What is a university? 

What should a university teach? 

Curriculum is perhaps the defining factor for the identity of a university. Increasingly prevalent is the view that universities exist to specialise students in anticipation of a career, most obviously a career in science, engineering, or civil service. A liberal education, by contrast, is so-called because it takes a comparatively 'liberal' view of utility and thus of the knowledge which will best serve students: it refuses to limit learning to what has immediate utility in relation to a prospective career, concerning itself rather with the project of forming articulate, well-read, reasoning and adaptable individuals. 

The introduction to the latest issue of Church, Communication, and Culture (vol. 9, issue 2, Nov 2024), provided by Jordi Pujol and José Mariá la Porte, suggests that this conflict between curriculums is really one between incommensurate anthropologies, that is, contrary ideas about the nature of the human person. Indeed, the difference hinges precisely on what value we attribute to life: whether efficiency is to be its measure, or if there is rather some intrinsic value to cultivating a refined mind independently of any particular task it may serve. I would like to stress, with St John Henry Newman, that the latter valuation is not opposed to utility, but is best conceived as a 'meta-utility' (my term). That is to say, we are all made better off in everything we do by having cultivated strong intellectual habits, such as the suspension of judgement, the patient and diligent consideration of a variety of perspectives, the pursuit of truth rather than the vain desire to be shown to be right, all culminating in the articulate rendering of a relevant, precise, and sufficiently thought-through judgement. 

Such habits are rightly valued, moreover, not just because of their meta-utility, but because they reflect virtues, such as the love of truth, humility, patience, charity towards those proposing alternative perspectives, the care to make one's ideas intelligible to others, fidelity to the complexity of reality evidenced through the careful refining of categories, distinctions, exceptions, and the language we use to express ourselves — each betraying a character which is to be commended for its own sake. I suppose we find these commendable at least in part because they foster community, for it is only when individuals are committed to coming together for the sake of mutual enrichment and the common pursuit of the true and the good that community is possible. Community, in turn, is a natural aid in considering the multiple possible perspectives on any problem. The appreciation of the complexity of any problem, the multiple angles from which it could be dissected and the various objections which could be raised to proposed solutions, is one of the defining values of a liberal education. 

The kind of university curriculum which is most conducive to the vision of the human person just described, then, is one which shuns a narrow sense of utility and the premature specialisation this entails, striving instead after 'universal' knowledge. 'Universal' does not mean simply the acquaintance with eternal truths, although there are enduring truths about human nature, society, and religion with which students ought to be acquainted; it refers more broadly to the interminable historical conversation about the implications these truths have for our lives and our politics. Whilst specialisation in a subject such as economics shines an important degree of depths on a problem, because it is confined to its own characteristic way of interpreting the nature of things, it is liable to mistake this perspective for the totality of the truth. And not only, to stay with the example of economics, will it strive to reduce all human relations and experiences to terms of economic value and rational self-interest, but it will forget that these terms are themselves contingent — that is to say, it will be taken for granted that self-interest and not mutual gain is the rational basis for economics, even though it is arguable that a coherent account of economics can be founded on either. Hence, a liberal education tries to 'liberate' students from becoming inappropriately confined to a single perspective on any issue. 

A liberal education curriculum will therefore be rooted in the 'Great Books' seminar. Dr Kanelos charitably and, in my opinion, rightly prefers 'Great Books' to 'The Great Books'. The advantage of 'Great Books' for education is that they are generally regarded as 'Great' by consensus, having withstood the test of time and been extensively cited, remarked upon, or a clear inspiration for future works. It is therefore safe to say that they likely harbour some transformative wisdom of the kind which acquaints students with the complex whole of reality, to begin to grasp which is the chief indicator of solid intellectual formation. Dr Matthew Post has written thoughtfully on the origin of the Great Works canon and its enduring relevance to character education despite contemporary and widespread suspicions towards literary and artistic canons. Such suspicions indicate why 'Great Books' and not 'The Great Books' might be more amenable to a contemporary audience. But I think there is a stronger reason, simply that, even if we agreed that the 'greatness' of these books was self-evident, determining what faculty this judgement can be attributed to is less straightforward. For some the judgement is rational; for others, moral; and for others, aesthetic. Corresponding to each is a determination of the means — rational, moral, or aesthetic — by which we come to appreciate the book and be transformed by it. I think the answer involves all three; it is important to note, however, the particular issues with reducing the process to reason alone, which I shall explore presently. 

The importance of academic community for liberal knowledge

First, though, I must elaborate on the connection between liberal education and community, as this begins to shed light on the kind of beings that we are and the kind of knowledge we are after. Before Dr Kanelos' lecture, I had not connected the need for a curriculum of 'universal' knowledge and interdisciplinary perspectives with the need for a strong community of learners and lecturers. In retrospect, it is intuitive that such a curriculum would be animated by a diverse bodies of students and faculties, each with different experiences and research interests to bring to the table. However, in order to function, the academic community must have a shared sense of themselves as searching for a deeper understanding of the 'complex whole' of reality, a reality which is not reducible to the terms of any one discipline. 

Theology is a possible exception to this, illuminating the findings of history and the sciences in a unique way; but we must remember what theology can learn from these disciplines in turn – namely that it must consider the concrete findings presented by them and use them to confirm for each generation the enduring significance of her eternal truths. For the sake of this discussion, and for maintaining a broad audience, theology can be limited to its role in guarding against false or reductive claims about reality. At minimum, theology is that discipline which prevents other disciplines from having a monopoly on the truth, because it recognises on a theological basis that reality is inexhaustible in its intelligibility; and with regards to the human person, it is that discipline which alone can offer a justification for our reluctance to reduce human experience to the utilitarian and deterministic terms of science. With this in mind, the interdisciplinary investigation into the complex whole of reality is possible. 

It is unfortunate that many contemporary faculties, and the curriculums they offer their students, are motivated by an excessive scepticism towards unifying conceptions of truth. But the dogmatic refusal to acknowledge any binding conception of the truth, a standard by which the quality of the academic discourse must be judged, betrays an underlying commitment to the notion that truth-claims are merely attempts to manipulate and deceive others for self-interest. And so these faculties are, ironically, united in their incisive criticism of unifying narratives of truth. The difference is that the foundation of this unity is in destruction, in upheaving our collective inheritance, rather than constructively refining and developing it. We must ultimately decide whether truth is power, with all the relativistic implications this has for ethics, politics, and even science, or is genuinely constitutive of reality, knowable to us, and redemptive. Only on the latter view is community possible, because the former amounts to an ethic of mutual suspicion and contempt. 

Some decades ago, it was common for universities to organise 'interdisciplinary days' with a representative sample of faculty present, a kind of annual conference that students could attend to hear their professors from the various humanities and sciences discuss their commonalities and differences. These presented a great opportunity for students to meet students from different disciplines. In addition, they were able to witness and participate in the advancement towards that 'complex whole' in real time. Such events are practically non-existent today; and although there are in the UK many options for interdisciplinary studies, these represent very small communities within universities. In general, this reflects the decline in communication and collaboration between university departments, a decline which David Butterfield has recently lamented in relation to the University of Cambridge: 

For centuries the Cambridge college was based on fellowship. At its best, this is a wonderful thing. It is a remarkably flat structure, where peer trusts and respects peer. All high-table conversation is necessarily interdisciplinary, and those who remember the old traditions know that politics and academic gossip are to be eschewed. [...] The high-table culture is now greatly diluted – by a sharp decline in academics dining in the evening, and a steady drop at lunch; by not just the rapid expansion of the size of college fellowships, but also the co-option of many members from other categories, including graduate students; and by the undermining of that deep sense of communal responsibility for the institution. 

The causes of this decline, according to Butterfield, have less to do with faculties turning away from truth than with an encroaching disillusionment with the idea of a university – a kind of identity crisis precipitated by increased pressures on research at the expense of teaching, mandatory provision for online participation in seminars to the detriment of departmental activities, and mounting mitigating circumstances for assessments, largely due to mental health. In this case, there is a rift between administration and the faculties themselves, the politically and pragmatically motivated interventions of the former undermining any initiative by staff to provide quality enrichment for their students. 

With interdisciplinary community under attack from both internal (ideological) and external (administrative) forces, the foremost casualty is universal or liberal knowledge, precisely that knowledge which takes us out of the confines of our own narrow (personal and disciplinary) perspective and prepares us for the real world. As a result, student formation suffers. 

'Intellectualism' in the university: the snake in the walled paradise

It is worthwhile investigating the transition from a community united by a common conception of truth to one for which any such notion has become suspect. Is there a distinctive attitude which precipitates this decline? In relation to this, one of the most striking moments of Dr Kanelos' lecture was his description of the university as a walled paradise — like Eden. In the context of the lecture, it was really a passing comment; but the question immediately came to my mind, what is the snake? — because there is always a snake in the walled paradise narrative. What, then, is the snake in the universities? And how might it be inimical to the comprehensive intellectual inquiry upon which academic communities depend in order to thrive? 

Newman, in the discourse on the ‘Duties of the Church Towards Knowledge’, identified this perennial foe as that excess ‘intellectualism’ which crowds out theology, the crown of knowledge which, through its handmaiden, philosophy, specifies the proper object and scope of the various sciences in particular and, in so doing, provides the point of orientation for their pursuit of truth. Without such a unity as theology confers, what begins as healthy criticism swiftly degenerates into cynicism, because the divine mysteries which ultimately ground human experience are reduced in their complexity to objects wholly intelligible within the purview of logic, science, or history. In other words, the sciences begin to overestimate their explanatory powers, or otherwise reduce the objects proper to philosophy and theology to the phenomena of science. Newman writes, 

Liberal knowledge has a special tendency, not necessary or rightful, but a tendency in fact, when cultivated by beings such as we are, to impress us with a mere philosophical theory of life and conduct, in the place of Revelation. […] Satisfy yourself with what is only visible or intelligible excellent, as you are likely to do, and you will make present utility and natural beauty the practical test of truth, and the sufficient object of the intellect. It is not that you will at once reject Catholicism, but you will measure and proportion it by an earthly standard. You will throw its highest and most momentous disclosures into the background, you will deny its principles, explain away its doctrines, re-arrange its precepts, and make light of its practices, even while you profess it. Knowledge, viewed as knowledge, exerts a subtle influence in throwing us back on ourselves, and making us our own centre, and our minds the measure of all things. This then is the tendency of that Liberal Education of which a University is the school, viz., to view Revealed Religion from an aspect of its own […] A sense of propriety, order, consistency, and completeness gives birth to a rebellious stirring against miracle and mystery, against the severe and the terrible. (‘Duties of the Church Towards Knowledge’, §2)

An overconfidence in the explanatory powers of the intellect is liable to systematically erase the mysteries which have long beset human reason and experience. One need not countenance the claims of revealed religion to see this reductive attitude in effect, since much secular philosophising, too, has been declared redundant by contemporary physicists — this is in regard to such puzzles as the mind-body problem, the ground and nature of human consciousness, and the nature of space and time. (For a brief example, see Raymond Tallis’ article, ‘On Points’, which attacks the coherence of the Cartesian notion of a discrete, unextended coordinate point in space, as indicative of the general habit of modern science to overextend itself and falsely impress upon us that it has explained away the old philosophical and theological puzzles.) 

We see the vices of this intellectualism throughout the history of modern philosophy, as it wrestled with a fact-value dichotomy it itself unwittingly created — a distinction between raw facts and judgements about those facts. The earliest modern formulation of this problem, that of Descartes, investigates how it is possible that the finite subject, who inhabits a unique perspective on the world, is able to transcend this perspective and establish how things are in themselves, independently of any particular perspective. How, in other words, is objective knowledge possible in light of subjectivity? Descartes had unwavering faith in the power of reason alone to transcend subjectivity. He describes a procedure by which received sense impressions, which, being perspectival, are to be doubted in their veracity, are refined by the mind into ‘clear and distinct ideas’ of the way their objects are in themselves. Unfortunately, it is never explained what relation, what relevance these ideas have to the world of experience, after being intellectually exorcised of precisely those ‘accidents’, to use the old Scholastic term, which made experience perspectival and thus problematic for the pursuit of absolute knowledge. 

Kant, to take another example, is best known for his critique of pure reason, which essentially called out the assumptions underlying rational procedures such as Descartes’, for instance that the clear and distinct ideas are descriptive of the world of mind-independent facts; this is the very thing which needs to be proven, not presupposed. Kant was therefore motivated to prescribe the limits of rational inquiry. However, he could not do this with consistency, without stepping outside of pure reason and rendering a tacitly metaphysical judgement, as Descartes had done. I am referring to his assertion that there is an unconditioned thing-in-itself which stands behind all experiences, despite the fact that such an assertion transgresses the very limits he himself has imposed upon pure reason. The unconditioned thing-in-itself is, by Kant’s own admission, unknowable; yet it is also supposed to be the ground of the objectivity of our judgements about experience. To overcome this paradoxical situation, Kant ultimately takes refuge in practical reason, which does not share the limits imposed upon pure reason that prevent the latter from attaining to knowledge of the unconditioned. He argues that certain facts about the nature of things in themselves must be presupposed if ethics is to be possible, such as the reality of freedom and, undergirding this, the capacity to establish rationally the dictates of absolute duty upon which authentic freedom, in his view, depends. It is not clear, however, that the ground gained for practical reason can be fed back into pure reason, given that they represent two seemingly incommensurate modes of looking at the world — the one conceiving it as a place of deterministic things, the other as a place for moral action. 

Nevertheless, what is positive about Kant’s account is that it goes some way to exposing the inconsistencies of intellectualism, affirming our dependence upon ‘practical reason’ or ethics (essentially Kant’s watered-down version of theology) as ‘first philosophy’. He is saying, in effect, that the intellectualism of Descartes and other Enlightenment thinkers is founded, not on self-evident facts, but upon a distinctive idea of rationality which is taken for granted, which is simply valued for its own sake; that this particular value, left unchecked, encourages reason to go beyond its license in postulating determinate characteristics for what is, in fact, unknowable to reason alone; and that this is the cause of the kinds of contradictions identified in Descartes earlier. Kant says somewhere that he felt he had to 'reign in reason in order to make room for faith.' I believe that this is precisely what intellectualism resists. 

Unfortunately, intellectualism is the cause of many unassuming reductions in ethics, too; and it is these which were of primary interest to Newman in the Discourse cited above. There is, he observed, a common kind of philosopher who prefers modesty rather than humility, politeness rather than meekness. (Meekness, to refer back to the letters of St Paul, is not weakness, but strength in weakness.) For them, ethics is reduced to the task of erasing surface-level conflicts and loses its ‘bite’, its gravity, its burdensome character — which is precisely its demand to direct the whole of the human person, not simply in avoiding certain bad manners, or observing the most obvious and asinine moral interdicts, but towards certain concrete habits and self-sacrifices in accordance with the deposits of faith. To them, the good is what is pleasing, evil is what is simply beneath them, as though the brokenness which is attributed to the Fall is mere bad manners which can be overcome through a decent education. This is not realistic, if we pay serious attention to our moral inconsistencies and the excuses we habitually make for them. A thorough self-examination should lead us to realise our dependence upon the economy of grace which animates religious life and which forms the basis for prayer, liturgy, and ultimately the sacraments. 

Perhaps Kant gave into this species of intellectualism when he demanded a ‘metaphysics of morals’. It is one thing to lay down a principle which ought to be diffuse in all moral actions, as our Lord did when he summarised the Old Testament law in the ‘new commandment’ to love one’s neighbour as oneself; it is another to take the attitude towards this principle that it is the ground for a system as such. A system intends to be exhaustive; by contrast, I do not believe most people’s experience of ethics is of systematic thinking, but of intuition — more precisely, of heeding the dictates of a well-formed conscience in the moment. Ethics calls primarily, not for systematic thinking, but for cultivation of the virtue of prudence; not for the prior calculation of all possible eventualities, but simply to be sensitive to the needs of others in each moment and to weigh these up with the relevant factors; not striving to act only in a way which is repeatable and thus universal, as Kant demands, but to be responsive to what the peculiar circumstances of the present perhaps uniquely demand. There is a way of thinking about ethics which leans too much on the absolute, and this is the tendency I associate with systematic thinking. But not every moral action can be so universalised. Consider how varied are the lives of the saints: how some are called to poverty, others to become nobility, royalty, or Vicars of Christ; some to martyrdom, others to old age; some to marriage, others to celibacy; some to found new orders and institutions, others to be betrayed by members of their own order; some to suffer through terminal illness, others through persecution; and worldly vocations have ranged from medicine through education to civil service. Indeed, some saints have been a mixture of these, depending on their stage in life and what God required of them. Surely, then, we could never prescribe the actions of one saint as morally binding on us all — at least, this is not the right way to approach the question of what is right and wrong. Being tightly integrated into the circumstances and personalities of individuals, it is trivial to view ethics as a system in the same way that Kant’s metaphysics is a system; it is rather that one principle is given to bring to all events and circumstances, the principle of sanctifying each moment, of bringing it to a relative perfection, at minimum through the right intention, if not the right action; of sanctifying each action and interaction through a combined effort of truthfulness and love. 

The attempt to lay down a principle and to exhaust its implications, which is so characteristic of reason, must not become untethered from the mystery of the human person, which is ultimately founded in the mystery of God. For if we cannot systematise ethics, and if the reduction of theology to metaphysics, or both to physics, is as riddled with inner contradictions as I have suggested, then it follows that reality is simply inexhaustible in its intelligibility. Something beyond propositional reasoning is necessary, if we are to give proper expression to this fact. Incidentally, this is precisely what theology supplies: it situates ‘mysteries’, represented most compellingly as images or narratives, at the heart of human experience. These expose the reductive claims of intellectualism and prevent the monopolising of truth by any one faculty. Moreover, they keep the interdisciplinary pursuit of the complex whole of knowledge open and productive precisely by proffering a decisive point of orientation. If this is to push a little against the limitations I imposed upon theology for the sake of this discussion, this only serves my broader point, which is to have explored the problematic consequences of overconfidence in the rational faculty. For I have been suggesting that reason cannot go all the way down to the depth of the human person or the relation between the mind and the world. Rather than consider the totality of these phenomenon, it seeks to get outside of them and abstract from their value-laden complexity only what can be systematised. This will never explain human experience because all the values and the context-dependence are not accidental, but very much essential to an embodied, historically-situated experience such as ours. What's more, these aspects of subjectivity are not opposed some kind of logic or lawfulness; it is just that this cannot be understood apart from human nature as it is enacted. Education should not rest in the abstractions of the intellect, but should always strive for the fullness of the human person. 

Hence why we study art, literature, poetry, music, history, and language, in addition to the sciences; and why it is perhaps reductive to think of the 'Great Books' seminar as merely sorting through the various arguments on a given subject which have arisen through history. In my view, to read is closer to encountering a personality. In closing, I shall attempt to flesh this out more and relate it to the university's project of intellectual formation. 

Can a university ever achieve its own goal of intellectual formation? 

During the second half of the evening in Leiden, we listened in on a conversation between a small selection of guests and Dr Kanelos himself. Part way through, one of the participants raised the question of the relation between universities and the Church. The consensus rapidly emerged that universities should eschew religious formation, because any university administration could not be reasonably entrusted with such a responsibility. Yet it is the case that Logos has been traditionally understood as more than reason, indeed as the Son of God in whom the moral and cosmic orders are united; as the person for whom every action betrays the possibility of transcending the fact-value dichotomy which was the invention of modernity. It is also the case that the universities have generally considered themselves to be concerned with the promotion of at least intellectual virtues, if not theological ones. 

Given the problems of intellectualism which I have enumerated, it must be asked whether a university which sets out to offer a strictly intellectual formation, as Dr Kanelos and even Newman himself were inclined to put it, can ever achieve this task? In other words, does what we call intellectual formation bear within itself the seeds of a self-defeating intellectualism? 

For most educators in the liberal education tradition, the term intellectual formation appears to have a much richer meaning in practice, if this is not made explicit in theory. We often speak of intellectual formation as though it were sharply separate from moral formation, yet in practice we recognise that when students are trained to be formidable in their thought, speech, and writing, they are simultaneously being trained to observe an ethic which ought to undergird effective communication. In practice, the intellectual virtues are inseparable from moral ones, precisely because communication entails communication to another; and since the fruits of solid intellectual inquiry ought to be communicated, because of the intrinsic value of liberal knowledge, it follows that care ought to be taken to ensure the mode of communication is proper. Students are therefore encouraged to tailor their arguments to the best possible version of their opponent’s position; to listen carefully and attentively to objections to their own position; to be motivated, not by a desire to win, but by a common pursuit of truth, meaning they must be open to correction; taking care to make themselves understood and to avoid obfuscating their argument with needlessly verbose language. 

To return to a problem given only brief treatment in the introduction to these reflections, why in fact do we value these qualities in a writer or speaker? Why do we favour debates which are cordial and mutually productive, even if contentious at times, to those where the interlocutors are motivated only by self-image? Bringing the focus back to anthropology, the answer is precisely because we are not utilitarian data-processing machines for whom facts and rationality are self-evident. If this were so, perhaps we would be justified in viewing our intellectual opponents as inferior data-processors, whose lack of rationality is self-evident in proportion to those of our ideas which they take issue with. But this is not an accurate reflection of who we are, and therefore charity is in order when we engage one another in debate. We are, in fact, fragile and ill-tempered beings in need of genuine intellectual and moral enrichment, so that we can contend with the complex problems of reality collaboratively, rather than against one another. 

Recognising this, we can better appreciate the value of 'Great Books' and what we are doing when we engage them and sense ourselves to have gained something transformative from them. I mentioned in the introduction that there are some who, succumbing themselves to a kind of intellectualism even as they try to defend the concept of 'Great Books', describe the barrier to entry to these books as a cognitive lack, a lack of rationality, or even a lack of taste: these students are 'simply incapable' of appreciating these works, they say, because they have been poisoned by woke ideologies in education. Granted the damage done to inhibit the positive reception of the 'Great Books' by contemporary education, is there really no antidote? What does it speak of the 'Greatness' of these books if they are unable to stir and transform the lost? Would that impotence not confirm the woke criticism, that the 'Greatness' is simply something some of us bought into for our own gain? In truth, the evidence of their 'Greatness' is precisely their capacity to transform even the most cynical, a capacity which is well-attested. How is this transformation effected, though? Is it fair to describe it as effected through reason alone? 

I want to suggest, in light of the anthropology which I have sketched throughout these reflections, that what we primarily respond to in a Great Book is a personality, by which I mean a comprehensive and distinctly coloured view of the world as a whole. Reading a text, more often than not we encounter a perspective rather different from our own, different in the respect of valuing contrary aspects of human experience. To understand a text, we first need to be able to see what the author sees: we must become sensitive to the particular problem he or she is describing and why it is, in his view, a problem. Only then can we fully appreciate the solution he or she is putting forward. But that first step, to enter into their gaze, as it were, and look upon the world as they do, is the most important step: it is indicative of the humility and, perhaps, the empathy required to take another's view seriously, so that, on the one hand, we are just in our criticisms and, on the other, we are most open to learning something from the author. This 'learning something' is not merely intellectual, but is synonymous with character growth precisely because it cannot be separated from the moral act of entering into the worldview of another. We take on their distinctive way of framing the world and, provided what we see both resonates with us and seems amenable to reason, we come to share in what they value. Such insights are genuinely illuminating, since we now see an aspect of the world which we had not heretofore noticed. 

Conversely, we may react negatively to a text. Perhaps the author has seen dimly — has overstated his case, has not taken into account things which we feel demand attention. Or perhaps that strong disagreement betrays our own immaturity, our reluctance to open ourselves up to alternative views; and perhaps this is something we do not generally experience, except in the case of this one writer. There is an important difference between defensiveness and having an idea to defend. A solid intellectual formation should give us the means to discriminate these two attitudes in others and within ourselves, whilst enabling us to investigate the site of these conflicting values with precision and with sufficient detachment. 

The advantage of this idea of personality over pure reason is that it prepares for a more humble, indeed a more realistic description of the reasoning process. I do not mean to deny that we analyse, take apart, check for valid inferences and so forth. But before we do any of these things, we make value judgements about the relevant inferences, distinctions, and underlying assumptions to be investigated; and for this to be effective, we must already have a sufficiently rich inventory of experiences and reflections upon which to draw, otherwise these elements will simply not occur to us. That is to say, we depend upon what one may call a well-rounded personality in order to reason effectively. At the same time, such a personality is not passive in his or her experiencing, but habitually reflects on these experiences and considers what principles may be drawn from them. It is these which then feed back into the reasoning process, which again is far more value-oriented than we tend to permit. 

Intellectual formation is possible on the grounds that we do not reduce it to mere intellectualism, and that we do not lose sight of the human person who is reasoning. At the Thomas More Foundation, we are working with teachers so they can offer their students precisely this kind of intellectual formation, which does not reduce the world to the terms set by the intellect, but rather trains students to maintain an open mind in pursuit of the 'complex whole' which shall always ultimately elide it. Besides studying logic, they should grow in their experiences and interests, and so enrich their personality that they become increasingly competent judges of the truth, goodness, and beauty in different viewpoints by virtue of having seen and reflected upon more of the world at large. In this respect, the beginning of intellectual formation is not academic, and so we needn't wait until university to introduce students to great literature and profound ideas.