Apologia pro studio suo

The Humanities Sequence is easily the most efficient and thorough way to obtain a liberal education. I do not mean to say that non-HUM graduates have not had a liberal education - that is what all AB candidates are supposed to receive - but I do think that there are probably gaps in such an education. Comparative literature majors will have had comparatively little philosophy, classics majors may have neglected Goethe, and a senior whose thesis disproves Locke may well have never read Euripides.

It is reasonable to ask what the value of such an education might be, and - though less pertinent - what its use is. Additionally, one could inquire as to why, say, my PC-programming roommate should read "The Nicomachean Ethics."

A liberal education - that education worthy of a "liber," a free man (or woman) - deals with the ends of life, not the means to living it, and is consequently higher in nature than all other studies. Its aim is human excellence, and consequently it regards the human being him- or herself as an end, not as a means.

A thorough liberal arts education is most essential to those not be majoring in these fields. Those who intend to make these arts their profession will be continuously immersed in them and will thus be repeatedly exposed to Plato's views on justice, the Beatific Vision of Dante and the fierce sublimity of Shakespeare. It is most especially the banker, the bond trader and the physician who should expose themselves to these monuments of Western thought now, at university. At no other point in one's life can one rely on sufficient leisure or on such opportunities of tuition to expose oneself to these pillars of the Western mind. It is not vain to read these books: They are themselves good, and, as John Henry Cardinal Newman reminds us, whatever is good is reproductive of good.

The HUM sequence is especially valuable because it moves with great speed and great depth, which is only possible because it draws on some of the best professors at this university to present these materials in a small, intensive setting. Further, it presents the Western canon as it really is: a seamless, interconnected weave. Newman wrote that a truly great intellect is one that "possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement, but as philosophy."

Such an education has tremendous value and indirectly, utility. It produces gentlemen and ladies. It enables one to see life as great minds have seen it: through the eyes of Hume or Aquinas. It trains the mind in a habit of curiosity, which will outlast the initial studies that set such a habit in motion. One could argue that this education has no use. But that would be a compliment: It is good of itself. To argue thus, however, would be to forget that the result these studies engender in the humanist is to be greatly admired: a cultivated intellect and a reception to artistic beauty.

It would be just as wrong, however, to make these arts bear a burden they cannot sustain as it would be to denigrate them for being "useless." The humanities will not "save us," as was the topic of a recent dinner at Mathey College. Newman again (as always) has the last word on this matter. In "The Idea of a University" he defends to the hilt the value of a liberal education and then concludes with his eloquent warning that one must "quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man."

I don't deny that there is value in "Useful Knowledge." Useful Knowledge is essential to improving our temporal circumstances: It has provided us with ice cream, Wikipedia and the steam engine. But these are all means to further ends: The comfort of the human being. They improve our circumstances: They do not improve ourselves.

As a nod to my numerate roommate, I should note that higher mathematics and similar studies - those with no further aim than themselves - are liberal arts. We have a cramped view of these studies in the 21st century, and the HUM sequence does not span all those fields that are "liberal." But it does cover most of them and very well. Every student at Princeton can be thankful that such a course is offered; I hope that most would pursue it.

Brendan Carroll is a freshman from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at btcarrol@princeton.edu.