As the nation's turmoil grows out of control, perhaps we can reach back to ancient wisdom and find that the liberal arts might give us our solution. “Liberal arts” does not imply that one is a political liberal. The great rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver was profoundly conservative, and Russell Kirk,
the intellectual founder of modern conservatism, was a historian. The
“liberal” in “liberal arts” implies that one is expanding one’s thought,
not that one is adopting any one political opinion.
On September 11, 2017, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, my friend and colleague Sean Patrick O’Rourke, the Director of the Center for Speaking and Listening and Professor of Rhetoric and American Studies at Sewanee, The University of the South, gave a speech on “Wisdom and Eloquence” at the Dedication of the Learning Commons at the University’s duPont Library. This speech was recognized by publication in the November 2017 issue of Vital Speeches of the Day. O'Rourke gave his speech at a time when education in general, and liberal arts education in particular, come under attack from too many quarters. In addition to thanking the many people whose work made the project possible, O'Rourke explained that, “we also gather to mark this moment in Sewanee’s long and distinguished history of contributions to liberal education.”
Like all good ceremonial or epideictic speakers, O’Rourke reached to a larger issue, deploring the United States’ growing willingness to abandon critical thought:
We are still feeling the effects of 9/11 and its aftermath: Recent independent polls by Pew, Gallup, and USA Today all indicate that we are more divided now than ever before. That division is evident in our use of corrosive, abusive, and hateful speech, our failure to listen to each other, our unwillingness to research and investigate the controversies that divide us, our willing and willful ignorance of science and scientific communications, and our tendency to let raw power replace informed debate, reasoned deliberation, and considered judgment. Our republic, commentators now tell us, is threatened more than at any time since the Civil War.
Related Link: Pink and the Power of Pearls at the VMA Awards: Epideictic Excellence
As I write this, Americans are rioting in the streets to protest police killings, while white nationalist groups flock to the cities to join in the mayhem, presumably hoping to cast blame on African Americans.
Looking for a solution to our national divisions, O’Rourke turned to the liberal arts. He explained how Marcus Tullius Cicero saw the ancient Roman Republic under internal attack. Rome’s great orator “retired to his villa,” O'Rourke explained, “thought deeply, and wrote to remedy the ills of his society.” To Cicero, the keys to civic leadership were, O'Rourke explained, “wisdom and eloquence.”
This thought led the speaker to discuss the Learning Commons dedication: “the space we dedicate today is the beginning of our answer to our civic crisis.” He explained that the Learning Commons “includes the enormous resources, both electronic and printed, of a superb college library.” Vitally, however, the Learning Commons also houses “a team of scholars, tutors, fellows, and teachers committed to working together to help every student achieve, in her own way and in his own field of study, ‘sapientia et eloquentia,’ wisdom and eloquence, never one . . . without the other.”
How do wisdom and eloquence, the goals of liberal arts education, answer our national and intellectual and political crisis? Using the rhetorician's classic tool, O'Rourke tied his points together with the trope of parallel structure:
To elevate the level of public discourse in our all-too-rancorous republic and to listen to one another even as we disagree;
To answer the bigoted and uninformed tweet with reasoned, informed, and considered judgment— . . . ;
To meet the defamatory utterance with passion, guided and directed by reason, . . . ;
To speak truth to power even when the risk is great and the fear nearly paralyzing;
To pursue knowledge, to weigh evidence no matter how contradictory or complex; to distinguish what is real from what is concocted, to engage questions even when they are difficult;
To eschew the easy talking points of partisan propagandists and instead embrace the nuances and complexities always present in any worthwhile debate or discussion;
To understand, in the end, that There. Is. No. Immaculate. Perception. That each of us will always have a somewhat different perspective on the world, its many issues and concerns, and the several routes forward. And that, while agreement on any of these points may be rare, constructive disagreement is a goal worthy of a liberally educated citizen in a republic.
As basic goals of liberal arts education, each of these points arises from a unified way to understand wisdom, and the parallel phrasing – “To elevate” – “To speak” – “To understand” – helped the listeners grasp the unity that underlies all critical thought. Yes, to trope Cicero, eloquence can lead us to wisdom just as wisdom leads us to eloquence.
Related Link: John McCain's Speech about "Spurious Nationalism"
Today, even more than in 2017, we hear our nation’s leaders attack science and denigrate our legal system, appeal to misinformation about our nation's history to justify stunningly unwise proposals, and call one another names because reasoning with our neighbor becomes too much trouble. To be wise, we must learn to think for ourselves, and not just to think, but to think clearly, to learn the lessons that history teaches, and to learn humbly that any of us can be wrong about just about anything.
So, no, those of us who study the liberal arts (my own undergraduate degree was in philosophy) are unlikely to get rich or famous. If, however, the liberal arts die from neglect, if we lose wisdom and eloquence, what good will the rest of knowledge do for us?
Like all good ceremonial speakers, O'Rourke praised the people and the institution that were being dedicated. He also, however, elevated the audience to think about moral principles. Furthermore, he showed, in a subtle but powerful manner, then an important public policy – the pursuit and encouragement of liberal arts – provides the only solution to our national identity crisis.
P.S.: Interested readers might want to look at O'Rourke's article about the liberal arts college, which he published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement (click the link and scroll). Also, anyone interested in rhetoric and public speaking should keep an eye on Vital Speeches of the Day, a nonpartisan publication that publishes notable speeches, and which, before budget cuts, used to be a fixture in every respectable public and high school library. Also, if you click the "William D. Harpine's Publications" button above, you will find links to my own modest research contributions about ceremonial or epideictic speech.
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