In 1513, the famed Florentine Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli wrote to his friend Francesco Vettori that at the close of day he would “enter the courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me.” Why do I dwell upon this sentimental writing of the father of political Realism? The reason is because this passage sums up the goal of a college. 

The purpose of a liberal arts education is to bring students to the chambers of the ancients, where they can feed on the knowledge that came before them and have a discourse with their ancestors. Lest I be taken as an hysterical fool, every culture has sought a connection with the past. In pagan China, the people would worship their ancestors and build shrines to their memory. In Catholic Europe, people spent the month of November (and November 2 in particular) remembering the holy souls in Purgatory and praying for the remission of the sins of their ancestors; this was in turn derived from ancient Judaic practices, as described in the Second Book of Maccabees. The great English writer of the twentieth century G.K. Chesterton wrote that “Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors.” Cultures across the world have given due reverence to their ancestors and honored those who came before them in a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude. This is not the case with our current society.

In modernity, we have tried with eagerness to remove all of our ties to our ancestors. We talk of our ancestors as oppressors; horrible people who were driven by the most atrocious desires and ideas. I cannot help but point out how rich this is coming from a society that is driven by selfishness, ludicrous sexual desires, and a plethora of nonsensical ideas about human nature and whence it originated. In the course of this hatred of the past, we have also lost the reverence for the writers of the past and the ideas which animated civilization; we have forgotten the canon of great books and the synopticon of ideas that scholars like Adler prided themselves on. Can it be that this flagitious destruction of our past has made its way to the halls of higher education? Yea, for these ideas were first proposed in higher education.

The vehement detestation towards the canon of great books was not created out of thin air, but refined through generations of scholars in Europe and America. Schools of thought, such as the German Frankfurt School led the way by setting forth Critical Theory. The German philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer explained that the purpose of this theory was “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.” Of course, this means the perpetual criticism of all that has come before us. Marx himself in an 1843 letter to the philosopher Arnold Ruge wrote, “If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order.” If this future is to be made a reality, we must therefore, redefine beauty, goodness, truth, and reality itself, so that we can be free and unburdened by what has been. 

  The reason I write of this is because Saint Anselm is currently undergoing revisions to the core curriculum, the paramount of these revisions being the Conversatio program. The pilot program, which the committee has created in order to test a new curriculum, is based not upon the great ideas of Plato or Augustine, but the problems that people have always faced like immigration and climate change. Ideas are timeless, historical problems are just that: historical. There is more in common between us and Aristotle than Somali immigrants in Lewiston and the Frankish immigrants of the Roman Empire. 

There has been lots of talk about removing “dead white guys” from the curriculum and adding newer readings; perhaps some should retake college philosophy in order to understand what an ad hominem attack is. The administration has stated that they desire to make the texts more accessible, but that is not the point of college. The point of college is to put on one’s robe and enter the chamber of the unknown; to communicate with the past and have a conversation with the great minds of yore. A true liberal arts education is meant to inculcate a love of the past and reverence for intellectual ancestors. If students do not enjoy reading Plato, then they could not come to a liberal arts school. Perhaps, the better option is to train themselves to read Plato and engage with his ideas even if one finds them boring or ludicrous. It is time for Saint Anselm to stop going along with the social trends in higher education and to defend the liberal arts in their entirety.