*When we study the Great Books, we aren’t studying certain ideas so that we might be able to regurgitate them and map out a nice history of philosophy. We’re studying the Great Books so that we might imitate the authors of this great conversation. (Or, in some cases, so that we might avoid their flaws.) Reading the great books is not an apprenticeship in cool ideas, it is a apprenticeship of mimetic virtue, under history’s greatest men and women.
Of course there is much overlap, and mastery of certain concepts is not a negligible goal. But if mere mastery of concepts is our priority, rather than what I’ve heard Andrew Kern refer to as an education in virtue, then our education makes us no better than very intelligent computers.
*Thoughts inspired by Dr. Christopher Schlect’s lecture, “Assessing Teachers, Assessing Ourselves,” from the 2018 ACCS Conference: Repairing the Ruins.