Comment on the liberal arts article

Not a bad read Alexander. Quite thought provoking and insightful whilst also very concise and easy to follow. I also am a student of the Liberal Arts. I attend the (only) Catholic Liberal Arts college in Australia. I'm in my second year and thoroughly enjoying the course.

I can relate to you when you said "it became one of those rare courses that changed not only what I know but also how I think", this speaks to me very clearly as I have share the same feelings about the power of a Liberal Arts course to change people.

Furthermore you raise the point about the world value, and seemingly the importance attributed to it. Today I sat in on a lecture given by John Young, a very intelligent Australian man who specialises in Thomist Philosophy, and he made the point that philosophy is a lot more difficult to understand than history (or many other subjects for that matter). John Young said, "If I walked into a history class, with no knowledge about history, nor the study of history what so ever, and the teacher said to me "Caesar crossed the Rubric". I would have no idea what he meant. However, to understand what he meant the teacher would only have to explain to me that Caesar was a great leader and the Rubric was a river. In comparison, if I walked into a philosophy class, with no knowledge about philosophy, nor the study of philosophy, and the teacher said " The argument says that there are entities possessed in common but not as a whole, possessed in common as a whole but not simultaneously, and possessed in common, as a whole, and simultaneously, but not so as to form part of the substance of the things it's common to. And he says, the substance requirement is one that we must impose on species and genera. So none of the ways in which a single thing can be possessed in common the way in which species would of have to be common" I would have no idea what he meant, and it would take a very, very long time for me to understand what he said due to the vast complexity of philosophy. Thus, Young's point was that words have a power associated with them, a value, which ties in with what you were saying.

That's my two cents.

I stumbled here whilst searching on wikipedia information about Harvard (it was tiresome as the drool on my keyboard was not helping things at all).

I shall forward your article to my colleagues.

regards,

Rowan