"Very much in other respects, but nothing at all as regards virtue. For even these arts of which I have spoken, though admittedly of a low grade – depending as they do upon handiwork – contribute greatly toward the equipment of life, but nevertheless have nothing to do with virtue.
"And if you inquire, 'Why, then, do we educate our children in the liberal studies?,' it is not because they can bestow virtue, but because they prepare the soul for the reception of virtue.
"Just as that 'primary course',' as the ancients called it, in grammar, which gave boys their elementary training, does not teach them the liberal arts, but prepares the ground for their early acquisition of these arts, so the liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction.". . .
--Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 88 (tr Gummere)
Seneca has already explained that he does not consider any education ordered toward worldly profit and efficiency to be a truly human education. We then become nothing more, in the words of the great George Carlin, than "obedient workers". Man does not live on bread alone, and he is certainly not defined by his position and status.
None of this negates the value of trade, or of bread, but rather simply puts trade and bread in their proper context. Being rich or well-liked, a supposedly respected and responsible citizen, will only be as good for us as the sense of moral character that drives all of our actions.
And now Seneca throws us for a loop. Liberal education has been, and still is, horribly misunderstood. It was never about creating important and successful people. Surely it was about making us wise and virtuous?
No. It won't even do that. Nothing will make us virtuous but our own choices and actions. An education might assist us in doing so, but it will not 'make' us anything at all. Only we make something of ourselves.
Just as a training in a trade may give us an opportunity to practice that trade, so an education that asks us to think for ourselves, and to rule ourselves, will only be as successful as we are willing to make it. A liberal education is only a material cause, never an efficient cause.
Remember that if you don't know who you are, or why you are here, or what you have to live for, nothing else you do will make any difference whatsoever. But no amount of Liberal education will make you that person. You will have to decide to make yourself that person.
I knew a fellow in graduate school who thought very highly of his place in the order of things. He was convinced that what he did, a teacher in the 'old school' model of the Liberal Arts, made him a hero and a saint. I was never able to be so confident in myself. One day, at a fancy dinner for our Department, a powerful and influential University donor asked him what he did.
His answer was exactly what I expected. "I teach your children the difference between right and wrong."
The donor didn't bat an eyelash. "Well then, you're not doing a very good job, are you?"
And that donor was completely right. Decent people aren't made by others. They make themselves, even as much as others may help them to do so.
In all my years of teaching, and through all the treatises, novels, plays, or poems I have taught about, I think no text has been as fulfilling as Plato's Meno.
A smug, entitled, and supposedly well-educated young man asks Socrates whether virtue can be taught. The Master suspects that the young man should already know the answer, but throws the question right back. What is virtue? And what does it mean to teach, and what does it mean to learn?
We would all like to think that we are at least trying to be good people. The claim is pointless if I can't even explain what is truly means to be good. Platitudes and shallow posturing won't cut it.
Now ask the second, and equally important, question. What does it actually mean to teach?
Socrates argues that if virtue is a good, and all that is good will benefit us, the only thing that always benefits us is wisdom. Virtue is, therefore, in whole or in part, wisdom put into action.
Now can anyone 'teach 'virtue? They may model and exemplify it, explain or promote it, but in the end, none of us will be wise or virtuous unless we choose to embrace such values. The teacher only offers the opportunity. The student must decide to take it, and to make something of it.
This helps us to understand what Seneca means. The study of the Servile Arts, the trades engaged in money-making and playing the worldly game, won't make us happy. They are, after all, nothing but tools. But even the study of the Liberal Arts, concerned with understanding and freedom, won't make us happy, either.
I am not a piece on a chessboard, and I am not moved by other hands. I move myself. That is Stoicism, that is true philosophy, that is true liberal learning.
Written 1/2010
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