From the Desk of the President
President Thomas E. Dillon
Why the Great Books?
(Winter 2006 Newsletter)
[Index
of Past Articles by President Dillon]
 Recently
I was asked to speak to members of a Legatus chapter about
the rationale behind our unique curriculum, made up, as it
is, exclusively of the Great Books. This invitation provided
me a welcome opportunity to revisit in a formal way some of
the founding principles of the College.
Excerpts from this talk are reprinted below and are meant
to be taken in the wider context set by three of our distinguished
founders in the informal talks they gave at a recent meeting
of the Board of Governors. (See the "Founders
Speak…" articles.)
Liberal education is undertaken for its own sake, not for
the sake of making or doing something in particular. Rather,
it simply aims, in the long run, at understanding the truth
about reality through a reflective consideration of the most
important questions about nature, man, and God that all men
face in every age. Socrates instructs us that this kind of
education is the most desirable, saying in his famous words,
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Liberal
education is the beginning of an examined life, a life ordered
to wisdom.
Since liberal education is of paramount importance, one must
ask how best to conduct it. At Thomas Aquinas College, we
are convinced that it is best conducted through a systematic
and dialectical study of the Great Books—the original
texts in the various disciplines authored by the greatest
minds the world has known.
One example would be the Dialogues of Plato, in which
we see Socrates pursuing questions with his interlocutors
about the nature of justice, of virtue, and of happiness.
Other examples are the plays of Aeschylus and Shakespeare;
the geometry of Euclid, Appolonius, and Descartes; the physics
of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein; or the theology of St. Athanasius
and St. Augustine.
What makes these books great? What is their power? The answer
to these questions is not the same for each of the Great Books.
Some are great because they exhibit an exceptional penetration
into reality and articulate the truth so well. For example,
in his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle shows that true
happiness lies not in sensuality, wealth, power, or honor,
but in moral and intellectual virtue. Likewise, in his Summa
Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas shows in an exemplary way
the compatibility of faith and reason. (Because the College
holds that the works of these two great thinkers are especially
wise, we study their works in greater depth than any others.)
But there are others among the Great Books which, though
they grapple mightily with the perennial questions, nevertheless
contain great—and instructive—errors. Indeed, though
their authors reason especially well, they too often begin
with false principles and conclude in error. A good example
would be Lucretius, who in the century before Christ’s
birth advanced a theory that all reality is reducible to atoms
in motion, thereby implying that the soul cannot be immortal.
Many of the Great Books are considered great in the sense
that they have had a tremendous effect—for good or for
ill—on our world and on the way men think and conduct
themselves. For instance, Marx, Freud, Darwin, and Rousseau
have deeply affected our contemporary world and, in a certain
way, have shaped it.
Descartes, too, has had tremendous influence with his invention
of analytic geometry, as has Newton with his seminal work
in physics, the Principia. These two thinkers were
so successful that their work helped bring about the technological
age. But by the same token, they also contributed to an expectation
of mathematical certainty in all things—a desire to quantify
our knowledge of everything—even where it is not appropriate,
as in ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and so forth.
Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, too, have had a lasting effect,
demonstrating vividly that ideas have consequences. Hegel’s
notion of the “progress of history,” for instance,
which he introduced in the beginning of the 19th century,
now dominates contemporary thought. Marx’s book on capital,
published in the mid-1800s, led to communism and its spread
throughout the world. Nietzsche, too, has changed the very
way we think about and discuss human behavior by introducing
the notion of “values” to moral discourse. “Value,”
of course, is an economic term that is wholly subjective—it
is this kind of language that has led to relativism and the
denial of any objective moral order.
Yet another example of the powerful effect of the Great Books
on the world was made plain to me while on a visit to Monticello.
When I observed the books on the shelves in Jefferson’s
study, I found authors like Virgil, Plato, Cicero, Locke,
Ptolemy, and others. Thomas Jefferson’s mind was shaped
by the ideas of these Great Books, and he, in turn, had a
great influence on the formation of our country.
It can be very fruitful to contrast thinkers like Homer and
Aristotle with thinkers like Hegel and Descartes. It is clear
as one reads the Illiad and the Odyssey that
Homer thought that men were becoming steadily worse—less
and less powerful than the gods from whom they descended.
Hegel, however, holds that man is becoming better and better,
and that, in fact, we are in the process of becoming God ourselves.
Another striking contrast can be found between Aristotle
and Descartes. Aristotle, when beginning to consider an important
question, would consult the wisdom of the past, searching
among sometimes conflicting opinions for what was commonly
held to be so; this became the starting point for his own
investigation. On the other hand, Descartes in his skepticism
rejected all that came before him, wanting instead to work
things out for himself completely anew.
The Great Books, then, are “great” for a number
of reasons: some are exceptionally good avenues to the truth;
others can be considered great for the consequential nature
of the errors they contain, even as their authors have thought
deeply about the questions all men have faced; and many have
a certain greatness from the powerful influence they have
had on men over time.
The study of the Great Books gives us the opportunity to
step back, get perspective, and ask, among other things, “What
is the good?” and “To what should we aspire?”
As we seek the truth about reality with some of the most masterful
minds the world has known, we are enabled also to critically
analyze our own time and its assumptions. At Thomas Aquinas
College, therefore, we are convinced that liberal education
is best undertaken through the study of the Great Books, allowing
us to make the best beginning in the pursuit of wisdom.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2006
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