Well, all these theories you should just toss on top of that heap of superfluous liberal studies. The people I first mentioned provide me with knowledge which is not going to be of any use to me, while the others snatch away from me any hopes of ever acquiring any knowledge at all. Superfluous knowledge would be preferable to no knowledge. One side offers me no guiding light to direct my vision towards the truth, while the other just gouges my eyes out. If I believe Protagoras there is nothing certain in the universe; if I believe Nausiphanes there is just the one certainty, that nothing is certain; if Parmenides, only one thing exists; if Zeno, not even one. Then what are we? The things that surround us, the things on which we live, what are they? Our whole universe is no more than a semblance of reality,
Zeno of Elea (circa 490-circa 430 BCE): a
Greek philosopher noted for his paradoxes.
Pyrrhonean, Megarian, Eretrian, and Academic schools: philosophical schools in ancient Greece that practiced some form of skepticism, or mistrust of claims to philosophical and scientific truth.
perhaps a deceptive semblance, perhaps one without substance altogether. I should find it difficult to say which of these people annoy me most, those who would have us know nothing or the ones who refuse even to leave us the small satisfaction of knowing that we know nothing.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What does Seneca see as the connection between a liberal studies education and the status of a free person? Think of other words based on the Latin word liber (liberty, liberate, library) and explain how these concepts might all be connected through Seneca's concept of liberal studies.
What does Seneca consider the only subject that deserves to be called "liberal"? Are the other disciplines that he mentions (music, mathematics, etc.) subsets of a larger discipline? If so, how? If not, why not?
What does Seneca see as the distinguishing feature between liberal and vocational studies? Is this distinction still valid in education today? Explain.
Why does Seneca reject the ideal that liberal studies make people virtuous? Given that he is writing in support of liberal studies, why does he spend more than half of the essay demonstrating the inability of liberal studies to produce moral behavior?
What, for Seneca, is the difference between studies that make people morally good and studies that lay a foundation that people can use in acquiring moral values?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
How does Seneca's view of liberal education compare with John Henry Newman's (p. 31)? How would they compare practical and vocational studies? Do the two philosophers have similar definitions of "liberal education"?
Compare Seneca's view of useless knowledge with the view implied in Richard Feynman's "O Americano Outra Vez" (p. 53). Does Seneca agree with Feynman's point that even very important subjects can be taught in such a way that they lose their value?
Seneca and Mo Tzu (p. 236) both see music as a thing with no practical value. Why, then, does Seneca value music while Mo Tzu opposes it?
Compare Seneca's view of the political importance of knowledge with the view that Frederick Douglass advances in "Learning to Read" (p. 24). Would Seneca view Douglass's arguments for literacy education as "liberal" in the sense of befitting a free person? Why or why not?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Write an essay that explores the connection between education and freedom. Explain how you think education should function in a free society and how educational institutions should prepare people to be citizens.
Provide a rebuttal to Seneca's view of vocational training as inconsistent with liberal education as he defines it. Consider how training people for careers might be important for "free people."
Choose one of the disciplines that Seneca lists—literature, music, geometry, or astronomy—and either agree or disagree with his reasoning that these studies do not directly produce virtue in those who study them.
Examine a current catalog from your college and write an essay describing one subject that Seneca would consider a liberal art and one that he would not. Support your position with quotations from Seneca's letter.
laurentius de voltolina
Liber Ethicorum des Henricus de Alemania
[CIRCA 1350]
WE KNOW ALMOST NOTHING about the fourteenth-century Italian painter Laurentius de Voltolina, except that his signature appears on one of the most remarkable images of the late Middle Ages. The drawing appears in a preserved copy of a parchment manuscript called Liber Ethicorum or Book of Moral Philosophy by a medieval scholar named Henricus de Alemania (Henry the German). We know scarcely more about Henricus than we do about Laurentius. All we can say for sure is that he is the figure at the front of the class in the famous illustration that decorates his book.
This drawing by an obscure painter in a virtually unknown manuscript has become famous in our day as one of the earliest concrete pictures of a medieval university classroom. The image shows Henricus sitting at a cathedra, or lectern, reading passages to his students at the University of Bologna, one of the great medieval centers of learning whose faculty included the great poets Dante and Petrarch and the famous astronomer Nicholas Copernicus.
The reactions of the students give us a window into education in the fourteenth century. As Henricus reads his lecture, some of the students, primarily in the front row, listen to his words with rapt attention. Others follow along studiously in the text. Towards the back of the room, students seem more distracted; some look bored, others are socializing with each other, and at least two appear to have fallen asleep. It is, in other words, like many college classrooms today.
Some educators use this image and others like it to argue that not much about higher education has changed in the past 700 years: professors still lecture from a privileged position, some people will always pay attention, and other people will always find distractions. However one interprets the painting, it is clear that viewers today recognize more than a few similarities between the education they have experienced and the world of Laurentius de Voltolina and Henricus de Alemania.
laurentius de voltolina
Liber Ethicorum des Henricus de Alemania, circa 1350 (book illustration on parchment)
Wikimedia Commons
See p. C-1 in the color insert for a full-color reproduction of this image.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Examine the teacher's position behind the podium. How does his position contribute to his authority? What does it say about the relationship he has with his students?
How many of the students would you say are engaged in the lecture? How many are disengaged? How many kinds of disengaged behaviors can you identify?
How does Henricus appear to be responding to his class? Does he seem concerned about the students who are disruptive?
Do you think it is fair to say that teachers and students today behave in many of the same ways depicted in this illustration? What do you think accounts for the similarities?