Modern Age - Summer 2014 - 75

COMMENTARY

WISE PASSIVENESS
pieper and wordsworth on the liber al arts
Louis Markos

I

n chapter 47 of his 1998 encyclical letter,
On the Relationship between Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio), Pope John Paul II laments
"that the role of philosophy . . . has changed
in modern culture." "From universal wisdom
and learning," he argues, philosophy "has
been gradually reduced to one of the many
fields of human knowledge." As a result,
traditional philosophy has been replaced
by "forms of rationality [that] are directed
not toward contemplation of truth and the
search for the ultimate goal and meaning
of life; but instead, as 'instrumental reason,'
they are directed-actually or potentially-
towards the promotion of utilitarian ends,
towards enjoyment or power."
Sadly, what the pope says here about
philosophy in particular has become increasingly true of the liberal arts in general. Over
the last several decades, American universities have adopted a utilitarian view of
education. This vocational-pragmatic view
has proved deleterious to the centrality and
strength of the liberal arts, particularly such

key humanistic pursuits as literature, philosophy, and narrative history focused on great
men (rather than fact-based, socioeconomic
history). The paradigm shift has manifested
itself in a number of ways: (1) the traditional
general-education core, grounded in the classics of Greece, Rome, and Christian Europe,
is replaced with a cafeteria-style core that
allows students to pick and choose courses
that interest them; (2) the humanities are
downplayed in favor of the social sciences;
(3) non-Western and noncanonical works
are privileged over the Great Books of the
Western intellectual tradition; and (4) the
very status (and existence) of Great Books is
questioned; and ethical, philosophical, and
aesthetic standards of the good, the true, and
the beautiful are deconstructed or dismissed.
To make matters worse, the agencies that
accredit liberal arts colleges and universities
have surrendered themselves to reductive,
statistics-driven methods that squeeze the
life and passion out of the humanities. To
hold up the liberal arts as ends in themselves

Louis Markos is professor in English and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University and holds the
Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. His books include From Achilles to Christ, The Eye of the Beholder: How to
See the World like a Romantic Poet, and On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis.
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Modern Age - Summer 2014

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