Seneca, Moral Letters 88.2

Certain persons have made up their minds that the point at issue with regard to the liberal studies is whether they make men good; but they do not even profess or aim at a knowledge of this particular subject. 
 
The scholar busies himself with investigations into language, and if it be his desire to go farther afield, he works on history, or, if he would extend his range to the farthest limits, on poetry.
 
But which of these paves the way to virtue? Pronouncing syllables, investigating words, memorizing plays, or making rules for the scansion of poetry—what is there in all this that rids one of fear, roots out desire, or bridles the passions?
 
The question is: do such men teach virtue, or not? If they do not teach it, then neither do they transmit it. If they do teach it, they are philosophers. 
 
Would you like to know how it happens that they have not taken the chair for the purpose of teaching virtue? See how unlike their subjects are; and yet their subjects would resemble each other if they taught the same thing. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 88 

In the quest for a quick fix and an easy profit, people will try to sell you most anything—and that includes an education. Usually, they will promise you a brilliant career, though you will also find the sophists who claim that their teachings will endow you with the greatest virtues, so you may then belong to the select elders of their tribe, whatever the color of its flag. 

 
The secular humanists assure you that science will rescue the planet, or the pious zealots guarantee you that doctrines will lead to a special place in heaven. The are sadly mistaken, for higher learning will never make us good, even as it might lay the grounds for ultimately choosing to be good. Since no one else can provide it for you, you will have to do it for yourself. 
 
In my remote neck of the woods, I am a fan of studying the “Great Books”, because I find that grappling with a diversity of perspectives is a fine preparation for finally forming one’s own convictions. You cannot come to know yourself without first knowing where you came from. 
 
I am under no illusion, however, that any sort of curriculum has ever saved a man’s soul, or that scholarly exercises will magically impart an excellence of character. 
 
Though it may take on a variety of forms, the liberal arts I admire are not aimed at memorizing a particular content, but at developing certain habits of reason, which strengthen our ability to be free in our judgments; this, and not any political posturing, is what makes them properly “liberal”. 
 
Nevertheless, when I teach the trivium and quadrivium, in the tradition of the Greeks and Romans, I do not pretend that breaking down an argument is a mark of righteousness. 
 
Literature or mathematics can help us in discovering the solution, but they do not provide the solution. If I limit myself to merely picking away at words, or fiddling with an equation, I am not yet engaging in the highest work of being human. I am not yet living in prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. 

To borrow from the terms of other schools, liberal studies are a material cause, an occasion out of which the virtues may arise, but they are not the efficient cause, the conscious commitment to the true, the good, and the beautiful. To do this is to embrace philosophy, understood in both it broadest and its deepest sense; beyond the technical means are the moral ends. 
 
Let the academics continue with their disputations on disparate topics. Once we can rise up to the first principles of our nature, such divisions will quietly pass away. 

—Reflection written in 2/2014