Love-biting the hand that feeds

The way to enlightenment is more manifold, I want to say, if there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy. So that sitting around a table, leaning back in the chairs with the front legs off the ground like dogs begging or playing, and the reading that at least here, at least almost always really does get done before the class and really gets discussed there, and even the occasional pieces of writing which we stress about out of all proportion to their actual difficulty and to the detriment of the real merit they ought to have as tools for clarifying thinking--there must be more to be meant by liberal education.

The music and labs and languages, of course, the extracurriculars, sports and games, dances, shows--these are all there, but the what you might call life experiences, work and travel and meeting people so different from you, I'm not sure these are possible there where the classes are happening, or if the structure of the classes is somehow inimical to them, rather than fostering them. Certainly there are no grades given for any of these sorts of learning experiences, but the results of them should show in a heartbeat, the difference between a cultivated person and a merely well-read one, or again a very hard-working one, one who has never had leisure to get taught in discussion-based classrooms or felt capable or interested to read a great book instead of relaxing by the TV or at the bar or finding fulfillment in their home and kids and possessions.

 But if there is some value in liberal education in the sense of books, these are just the people who stand to gain; or if there is some value in the experiences themselves, it is the reading and discussion that should make it felt, expressed, understood somehow; and in turn, their voices in the discussion could testify to the world outside of the books so as to make those puny readers among us go out to learn and act in a more down-to-earth way. Which to incorporate into a curriculum would change the meaning somewhat of the word--would give the reading a more concrete direction in tension with its significance as contemplation, the end-in-itself side of things. But even this contains an outward aspect, as a candle is what it is, burning, yet casts its little light and heat, so that whatever is around it, if it is of a certain kind, aspires to catch the fire, reflects the illumination.

Anyone contemplative, it seems to me, who has not forgot their humanity, would also consider it well to try and share that experience, and sympathizing with the experience of others, nevertheless resolutely strive to draw them into the like contemplation, for themselves and for what they stand to discover and share thereby. Again, if this is something good in itself, they should naturally aspire to it, and if they can't or don't do it for themselves, there must be conditions in the way, chaining them to ignorance. And if those conditions yet make up their life, and whatever significance it has, we great readers would be equally ignorant not to investigate that, but to be content to read and discuss in our dwindling numbers, seeking forgotten potentialities of the human all alone. To philosophize and create something beautiful has to be in reach of anyone, if democracy is to be believed in for its part; but then actually thinking and making something beautiful must be done, if democracy is to be realized.