A nifty little essay that reminded me of the many important facets involved in a well-educated person (and sadly, the deficiencies in my own education). A short snippet of Mitchell’s thoughts after the jump:

In concrete terms, the great tradition includes the books and essays and dialogues, music, and sculpture, architecture, and painting that constitute the development of creative and analytic thought from the ancient world to the present. Most people would agree that works by such figures as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Moses, Virgil, St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Newton, Bach, Milton, Rembrandt, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, etc. are properly seen as necessary and integral elements of a liberal education. To know the works of the great tradition is to encounter the best that has been thought and created. To wrestle with these works is to strive with the mighty to grasp the perennial truths for which humans naturally seek. To understand these works requires the student to submit, at least temporarily, to their authority and learn from them as an apprentice submits to a master and slowly acquires his knowledge. Therein the soul is shaped by the imaginations of great men and women who have gone before and left a record of their lives and thoughts.

But at the same time, anyone who seriously engages the works of the great tradition will soon come to realize that they do not form a seamless and coherent account of reality. In fact, if one thing is clear about the tradition it is this: the various authors often find themselves in direct conflict with each other. They are striving to know but they often come to different conclusions. It seems that if we must submit in order to understand, we must also move from understanding to critical reflection. All the great works cannot be correct. Yet, we can learn from them all, for even those with which we ultimately disagree can teach us much about the human pursuit of knowledge and the pitfalls that are strewn along the way. Thus, while a serious engagement with the works of the great tradition requires submission to their authority, critical engagement implies that the process ends with personal responsibility. One must learn to exercise judgment and proceed with self-control.

Here we can see how a liberal arts education, rightly conceived, helps to prepare an individual for self-government, which is a necessary condition for a free society. It inculcates mental habits—including good judgment and self-control—without which liberty is license. Through a liberal education we come better to understand human weaknesses and temptations as well as the possibility of noble deeds and greatness. We can learn, by the example of great men, that self-sacrifice is commendable and avarice base; we can come to imagine ourselves treading paths forged by giants and sung by poets; we can come to realize that love moves mountains and hatred consumes both subject and object. In short, a serious engagement with the great tradition gives us the ability to see the possibilities and the dangers latent in human nature. It inculcates a taste for the noble and a distaste for the ignoble. It orients our souls toward that which is highest and best in human history.