Flagg Taylor on Liberal Education
Podcasts on Half-Forgotten Works by Leo Strauss, Eva Brann, etc.
Unlike the joys and discoveries one can expect with trips to a well-run used bookstore, a trip to your local Barnes and Noble will deliver a good deal of stomach-turning. As you browse its aisles, you’re going to be asking questions like: “Where is important title x?” “Do they not understand there are at least three translations of classic y superior to this clunker-one from the 1890s?” and above all, over and over, “Why are they pushing this poisonous junk on the populace?”
And God help your spirit should you peek into the young-adult fiction section!
One glimmer of light that shone out in a recent trip of mine, amid this mire of miseducation, came from several copies of Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. I picked one up, and am about fifty pages into it. I won’t discuss its many merits here, but it seems like it could play an important role in our times in turning younger generations to real education.
In my last post, on Jaroslav Pelikan, I mentioned in passing the huge impact Mortimer Adler’s Reforming Education: the Opening of the American Mind, had on my own life. While it is a collection of essays spanning Adler’s entire career, some of them going back to the 40s, its 1990 release and subtitle indicate it was Adler’s effort to assert the importance of his own vision for liberal education in the wake of Allan Bloom’s unexpected bestseller success with The Closing of the American Mind. In retrospect, Bloom’s book is as much a doorway into Straussianism as one into genuine liberal education, whereas Adler’s is a singular doorway, and thus better able, as Hitz’s book is also, to woo persons from various political-ideological viewpoints into the pursuit of Great Books Happiness. So while Adler’s book (which also contains his most-developed list of the Great Books) was ultimately intellectual lesser than Bloom’s, and thus less-open-minded in the fundamental sense, it did feature a more open and more all-American beginning point. It wasn’t a “conservative book.” That’s why I, for one, might never have become “Straussian” had I not first become “Adlerian.”1
Hitz’s book is more in the spirit of Adler’s, while also being more enticing for younger 21st-century book-buyers than crusty ol’ Mort could ever be.
Skidmore College professor Flagg Taylor—who is also my friend and sometime collaborator—last year began a podcast series called Enduring Interest (available not simply on its website, but on Audible and several other platforms), which introduces listeners to important books that stand the test of time and which continue to influence many of our best thinkers, but which are nonetheless not as well-known as they should be. Some of the titles, such as Raymond Aron’s Opium of the Intellectuals, are related to Taylor’s expertise on dissident writings, but recently, his podcasts have concentrated on the theme of liberal education. I suspect Flagg was inspired to do so in part by Hitz’s book, as he gave it a glowing review in National Review.
So far this thematic series has featured podcasts on 1.) Leo Strauss’s two most important essays on liberal education, discussed with Catherine and Michael Zuckert, 2.) Hannah Arendt’s “Crisis in Education” with Rita Koganzon, and 3.) Eva Brann’s Paradoxes of Education in a Republic, with PostModernConservative’s own Pavlos Papadopoulos. I haven’t listened yet to the one on Arendt, but the one on Brann is really among the best podcasts on an intellectual topic I’ve ever heard. Golden sentence upon sentence from Pavlos. I won’t say more on Brann’s genius and importance here, and just send you straight to this fine work from Pavlos and Flagg.
One thing I like about these podcasts is that they serve both the needs of the listeners who want to study these particular works, even to do close textual analysis of them, precisely because they already have a sense of their worth, as well as those listeners who have never read the work in question or even heard of it.
That’s why I’d also strongly recommend the podcast done on the two Strauss essays, “What Is Liberal Education?” and “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” with Catherine and Michael Zuckert. Eventually, the Zuckerts’ conversation becomes more about Strauss generally—which includes some interesting tidbits on him as a professor—than about the essays themselves, but initially, the focus is on the two rich pieces penned in the early 60s from the collection Liberalism Ancient and Modern. These are not simply important in terms of what they say about liberal education, but they also include some of Strauss’s most important statements about the relation of the gentleman and the philosopher, as well as about democracy.
…wisdom requires unhesitating loyalty to a decent constitution and even to the cause of constitutionalism.
…What then are the prospects for liberal education within mass democracy? What are the prospects for the liberally educated to again become a power in democracy? We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy. While we are not permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which democracy exposes itself as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the obvious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence.
Statements like that incline yours truly to claim Strauss would welcome a more democracy-friendly case for republican constitutionalism, a case holding that in our time, the lovers of wisdom and human excellence should insist, against a certain Party and its allies in higher ed, that “democracy” is Our Word, Not Theirs.
Anyhow, if you have any desire to better understand liberal education and the case for it in our time, don’t miss these podcasts!
I should add that I remain at least somewhat Adlerian in thinking that Straussians tend to underestimate the wisdom of Aquinas and the Thomist tradition. I recently ordered this promising book from one of the very best teachers I learned from while at St. John’s College, James Carey, and would highly recommend the work of Thomas Hibbs on understanding the political/ethical subtlety of the “Dumb Ox.”
Flagg Taylor on Liberal Education
Thank you for your excessively kind words! I assure you, any golden sentence I spoke was actually just a quote from Brann's book. The Arendt episode is very good as well.
I agree, Zena's book is terrific. When you've read it, you might want to check out my review (in which I draw out some differences between LOST IN THOUGHT and Brann's PARADOXES): https://www.athwart.org/the-serious-amateur-zena-hitz-lost-in-thought-review/
I recently wrote something similar on a bizarre attempt to review Houellebecq's most recent novel through the lens of newly-updated establishment 'wokeism'. https://theruins.substack.com/p/houllebecq-and-the-sovereignty-of
As Houellebecq already found success, the only way to deal with him was to try to tease out sentences that supported their own position, while leaving Houellebecq in the unenviable position of acting as sad chronicler of his own society's demise, rightfully depressed at its inevitable yet rightful end.
It remains to be seen if a 'new Houellebecq' will be published, let alone find his works furnishing bookshop windows and bestsellers lists.