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10 III TLib

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15 8he Lectures and Essays of JacobIEvery one of us (that is, every human being on this ewithout exception) is in some way educated. By this I meaneveryone assimilates from his early childhood sets of custbeliefs, opinions of all kinds, ways of behavior, and evenof feeling and reacting. "'Without this elemental kind of edtion we could not become members- of our families, of cand of all the smaller or larger communities to which we belTo be a human being means to be educated in this elemeway, to be educated in the elements of human life. Oursdouble growth, double nourishment, double ripening.maturity as human beings does not necessarily coincide our maturity as living organisms, whereas no such discrepseems to exist in the case of our incomprehensible cousinanimals. The nourishment that leads to our human matu

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16 0he Lectures and Essays of Jacob Khowever distorted, for knowledge. If we were to adopt metaphor "body of knowledge," we might perhaps say, usifamous phrase from recent political and military history, tgossip constitutes the soft underbelly of knowledge. Gossithe small tribute that our passionate and appetitive life paysvery, very small coinsto intellectual life. And it may even rea nobler part of the body of knowledge, if channeled in a propdirection. This brings us to still another class of questions, whidle curiosity is replaced by a kind of passionate or, if you pleaserious curiosity. Questions raised out of idle curiosity are, stricspeaking, none of our business. But when we raise them becauwe attach very definite importance to the answers that is, whwe make it our business to know the answerswe deal wquestions of a different nature. In a trial, where crucial fahave to be established, or in our travels, confronting unfamcustoms, we ask questions in order to win certainty about thin

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be und erstood e i ther as the pursui t o f the not yet known (adiscovery o f the not ye t known) or as the pu rsui t o f the oncknown (as recovery of the once known). Prophecy and d ivininare the pr imo rdia l forms of the f irs t k ind of pursui t , mythmaking the primordial form of the second kind. Derivative form(by this term I d o not mean to im ply any censure) are what wcall science and history ; . Science is forever on the way to discovthe not yet known; history is forever recovering the once kn ownBoth emb ody the type of quest ioning that I have ca l led thexploratory kind in i ts purest form. But both a l so depend oa quite d i f ferent k ind of quest ioning that I h ave , with somtrepidation, to consider now.I have sa id b e fore that wi thin the conf ines o f our h or izothere is the expected as wel l as the unexpected, the old an d thnew, the known and the unknown, the familiar and thunfamiliar. We do, however, experience a kind of question whichas it were, tends to smash the bounds that limit us. We do occa

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and how to conceal what we mean. Not only do we knowto speak that is, to speak imperfectly we also know athis very imperfection. This knowledge, if formalized andmulated, becomes the discipline of grammar. It is of littlein our actual speaking, and yet, upon reflection, we cannoto see how utterly dependent on grammatical forms we aour actual speaking. A similar reflection upon speech leadto the formal discipline of logic. And I should like, at theof being tiresome, to add another example derived from atinuing reflection upon our speech. The act of speaking preposes the distinguishing of one word from another andrelating of one word to another. It presupposes, that is, coing. For counting is distinguishing and at the same time relaone thing to another. At all times, therefore, speaking andthinking involved in it have been understood as a sort of cputing. This does not mean that in speaking we have an expknowledge of numbers. But reflecting and pursuing

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know. Only in pursuing this goal is man really man and realfree. To acquire the various means that enable man to persiin this pursuit is to cultivate the arts of freedom.

The idea of liberal education, then, whether you accept oreject it, is not definable in terms of some peculiar subject mater. Some applied sciences may well fall outside its scope. Buby and large, any formal discipline may form its vehicle anbasis. It is not the subject matter that determines the charactof studies as liberal studies. It is rather the way in which a formal discipline, a subject matter, is taken up that is decisivewhenever it is being studied for its own sake, whenever thmetastrophic way of questioning is upheld, whenever genuinwonderment is present, liberal education is taking place.

Foremost among the formal liberal disciplines are, of coursethe mathematical disciplines, the physical sciences, the sciencof life, the sciences of language grammar, rhetoric, an

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scholarship, and l iberal educat ion can never ignore i t .3. But the most serious ob stacle is the relat ion o f l ibereducation to the pol i t ical commun ity, the state. The G reeks, yremem ber, saw in le isure, in schooling, the source of a twofoact iv ity: the pursui t o f l earning and of pol i t ica l ends . G reethought, in fact , circles continuously about these two highepoles of human life . The relat ion of man to his cit izenship, the obl igat ions that f low from his be ing a c i t izen, a memb eof a political comm unity this relation is one of the great anstanding themes of all c lassical philosophy. Man conceived a political animal and man conceived as a being desirous to knoare no t necessarily identical . What complicates ma tters is timme diate and com pelling interest that any state takes in theducation of i ts chi ldren and youth. Plato's Republic is devotto this theme. Aristotle says (Politics, V, 9): "Of all things I hamentioned, that which m ost contr ibutes to the perm anence o

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searching and questioningmensurability between thithe basis of all liberal learof our existence. But what ing and questioning were