Prescribing The Life Of The Mind: An Essay on the Purpose of the University, the Aims of Liberal…

What are the purposes of the university? What should be the aims of liberal education? With phrases like "cultural relativism", "political correctness", "cultural literacy", and "canon wars" buzzing through the halls of academia and of government and appearing almost daily in heated public debates, these are important questions. With good will and common sense, Charles W. Anderson enters the fracas. He argues that teaching students to think, by developing their capacity for practical reason, can provide a unifying mission for the university and an integrating theme for the curriculum. A distinguished political philosopher with years of experience teaching in undergraduate liberal arts programs, Anderson shows here how the ideal of practical reason can reconcile academia's research aims with public expectations for universities: the preparation of citizens, the training of professionals, the communication of a cultural inheritance. It is not good enough, he contends, to simply say that the university should stick to the great books of the classic tradition, or to d