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Page 1: The liberal arts college and humanist learning

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

Page 2: The liberal arts college and humanist learning

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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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References

Arcilla, R. V. (2010). Mediumism: A philosophical reconstruction of

modernism for existential learning. Albany: SUNY Press.

Clark, K. (1969). Civilisation: A personal view. New York: Harper

and Row.

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