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PARTISAN REVIEW
deceive others and are at once both more plausible and more danger–
ous than their centrist and right-wing brethren. That is why I shall
discuss Mark Van Doren's
Liberal Education
rather than the recent
works of
Mon~ignor
Sheen, M. Maritain and Mr. Hutchins.
The central argument of Van Doren starts from the premise that
the nature of man is always and everywhere the same. Therefore, the
education of all men should be the same. Therefore, the curriculum
of study must be identical, it must be prescribed and each student
should have all of it. Therefore, the content of study must be primarily
traditional and classical, oriented to the past not the present. Since
the best of this tradition is enshrined in books, only the great books–
"the unkillable classics" in Van Doren's phrase-should be studied.
Such a study
is
liberal education. It is exemplified in the St. John's
College program and
only
in that program. "Until it is accepted every–
where in America, we shall lack the right to say that liberal education
exists among us." Education, truly understood, is "liberal" education.
Democracy is impossible without true education: therefore, democracy
is impossible until such "liberal" education is universally adopted.
This is drawing the loose ends of the book together into a co–
herent and continuous argument. Yet every statement is explicitly
made and the "therefores" are all Van Doren's own. It would take
a volume to expose all the hoary metaphysical fallacies that underlie
the premises of his argument. But even granting his metaphysics, his
conclusion that education must be uniform is a non-sequitur. And
even granting that in a certain sense education should be the same
for all men, it does not follow that a classical rather than a modem
education must be prescribed (after all the Greeks did not have a
hu'ndred great books). Nor does it follow that education must be
identified with Van Doren's idea of liberal education or that the latter
is a necessary condition-practically a guarantee-of democracy.
It is indeed curious that one who is so enthusiastic about the
medieval trivium and quadrivium should be so slovenly even in the
matter of the formal correctness of his inferences, not to speak of
their truth. Mter all, Van Doren is dealing with a theme in which
poetic license has obvious limits.
To speak of
the
nature of man is already a sign that a selective
interest is present. What is designated by the term 'man' may have
many natures depending upon the context and purpose of inquiry.
Even
if
the
nature of man is defined in terms of what differentiates
him from other
animals,
we can choose any one of a number of
diverse traits that will satisfy the formal conditions of the definition.
And for many purposes what man has in common with other anima.!&
