Why we all need liberal education

Every human being deserves to be autonomous.

Americans, in particular, should agree with this sentiment, because it follows from one of the three unalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence—the right to liberty. It would make no sense to have liberty if we could not direct our own actions. And that is the essence of autonomy—prescribing laws to ourselves to govern our own actions.

Yet human beings are not born free or autonomous. We come into the world full of desires and, at first, our desires control us. It is only much later that freedom becomes possible. When we begin to resist our desires, we acquire options for the first time. And freedom—the ability to choose among options without constraint—arises at the same moment. This first freedom is the seed of autonomy.

But freedom does not spontaneously grow into autonomy. A steady supply of learning must be added. Which choices work out well, which badly? Are there signs or patterns that identify good and bad choices? Is it possible than a bad choice in one area of life may be a good one in another area?

Only by confronting these and hundreds of similar questions do we develop enough control over our freedom and enough consistency of character to begin establishing laws for ourselves. Those who never experience this sort of learning use their freedom capriciously, haphazardly. They are free but not autonomous because they have no laws to direct their choices.

If we had to learn everything on our own, we probably wouldn’t live long enough to become autonomous. So, since long before the first historical records, human beings have speeded up the process through education, which shares out the labor of learning among a community of learners.

Now, education can be used to attain all sorts of aims other than autonomy. By joining educational communities you can learn how to master a skill, how to survive in a hostile environment, how to become wealthy. But learning to be autonomous is the highest possible aim, one which both supersedes and encompasses all other aims. It puts us in control of our lives and gives us the authority to decide which other aims are worth pursuing.

Education for autonomy is called “liberal education.” The “liberal” means “pertaining to freedom.” Autonomy is the highest degree of freedom that human beings can attain. And the “liberal arts” are not, as many seem to believe, useless and impractical subjects. They are the skills that pertain to the best use of freedom, the studies that move us forward on the path toward autonomy. That makes them more practical by far than other arts that aim at lower degrees of utility.

It is sometimes said that liberal education is not for everyone, that some people are better off with job training that will enable them to make a living. It is also said increasingly that liberal education is not for anyone, that education only makes sense as an investment in establishing a remunerative career.

Both of these beliefs are wrong. Liberal education, which helps us make the best use of our freedom, is for everyone in a way that job training can never be.

Getting a job, no matter how lucrative, does not make you autonomous. On the contrary, it makes you subservient to your employer in ways you may not have bargained for. But becoming autonomous makes any job you take part of your life-plan. You decide how much of your existence you are willing to give over to making a living. You decide when or whether to get a new job if your old one stops suiting you. You decide how making a living fits in with your conception of making a life worth living. We all need the sort of liberal education that can help us achieve this level of control over our own lives.

Because every human being deserves to be autonomous.