Pursuing the Good Life

Once students wrestle with these thinkers, they realize that the secret of living a moral life will never be found on a poster or bumper sticker. Investigating the moral life takes time and effort, and then committing to live morally is the work of a lifetime.

Focusing on the moral life—what is it and one lives it—would seem to be an important part of education, and yet these thinkers aren’t at the heart of most college and university reading lists.

Part of the reason for the disappearance of the thinkers listed above is that most of them are European males. In other words, morality and wisdom was investigated too narrowly. I understand this objection, but that would seem to be an argument for adding thinkers from other cultures, not removing the European contributors.

A more significant reason for the absence of campus-wide discussions of morality and wisdom is that the nature of higher education has changed significantly over the past decades. The word “education” comes from a Latin word that means to “lead forth.” Education is meant to lead a student forth from ignorance to truth, from irrational to rational deliberation, from sloppy thinking to balanced thought. Not that long ago, to say that someone was truly educated was to say that she had developed good character.

Over the past decades, the focus of college and university curricula has increasingly shifted from graduating people of good character to graduating people with the skills necessary to advance in their careers. Career success, rather than becoming a person of good moral character, is the current proof that the high cost of college or university is money well spent.

Some colleges and universities, especially liberal arts colleges, try to balance discussions of the moral life with acquiring skills beneficial to future careers. But the number of colleges and universities with liberal arts programs is shrinking, while skill-based programs are proliferating.

There are people who are just fine with this trend. Some of them worry about the biases of professors and think that discussions of morality should be left to families.

My worry lies elsewhere. As I survey current American culture, I believe the evidence suggests that we are suffering from a lack of nation-wide conversations and debates about issues of character and morality. Our leaders don’t have to be reasonable; they just have to be loud. They don’t have to offer viable visions of the future; they just have to stoke our fears. They don’t have to make sense to their opponents; they just have to make sense to their base.

To read the great works of Laozi to Kierkegaard will not make a student a Democrat or Republican. What reading and wrestling with the great thinkers does offer is far more important. The great thinkers give our society a common language to discuss meaningfully the major issues we face.

Without this common language, we’re just talking to those who already agree with us. With that common language, true dialogue is possible. From true dialogue can come understanding, and from understanding, compromise, if not agreement, is within reach.