The value of a liberal education: An essay on the power of knowing

Conclusion

It is not easy to summarize what has been suggested in this essay. But in greatly simplified terms, something like this may serve.

The understanding which comes through education increases the power of man over himself and his world; it increases his awareness, his capacity to influence, to accept and to enjoy. Everybody knows these things, but an explanation of how this power arises has been attempted. To do this, understanding, was said to be a process, a dynamic act, and four perspectives on this act, each showing one of the ways in which power is created have been presented.

First, it was suggested that thought is the process of discriminating the field of feeling. This implies a much closer connection between thought and feeling than is ordinarily held. The particular power here is expressed in terms of the idea that the form of thought both expresses and limits at the same time. Due to this you get clear elements not only expressed in their own right, but deriving part of their clarity and individuality because of their explicit exclusion from other elements of the same field. Second, the power of knowing was explained as due to the tension between levels of significance It was suggested that concepts are fields of meaning composed of mutually constituting levels or particularity and generality.

Third, it was suggested that the power of knowing comes through the extension of the range of significant feeling through the use of imagination.

Finally, the double aspect of consciousness, which allows man both to do something consciously and to guide such doing self-consciously, was indicated as of major importance to the power and practice of a liberal education because it constitutes the power which frees man from himself.

No one can liberate another person by organizing his experience for him. That he must do for himself; it is his life. But educators are in the business of disciplining the student in the truly human fashion which includes the organization of our experience in terms of dynamically interacting levels of generality and significance, the objectifying and clarifying of the field of feeling through thought, the broadening and deepening of that range of feeling through the imaginative projection of possibilities for feeling, as well as the steady consciousness of self that frees man from himself.

These four aspects constitute the power which man's nature gives to him alone. It is because of this power that man has been called a rational animal. And along side of this power any others which he may be said to possess are as nothing. Indeed, it is open to question whether there are any other separate powers. Someone may want to mention the power of human love, but a moment of reflection should show that all we consider of most value in human love is an expression of the powers of which we have spoken. A liberal education is of value precisely because it is aimed at the development of those qualities of truly human activity which characterize man at his best. We may have to accept something less than this due to human frailty, but we need not be content to aim at anything less.