Why We Need the Liberal Arts

These initial decades of the twenty-first century are times of rapid change and growing anxiety. Public figures on both left and right continue to promote the sharp alteration of American society. Sober voices that remind us of old wisdom and that point us to the value of civilizational norms are increasingly drowned out. The cement of society — the beliefs, customs, and institutions upon which old and new generations can together stand — has been cracking. So too has the cement that unites together those currently living. The events that occurred in the spring of 2020, furthermore, continue to have a deteriorating effect on American society. The imposed isolation, protests, and political division of 2020 worsened our appetite for change and contributed to further anxiety about the future. What will it take to combat the forces of decadence in our midst? This is the difficult question we face, and one that does not have an easy answer.

Yet, as a leading man of letters used to say, cheerfulness keeps breaking in. Although we live in a time of decadence, signs of renewal still emerge. One sign of renewal is the publication of a new book, The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education (2023), edited by Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson. Published by Plough Publishing House, this book makes a convincing and multi-faceted case for why the liberal arts still matter today. Liberal arts education, they suggest, is critical in the cultivation of flourishing human beings. Rather than asking young people what they want to do with their studies, we should instead ask them who they want to be. This is due to the nature of what liberal arts education passes down — a knowledge of what it means to be human, and a glimpse into how to live a fulfilling human life.

In the introductory chapter to The Liberating Arts, the editors recall that the spring of 2020 was a difficult time for higher education. Problems that we long faced in the educational arena were further exacerbated. This included concerns about the increasing costs of college, the gutting of humanities departments, the popularity of professional degrees, the increased need for micro-credentials, and the growth of online programs. This is not to mention the continued deterioration of education experienced since the twentieth century, especially as a result of John Dewey and his colleagues. During this time of difficulty in the spring of 2020, however, a group of faculty members from a variety of institutions engaged in conversations about the enduring importance of the liberal arts. This group came to be known as “The Liberating Arts” and launched a website of the same name. The book currently under review is the result of their conversations.

In the midst of decadence, the temptation of many public writers is to engage in a culture war and to retreat into the narrow confines of an ideology. Fortunately, this is not a temptation for the editors of this new book. Bilbro, Wilson, and Henreckson have instead compiled together a thoughtful conversation about the liberal arts tradition. Their defense of the liberal arts transcends the culture war of our time, and it transcends the political division that makes thoughtful conversation about difficult issues increasingly rare. One goal of their new book is to “model the kind of conversation and friendship that liberal arts formation makes possible.” The liberal arts, they believe, foster liberality and generosity, the dispositions that make authentic friendship and constructive conversation possible. The editors invite us into a conversation about the liberal arts, not into the fury of a culture war. Times of anxiety require a return to the wisdom of our ancestors; they require a return to the traditions of inquiry that are oriented toward the pursuit of the good, true, and beautiful.

Totaling about 200 pages, The Liberating Arts is a short book. Despite its brevity, however, this book gives readers much to consider. Another goal of the editors is to demonstrate the enduring importance of the liberal arts, especially today, in a time of society-wrenching change and anxiety about the future. The editors show this enduring importance by responding to common criticisms of the liberal arts. The title chapters give good insight into the kind of criticisms that are engaged:

“What Are the Liberating Arts?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts a Waste of Time?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Elitist?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Liberal?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Racist?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Outdated?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Out of Touch?”

“Aren’t Liberal Arts Degrees Unmarketable?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts a Luxury?”

“Aren’t the Liberal Arts Just for Smart People?”

The answers to these questions come from a variety of perspectives, yet together they make a multi-faceted defense of the liberal arts tradition. The list of contributors includes Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia S. Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel B. Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve A. Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, Jonathan Tran, and Jessica Hooten Wilson.

The structure of this book is unconventional. As the editors point out in a brief introduction, each chapter responds to one commonly held criticism of the liberal arts. Then, after voicing this criticism, there are three responses that follow. The first and last of these are “interludes,” which provide a practical example of an organization, experience, or practice that responds to the question at hand. In between these two interludes is a discursive essay that provides a formal response. The point of this approach is to provide a “fuller vision of what liberal arts education might look like today.” The editors of this new book do not want to simply provide an argument in defense of the liberal arts. In addition, they want to dispel popular myths, and they want to do so by showing concrete examples of what the liberal arts look like today.

The Liberating Arts begins with a strong chapter, addressing the question of whether the liberal arts are a waste of time. This section includes a short essay by Sean Sword. A juvenile offender, Sword served twenty-seven years in prison and began his college studies in Ionia, Michigan through the Calvin Prison Initiative. This initiative provides a Christian liberal arts education to inmates. Each year twenty students from prisons around Michigan are selected to enroll in a five-year program, during which time they earn a bachelor’s degree from Calvin University. Sword writes that this experience played a key role in his restoration to society and helped him find redemption through the teachings of Christ. Of course, Sword’s point is not that we should pass legislation to require that all prisoners be educated in the liberal arts. His point, instead, is more personal: that conversing about old books changed his life, and that it can change the life of others, too. The humane tradition indeed has a transformative and lifegiving power, if only we would conserve it and pass it down to more people.

An essay by Zena Hitz addresses whether the liberal arts are a waste of time. According to Hitz, studying the liberal arts is worthwhile because doing so accords with our human nature. There must be some activities that are for their own sake, she argues, rather than for the sake of something else. The human being needs some activities that are beyond work and mere recreation. As Aristotle argued, it is only contemplation that can satisfy this human need. The liberal arts help us to attain true leisure, an interior discipline that helps us to confront what it means to be human and to find harmony within ourselves. For those who are interested, Hitz has written an excellent book on this topic, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (2020).

It should be noted that Zena Hitz is a tutor for St. John’s College in Annapolis, one of the bright lights in higher education today. In a time when many colleges are abandoning the liberal arts, St. John’s College introduces students to the great books of Western civilization through seminar discussions. In this way, it stands with institutions like Thomas Aquinas College, The University of Dallas, Wyoming Catholic College, Hillsdale College, Grove City College, New Saint Andrews College, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Faulkner University, and a handful of other institutions that champion the liberal arts in the twenty-first century. In the world of K-12 education, there is simultaneously a renaissance of classical schools. Networks such as Great Hearts Academies, Barney Charter School Initiative, and the Chesterton Schools also come to mind, and so do organizations like the Circe Institute and the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education. These are only a few examples of groups promoting the renewal of the liberal arts in primary and secondary schools. It should be noted, furthermore, that various contributors to The Liberating Arts, not just Zena Hitz, teach at colleges or schools that are fostering renewal. The biographies of contributors found in the back of the book list some of their associated schools and institutions.

To be clear, a central thesis of The Liberating Arts is that the liberal arts must be restored to our institutions of learning. At the same time, however, the liberal arts do not only belong in the classroom — a point made in nearly every chapter of the book. That the liberal arts should not be confined to the classroom alone is implied in their very definition. The word “liberal” means free, from the Latin liberalis. As Jessica Hooten Wilson puts it, the liberal arts free a person from the confines of consumerism and ideology, and in this way, they are “universal” and “freeing ways of knowing.” The liberal arts are liberating precisely because they free people from modern “ills” and prepare them for “the good life.” I would add that the liberal arts liberate insofar as they introduce young people to true academic leisure, imparting to them what St. John Henry Newman called a “philosophical habit of mind.” This aim of the liberal arts can be realized both inside and outside a formal classroom setting. Take again the example of Zena Hitz. In addition to teaching the great books at St. John’s College, she is also the founder of the Catherine Project, an educational initiative open to anyone 16 years or older. Another example is Emily Auerbach, who, while teaching English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-founded The Odyssey Project, an initiative that introduces low-income adults to the great works of art and the humanities. Just as we should not equate education with formal schooling, we should not reduce the liberal arts to something only found in a traditional classroom setting. The liberal arts have enduring importance because they are liberating to the person and to the republic, both inside and outside a formal classroom.

Again, readers will find thoughtful answers to critics of liberal arts education in this new book. For instance, some claim that the liberal arts are too politically “liberal.” Joseph Clair, an associate professor of ethics and the executive dean of the Cultural Enterprise at George Fox University, disagrees. While admitting that there is a liberal and progressive bias in higher education, he maintains that the Christian liberal arts tradition to which he adheres recovers a “broader conception of the human person.” The Christian liberal arts tradition, focusing on the formation of the human person, orients education toward a “transcendent horizon.” It recognizes that citizenship is two-fold. On the one hand, we are citizens in the city of man. On the other hand, we Christians are citizens in that “eternal city.” Recognizing the dual nature of our citizenship, the Christian liberal arts tradition imbues students with a “sensitivity to the limits of politics.” This realization reminds us that the liberal arts are not “liberal” in the political sense. Instead, they are “liberal” only in the sense that they free us to understand the mystery of our human nature.

To critics who claim that the liberal arts are racist, Angel Adams Parham disagrees. While it may be true that the liberal arts have, at times, been framed in racially exclusive ways, this tradition is more diverse than many people realize. The Western tradition is not monolithic, but rather embraces multiple people and cultures across time and space, drawing all of them into the Great Conversation. For those who are interested, Angel Adams Parham is also a co-author of The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature (2022).

A strength of this book is that the majority of common criticisms of the liberal arts are addressed. Are liberal arts degrees unmarkable? Although some say that they are, the data shows a more complicated story. So too does the experience of certain hiring managers. Are the liberal arts a luxury? Are they only for smart people? Readers will find responses to these questions and others. In the opinion of this reviewer, though, the most outstanding chapter of this book was chapter six, the one engaging a criticism that the liberal arts are outdated.

Indeed, some say that the liberal arts are an outdated relic. This group of critics asserts that the rising generation does not need old books. Instead, young people need to master contemporary technologies and “best practices” in their respective professions. Reading old books may be a good hobby, but it will not help young people in an increasingly complex world dominated by science and technology. Penned by L. Gregory Jones, Jeffrey Bilbro, and Becky L. Eggimann, chapter six is perhaps the best in the book because it frames its defense of the liberal arts as a defense of tradition. It is true, as other contributors point out, that liberal education helps cultivate the individual human person. The cultivation of the person is indeed the primary purpose of liberal education — hence the title of the book, which refers to the liberating arts. The liberal arts are not for the sake of a political agenda, and they do not find their usefulness merely in the utility they might bring to the community. Liberal arts education, above all, is meant to liberate the individual human being. At the same time, though, liberal arts education passes down to persons a shared patrimony of culture, uniting the living and the dead.

According to Jeffrey Bilbro, remaining rooted in the past is important for two reasons. First, it helps us remember where we come from and understand who we are. Second, it helps liberate us from the ever-changing fads of the moment. In this way, we are freed from what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” A common feature of contemporary culture, writes Bilbro, is a “reflexive disdain for the past.” We still need the liberal arts today because we need an education that reminds the rising generation that tradition is not a relic of the past. Instead, tradition is an inheritance that shapes us, and that in turn invites us to shape it. As L. Gregory Jones recalls, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living — this is not what liberal education passes down, for not everything is worth conserving. Tradition, however, is the living faith of the dead. And so, it is a healthy participation in a tradition that liberal education gives us. Severing ourselves from this living tradition does not make us freer or more innovative. It is no wonder that G.K. Chesterton believed we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see far and high because we have ancestral shoulders to stand on. When we remove ourselves from their shoulders, we tumble down into the darkness of ignorance. When severed from ancient wisdom, the “ephemeral” dominates, and the permanent things wither. Hence the enduring importance of liberal arts education.

The Liberating Arts is a book that will be beneficial to the general public who are interested in rediscovering liberal learning even though they may not have received it in school or college themselves. It is a book that will be helpful to professors and teachers who are in a position to reimagine and rearticulate what the liberal arts might look like in their own institutions. Finally, those in the classical school movement will also find this book helpful, finding arguments against the common criticisms they hear from community members and parents who do not see value in the kind of education they offer. Furthermore, given that the origin of this project was associated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, this book is infused with a Christian worldview that will also be appealing to classical educators who teach in Christian schools. This book is, after all, just as much a defense of the tradition of Christian humanism as it is a defense of the tradition of the liberal arts. This is a clear strength of the book, making it a fitting text for those involved in the current renaissance of classical Christian education.

For their work in putting together The Liberating Arts, readers should not simply give the editors and contributors thanks. Instead, readers should do whatever they can in their own spheres of influence to rearticulate the liberal arts tradition and pass it down to others. The liberal arts tradition needs new defenders in our time. It needs men and women who are willing to pass down our perennial education and the wisdom it has long contained. As Jessica Hooten Wilson writes, “the free person desires to liberate others, including future generations.” Like the young prisoner in Plato’s cave who believed shadows were all of reality, the rising generation has not been receiving the kind of education befitting of a free man or a free woman. Once freed from the cave, the young man in Plato’s allegory gazed upon real things and then returned to the cave. There he called others to the same freedom he had just experienced. Likewise, those of us who have found freedom in the liberal arts have a duty to share it with others.

The Liberating Arts: Why Need Liberal Arts Education
Edited by Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson
Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House, 2023; 224pp

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