good son. In the heat of the moment or under the influence
of authorities, he, like us, is prone to act on the basis of
assumptions about his nature and the good that he has not
much questioned. This is the case not only with our com-
mon learning projects but with all our activities. Our hope,
however, is that after we have examined our lives more
closely and augmented our self-knowledge, we will retro-
spectively look back and affirm the beliefs we earlier
accepted. And our tacit understanding, built into the dis-
tinction between belief and knowledge and our growing
history of mistakes, is that this will not always be happily
the case. When it is not, we will have to admit that what we
learned amounted in truth to nothing much at all and in
effect wasted our time. (To be sure, it then becomes pos-
sible to learn in turn from this error.)
It is in this regard that the stakes behind liberal learn-
ing’s traditional appeal to freedom become clear. The artes
liberales are those appropriate for the free person. My
thesis that these arts aim above all to determine each of our
natures and our ethical commitments amounts to the claim
that nothing is more essential to our liberty than the
opportunity to determine these things for ourselves. We
each need to find out whether our understanding of these
matters authentically fits our lives, and we need to be
capable of demonstrating, testing, and deepening this
understanding by living it out. As long as we merely
acquiesce in other’s views in this regard, we remain
effectively confined. Thus, the reason our existential
questions call for responsible learning is first that there is a
difference between responses to them that one knows are
true, more or less, and others that one merely believes; and
second, that there is a difference between responses to
which one has fully consented and others which one has
been forced to adopt.
Fig. 1 Existential questions of
learning
The liberal arts college and humanist learning 23
123
Liberal learning, then, provides one with existential
answers. How? An explanation at length in practical terms
will have to wait for another occasion. What I want to turn
to here is a rather more skeptical formulation of the
question: How do we know that liberal learning is even in
principle possible? Could it not be the case that the above
knowledge is something really incommunicable? If it exists
at all, maybe it comes to one mysteriously and by hap-
penstance, or one possesses it at birth, rather than it being
intentionally acquired from others. This, we may recall,
was Socrates’ and Meno’s provisional conclusion about
virtue at the close of Plato’s Meno (Plato 2002).
The very possibility of liberal learning is something that
must be established. What we need is a set of defensible
principles that rules out any a priori, insurmountable walls
to this practice and that opens up the world to it. The
learning practice that enables us to acquire knowledge
necessary for any other project of learning calls for some
kind of theoretical, philosophical support.
I propose to call the philosophical discourse that
explains why we are predisposed to liberal learning,
‘‘humanism.’’ Why do I use this term? It may seem odd to
invoke interest in the human when it is learning that is in
question. Furthermore, has not the historical concept of
humanism not only grown unmanageably capacious since
its origins in the Renaissance, but metastasized into vari-
eties of religious humanism, secular humanism, socialist
humanism, existentialist humanism, and so forth? Trying to
find a common denominator in these movements and their
doctrines that is meaningful enough to ground, in a clearly
pertinent fashion, liberal learning may not look like a
promising way to proceed.
Perhaps I might make some headway if I renounce any
hope of fashioning a system that would answer all ques-
tions about the human and limit myself to noting some key
points that most if not all versions of humanism—this
would have to be checked empirically—would imply. Let
me accordingly formulate for the purposes of my argument
a minimalist, primitive humanism composed of only two
principles. I call it ‘‘primitive’’ so as to acknowledge that
these principles concerning the human leave much about
their subject in shadow and provide little guidance for how
they should be elaborated in order to shed more light on it.
In particular, I do not hold that these principles are central
to all humanisms. My modest claim is simply that any
humanism that distinguishes itself from non-humanist
perspectives on us, however much it may differ from or
oppose other humanisms, and however refined and com-
prehensive it may grow, would have no trouble agreeing
with these points.
The first principle states that the human is what we
observe in all people and find familiar. I designate this the
principle of universal recognizability. Slightly modifying
the famous line of Terence’s, we can formulate it as fol-
lows: ‘‘I am human and nothing human is foreign to me.’’
(A more exact translation of Terence’s line runs: ‘‘I’m
human, and I regard no human business as other people’s.’’
See Terence 2001, 187.) Notice that this maxim does not at
all insist I am solely a human being. It is compatible with
me understanding myself to be as well a twenty-first cen-
tury Filipino-American, a biological male, an idiosyncratic
neurotic, and so on. It does not even assert that my
humanity is the most important thing about me. And of
course it is silent about what difference it makes in detail to
be human. It simply claims that whatever else I might be, I
am also human: There is something of me I can recognize
in everybody. A perspective that rejects this principle, that
asserts, for instance, that each of us is utterly unique from
top to bottom, would not be humanist.
The second principle of this ur-humanism issues from
the observation that humanists of all stripes encourage us to
respect and affirm the human. True, they are liable to
develop accounts of this part of ourselves that vary quite
widely. Furthermore, these balance sheets often direct
critical attention to traits that are horribly shameful. What it
means to be human can be articulated in divergent direc-
tions and spotlight the ugly. In the end, though, often after
comparing us to the gods and beasts, humanists tend to join
in celebration of this condition, however, qualified and
somber.
Indeed, ‘‘celebration’’ may be a rather cursory descrip-
tion of the recognition by humanists of a special pathos,
one that we can find in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s film, Dek-
alog (1989). This work recounts ten stories set in a Warsaw
apartment complex during the 1980s that dramatize each of
the Ten Commandments. Their main characters, after
exhausting struggle, inevitably fail to keep the injunctions.
The way these struggles are staged, however—such as the
way the protagonists’ faces, momentarily stilled in ago-
nized thought, are divided by Rembrandtesque shadows—
heroicizes them. Their pathos is that of being subject to an
ethical demand that ultimately defeats them—but that also
brings out the best in them. The film drives home the point
that when we strive to act and live perfectionistically, that
striving will itself distinguish us, even though it cannot
succeed; this point differentiates the film from works that
straightforwardly glorify divine law or cynically condemn
all to ashes.
My second principle is thus that to be human is to strive
morally, tragi-comically, and nobly. The human is not just
the part of ourselves that we universally recognize, such as
the fact of being a featherless biped; it is the part that has
salience for this struggle. Moreover, the struggle casts an
ambiguous light on our actions, not unlike that of the
Calvinist doctrine of salvation (see Weber 2009, 49–66).
On the one hand, nothing we do will enable us conclusively
24 R. V. Arcilla
123
to attain the good: this is the tragedy or comedy. On the
other, trying to do something for the good is already a sign
of goodness. Our human deeds, wrestling with obscure
powers, are simultaneously pathetically in vain and in
pathos achieved.
The primitive humanism formed by these two principles
thus amounts to the theory that we can recognize a uni-
versal humanity in each other that is involved in the tragi-
comical and noble struggle for the good. How would this
theory support the practice of liberal learning? How would
it quell skepticism and assure us that the world is given to
this learning? Its first principle places each of us in a
relation to others such that we can examine how parts of
our experience link up with parts we share with others, thus
enabling us to gain knowledge about our nature as a whole
from others. As for the second principle, it assures that our
lives already possess ethical value. It invites us to have
faith that the very attempt to strive for the good, to learn
from each other about the good—demonstrates the good in
us. The first principle thus opens the door for liberal
learning; the second encourages us to affirm its intrinsic
value as a mark of distinction. It should be recalled,
however, that these helpful, pragmatic consequences for
liberal learning are not the intended aim of humanism. The
latter is focused on developing a theory of the human. It is
not a self-conscious, but unconscious, philosophy of liberal
learning.
Admittedly, I have presented this humanism with little
in the way of argument. What would incline us to consider
it something more than arbitrary assertions? More than
anything else, it would be genuine empirical evidence.
Something about our experienced interactions with the
world would have to back up the claim that we can rec-
ognize universal taits in each other that play a part in an
ethical struggle. Before we embark on an examination of
this experience, however, we should consider how we
could even know whether or not it supports this theory.
Must the experience not be already intelligible to us? Yet
how is this possible? The circle appears ineluctable: It is
only possible through successful liberal learning. We
would have to have learned how to distinguish such an
experience from related ones with the help of others who
have had it. Once again, we should remember that the aim
of liberal learning is not to confirm humanism. Neverthe-
less, this learning, supported by humanism, does enable us
to know about the very experience that would support
humanism.
Humanism is a theory of the human; liberal learning is a
practice for acquiring knowledge of one’s nature and the
good. Despite their apparently divergent interests, each
plays a crucial role in the constitution of the other. In light
of this symbiosis, I propose to revise the terminology I
have been using. For ‘‘liberal learning’’ and ‘‘humanism,’’ I
shall substitute the single term, ‘‘humanist learning.’’ This
term refers to a learning that not only enables us to know
our nature and the good, but also to know the truth of our
humanity. And it refers not only to the practice of this
learning, but also to the learning’s results: specifically, the
knowledge that our humanity includes the capacity to
recognize features of the ethical struggle in all of us.
Accordingly, my argument is that any well-considered
learning project in which we engage requires that we
engage as well in humanist learning.
To bring to a close this introduction to it, let me briefly
examine a model text of this learning. It is characterized by
passages such as the following:
Looking at Ottonian ivories, or at the marvellous
bronze doors made for Bishop Bernward at Hildes-
heim at the beginning of the eleventh century, I am
reminded of the most famous lines in Virgil, that
great mediator between the antique and the medieval
world. They come when Aeneas has been ship-
wrecked in a country that he fears is inhabited by
barbarians. Then as he looks around he sees some
figures carved in relief, and he says: ‘‘These men
know the pathos of life, and mortal things touch their
hearts’’ (Clark 1969, 29–31).
The lines are from Kenneth Clark’s book, Civilisation:
A Personal View, which consists of the revised scripts for
the BBC television series of the same name. Civilisation
was first aired in 1969; recently, it has been re-released in
the dvd format. The series consists of thirteen episodes,
each narrated by Clark. The topic is the history of civili-
zation in Western Europe and the United States, from the
‘‘dark ages’’ following the disintegration of the Roman
Empire right up until that tumultuous year of 1968. Each
show considers a particular epoch marked by a quality or
qualities signaled by the episode’s title. The programs
focus on art and architecture, with some attention paid to
music and literature, and rather less to philosophy, the
sciences, religion, and politics. Clark’s general approach is
to select an influential group of artists and works and to
muse out loud about how they express certain civilizing
qualities.
Evidently, the series is not all that different from the
garden-variety Introduction to Western Civilization course
offered by many colleges. It enjoys the advantages of the
television, and now video, mediums, to be sure, particularly
their power to provide us with ever-changing views of art-
works and to accompany these images with music. Clark’s
discourse can moreover switch back and forth between
abstract characterizations and more concrete observations
recorded in the actual presence of the objects themselves, a
register that brings us closer to them too. But these feats only
magnify what ordinary classroom instructors do as a matter
The liberal arts college and humanist learning 25
123
of course. The central demiurge of the series is still Clark
with his charisma and talents; furthermore, these are rec-
ognizably the same as those demonstrated daily by college
educators around the world. Indeed, one of the chief reasons
I turn to this work is that it has recorded a teacher’s actions
and turned them into a stable text. Although videos of liberal
arts teaching are being increasingly produced and marketed,
Civilisation furnishes us with an example that is widely
admired and that remains easily available for study.
In what does this pedagogy consist? Let me first say in
what it does not. In my judgment, Clark’s primary aim is
not to convey facts of Western art history, as if he were
supplementing our grammar educations. True, his dis-
course contains plenty of information; in the quoted pas-
sage above and in the photographs that accompany them,
we learn that there exist Ottonian ivory images of the
celebration of mass and that in the eleventh century, some
bronze doors were made for a certain Bishop Bernward. In
addition, we are invited to conclude that these works are
representative not only of art in the aftermath of the Car-
olingian renaissance but of civilization in general. Some, to
be sure, might resist these conclusions. Why is there no
mention of women during this time? How comprehensive
can our understanding of this period of art be if we exclude
their crafts from consideration? As for elucidating the tit-
ular theme, why does Clark confine his gaze to the West?
These and similar critical points mark real limitations in
the historical knowledge he is offering us. But they are as
such somewhat beside the point if we understand his stress
to be on another kind of knowledge.
It is not on historiographic or critical expertise either.
Clark is not out to give us lessons in how to be a good art
historian. I imagine that many such scholars would frown
at the association of the gothic images with a poem. How
can we do complete justice to their visual incidents and
intelligence if we subsume them under literary consider-
ations? But again, that is not really the point.
Rather, Clark’s pedagogy aims to facilitate our humanist
learning. He invites us to recognize in the works he dis-
cusses features of our proper experience that are linked to
our ethical struggles. The Aneid allusion makes this
explicit. What also communicates this invitation is the
implicit, motivating question that accompanies the passage
and most of the book in general: Does it not appear this
way to you? Do not these images, like Virgil’s line, remind
you of the mortal pathos in your own life? Even if it turns
out that Clark’s historical information is flawed—say, that
the bronze doors were not actually made in the eleventh
century—even if his approach obstructs what a more
methodologically rigorous art historian today would see,
these faults matter less when the real object of study is not
so much the historical works as the viewer’s present self.
Self-knowledge is the main thing one can learn from
Civilisation.
Clark shows us how to find in works from various times
and places opportunities for making sense of our own
experience, thus confirming the salience of these works for
each other. He derives from them suggested terms for
understanding their artists and ourselves and communicates
the terms to us in a coruscating yet gentle, strictly unas-
suming fashion. Whether and how we use them he leaves
freely up to us. It may be that some of us will find certain
terms quite unhelpful. This could be the price, for example,
of focusing largely on male artists and thinkers. Even with
respect to humanist learning, Clark’s teaching has its lim-
itations. At the end of the day, though, in the spirit of the
liberal arts, no one has to accept anything, especially since
what one takes on is a self-understanding for which that
person alone will be responsible.
Here is a last example of this mode of instruction,
prompted by some sculptures of the German artist Tilman
Riemenschneider:
The Riemenschneider figures show very clearly the
character of northern man at the end of the fifteenth
century. First of all, a serious personal piety—a
quality quite different from the bland conventional
piety that one finds, say, in a Perugino. And then a
serious approach to life itself. These men (although of
course they were unswerving Catholics) were not to
be fobbed off by forms and ceremonies—what at the
time were, rather misleadingly, called ‘‘works.’’ They
believed that there was such a thing as truth, and they
wanted to get at it. What they heard from Papal
legates, who did a lot of travelling in Germany at this
time, did not convince them that there was the same
desire for truth in Rome, and they had a rough, raw-
boned peasant tenacity of purpose (Clark, 1969, 139).
Clark recounts some of the characteristics of pre-Refor-
mation Germany. But that is not the lesson’s main point.
The key phrases are not ‘‘northern man at the end of the
fifteenth century,’’ ‘‘works,’’ ‘‘Papal legates,’’ or ‘‘peas-
ant,’’ as they would be if his talk were part of a class in our
grammar or professional educations. They are ‘‘serious
personal piety,’’ ‘‘serious approach to life itself,’’ ‘‘desire
for truth,’’ and ‘‘tenacity of purpose.’’ We are encouraged
to see those words playing across Riemenschneider’s faces
and to ask ourselves, individually: Do those faces mirror
my own? Would I want them to?
It is this sort of inquiry into the existential meaning of
all our learning and other actions that calls for a combi-
nation of liberal learning practice and humanist theory. It is
this that would be threatened if society ceased to support
genuine colleges of the liberal arts.
26 R. V. Arcilla
123
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