University education seems increasingly to be ordered towards one goal: pursuing a lucrative career. I recall being in a philosophy course, where the professor, during one of the first few classes, posed the question: “Why study philosophy?” One might think the answer of a devotee of such a noble subject would respond with something like “To pursue wisdom” or “to live well” or perhaps even “to know God.” Instead of giving these answers, he displayed a bar graph with college majors plotted by average salary. He proudly showed us that philosophy majors were among the highest earning majors. The productivity and fruit of a college education is no longer measured in wisdom, but dollars.
Traditionally, college specifically and knowledge more generally was viewed as its own end, something fitting for man to attain. The stems from the idea that man is made in the imago Dei with an intellect with which to know God and creation. In his incredible The Idea of a University, St. John Henry Newman summarizes this perennial philosophy.
Now, when I say that Knowledge is, not merely a means to something beyond it, or the preliminary of certain arts into which it naturally resolves, but an end sufficient to rest in and to pursue for its own sake, surely I am uttering no paradox, for I am stating what is both intelligible in itself, and has ever been the common judgment of philosophers and the ordinary feeling of mankind.
One might think, the intellectual life is great for Harvard PhDs and people whose opinions grace the New York Times. As for the common man, he merely chooses a thinker to follow, or a side to follow, and roots for them as a sports team, if he follows at all. Yet all possess a rational soul, which we use to make judgements and determinations about the outside world and our place in it. Insofar as we are called to develop this faculty, we are all called to a sort of “intellectual life.” St. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, discusses why every person ought to study philosophy:
But without philosophy and right reason none can possibly have practical wisdom. Therefore, every human being ought to study philosophy, and deem it the greatest and most valuable act of all, putting all other things in the second and third place.
Philosophy is not the privileged task of a few elites, but a universal part of the human experience.
One might respond, this is fine and dandy for a graduate student ignoring his impending doom in school assignments, but not for a practical man of the world. After all, I want to learn things that are actually useful. This is absurd. In today’s day and age of all time periods, it is especially accessible. Frederick Douglass went to such great lengths to teach himself to read because he understood that it was knowledge that sets men free. The least you could do is download a 100-page pdf and take a gander at it every now and then.
Since the dawn of time, or at least since Ancient Greece, man has been paralyzed by the question of self-knowledge. The maxim “know thyself” was inscribed on the door of Plato’s academy because this was seen as one of the principal ends of philosophy. As with the vocation to philosophize, this desire is not rare, but shared among all humans. Truly, I am yet to meet someone completely disinterested in knowledge of himself. This desire can only be satiated by knowledge of the truth, by which our state in this world is revealed. I will leave you with the command that God gave St. Augustine at the time of his conversion: “Tolla lege.” (Take up and read)