Liberal Arts and Servile Attitudes

 It is a common complaint heard from young graduates of liberal arts programs that their expensive degrees are not providing them ample enough opportunity for employment.  I myself have been admonished by older, more “successful” men that college programs in the liberal arts amount to no more than a waste of time and money.  I often admit that a degree in history or philosophy might indeed prove useless in the “real world” and I understand the frustration of being “overeducated”, but at these thoughts I am reminded of a concept laid out by Josef Pieper in his most famous book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture.  He explains that the liberal arts are “liberal” precisely because they are free from being practical or useful.

This, of course, might sound ridiculous at first, but only until the reader will ask himself just what “art” is.  It is no money-making pursuit, though, sadly, it seems to be the occupation of many so-called “artists” of today.  The concept of liberal arts being both liberal and true art depends on the idea that knowledge is something worth pursuing for its own sake, rather than for the sake of something else.  Knowledge which is gained for the sake of practical concerns, such as gaining money and reducing effort, is called “practical knowledge”.  Such knowledge includes science and technology; engineering, programming, mechanics, machining, and the like.  Art, both seen and heard, philosophy, and history are those fields of knowledge which have very little to do with putting bread on the table:  That is, they are free from having to worry about putting bread on the table.  They are all part of what is truly worthy of our time and effort and even our money.  Bread and effort are obvious necessities for life, but they are less than life.  Pieper did quite well in showing that when every pursuit is reduced to something like a dollar value, we become nothing more than machines.  Every ounce of effort we put out in our daily lives to make a living is the clearest evidence that living is always worth more than what it may cost.  We do not live in order to sustain and produce, we sustain and produce in order to live. 

So, what does it mean to live?  It depends what creature is living.  What it means to live as a cat is not the same as to live as a man.  It does not take deep insight to notice what the difference is.  Animals spend their time seeking food and mates, perhaps even solving problems and entertaining themselves while they are at it, but only humans write and read history, tell stories, paint pictures, sing, think aloud, build churches, and pray.  Only humans do these things; they are particularly human.  The liberal arts, then, are concerned ultimately with humanity and being human.  "Why study liberal arts?"  How absurd this question becomes!  We pursue the arts because in them we are most free, most human, and most alive.

If, dear reader, you are one of those souls who worked hard to obtain a liberal arts degree because you loved it and were subsequently sent out into the world by your alma mater in the hope of making a decent wage by that knowledge, you have been misled.  It might help more to go back and learn something practical to practice instead of condemning the economy for being too weak to support you or hating society for being too simple to appreciate your expertise.  Much joy and gratitude is to be had, however, for knowing what is worth knowing for no other reason than that you wanted to know it.