The Purpose

 

I subscribe to online updates—emails—from Chris Rufo, and he sent me one on 2/27/24 which I pasted onto this blog entry for I wish to comment at it in its entirety.

 

 Here is Rufo’s email: “The Purpose of Higher Education, A proposed mission statement for New College of Florida.

 

I have been reporting on American universities for the past year and believe that we can best understand the nature of the crisis on campuses today by asking a simple question: What is the purpose of higher education?

 

My response: The purpose of higher education is to help young adults gain depth and breadth of knowledge, and to learn fearlessly ask to smart professors any question that they can devise, and to gain knowledge from specialized fields of study, which they can then incorporate intellectually into their powerful, keen young brains, and then maverize an come up with new ideas and suggestions advancing knowledge in sundry ways.

 

Here is Rufo (R after this): “If you ask many university administrators for an answer, many would respond with a blank stare. Others would wax about diversity, inclusion, and social justice, or repeat consultant-style language about securing new facilities and federal grants.

 

At New College of Florida, where I am a trustee, we are chartering a different path. When Governor Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees, he tasked us with nothing less than revitalizing the classical liberal arts tradition and restoring the original mission of the college. Following that mission, I have helped draft a new mission statement for New College that is currently under review and is currently available for public comment. Here is the latest language:

 

At New College of Florida, our mission is to revive the great tradition of the classical liberal arts and to cultivate good citizens, artists, academics, entrepreneurs, and statesmen.”

 

My response: Just imagine if these cultivated professionals were individually maverized supercitizens as well as being good citizens, academics, etc.”

 

R: “The founders of New College envisioned a community of scholars, modeled on the University of Oxford, that would provide students with ‘a classical liberal arts education’ and pass down ‘the learning of our civilization in the classical tradition.’

In our era of stifling intellectual orthodoxy, this task is more urgent than ever.

 

At New College, our unwavering commitment is to rediscover the deepest purpose of education and to give students a foundation of logos, human reason, and techne, the applied arts.”

 

My response: One cannot maverize unless one has a powerful mental facility for using, applying, and originating new thought based in one’s logos, or human reason, and if one is not skilled and deeply competent in various applied arts.

 

R: “Our distinguished faculty and student body, while advancing a diversity of opinions, hold a shared commitment to liberal principles—free speech, open debate, colorblind equality—all oriented to the pursuit of the highest good.”

 

My response: I am more individualistic and for egoist morality than are conservatives like Rufo, neo-conservatives, our Founders and classical liberals, who are more group-oriented than I am, more inclined to see human salvation is established hierarchies and institutions than do I, but what Rufo advocates here: diversity of opinion, free speech, open debate, colorblind equality—all oriented to the pursuit of the highest good—these ideals are quite commendable, and are grounded in Judeo-Christian tradition of liberal education and classical Christian morality, altruism-egoism. I just turn that around: my moderate, rational egoism is egoism-altruism to guide students along in their life journey of personal maverization.

 

R: “Let us be unapologetic: We are a public university, open to all, in which exceptional students of any background can participate in the great tradition of the West.”

 

My response: Rufo comes close in stating that exceptional students of any background can participate in the great educational tradition of the West, higher learning. My slight modification of his  definition of exceptionality for each student is to declare that each student is exceptional potentially, and by merit, hard work and by the dint of maverized imagination and ratiocination,  each can get the grades to merit being admitted to campus and not flunking out, and her great-souled telos ambition for her intellectual brilliance, will cause her to impress and please her professors and society and God with the brilliance and productivity of her output.

 

R: “Our calling is to provide a liberal arts education befitting free men and women, and a free society. While others are caught in the fray of ideology, we look up to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

 

We create students who will move the earth.”

 

My response: Very nice.

 

R: “The intention of this new mission is to lay out the animating philosophy of the college and to move beyond the platitudes and bromides of our competitors. The phrases about reviving ‘classical liberal arts education’ and passing down ‘the learning of our civilization in the classical tradition’ are borrowed directly from the founds of New College.”

 

My response: I have learned from the Philosophy of Science articles that there is a current controversy as to whether the paradigms of science that rule scientific thought and pursuit for a generation or two, whether the history of science is cumulative or revolutionary as Thomas Kuhn declared.

 

I think learning, in the world of science or elsewhere (adding to the classical liberal arts education, the Great Books education and running our future based upon our past, the learning of our civilization in classical Western tradition), knowledge is expanding both quantitatively and qualitatively, that we are getting closer to the truth and an absolute epistemic and alethic discernment of certain knowledge. We may never quite arrive, but we know more today than yesterday, so I conclude that knowledge and wisdom accretion is cumulative and progressing, or than ahistorical, revolutionary, subjectively limited by and confined to the cultural and intellectual worldviews is of thinkers constructing such in this generation.

 

To help us grow further, farther, and faster, the character and methodology of each scholar, young or old, credentialed professor, or longshoreman philosopher like Eric Hoffer, should be modeled after my Mavellonialist scholar for the future, an individuating supercitizen.

 

One cannot hold down and back intellectually, morally or in their pursuit of wisdom, millions of young great-souls-in-the-making, attending college, or learning as autodidacts as did Hoffer.