Robert Hutchins: Liberal Education & John Erskine: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent

Robert Hutchins, Liberal Education: excerpt from The Great Conversation, Tuesday 3.29.22 8:00-9:00pm (ET)

Robert M. Hutchins, once affirmed that, "The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day". His dear friend, and colleague Mortimer Adler stated, “What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.” The reading for this seminar is excerpted from this foundational important writing by Robert Hutchins.

John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent Thursday 3.31.22 8:00-9:00pm (ET)

John Erskine founded the General Honors Course and in the early 1920s started teaching a Great Books course at Columbia University. Erskine’s first list was his own list of fifty-two books. Erskine combined his list of classics with a discussion group approach. He had his students read one classic a week and then meet once a week for a two-hour discussion sitting round a large oval table. It is worth noting that in 1921, a young Mortimer Adler took the course as a student. That experience had a significant influence on the Great Books movement that Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins served as the foundational figures. In this seminar, we will “think Christianly” about this important writing and see how we can redeem its wisdom and truth.