The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What it Means to Be an Educated Human Being

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 500 pages
• Published by: Intercollegiate Studies Institute September 1, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1933859253
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1933859255
• Book Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.2 x 1.9 inches
• Weighs: 3.2 pounds

Product Description
Frustrated with the continuing educational crisis of our time, concerned parents, teachers, and students sense that true reform requires more than innovative classroom technology, standardized tests, or skills training. An older tradition—the Great Tradition—of education in the West is waiting to be heard. Since antiquity, the Great Tradition has defined education first and foremost as the hard work of rightly ordering the human soul, helping it to love what it ought to love, and helping it to know itself and its maker. In the classical and Christian tradition, the formation of the soul in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence took precedence over all else, including instrumental training aimed at the inculcation of “useful” knowledge.    Edited by historian Richard Gamble, this anthology reconstructs a centuries-long conversation about the goals, conditions, and ultimate value of true education. Spanning more than two millennia, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary writers, it includes substantial excerpts from more than sixty seminal writings on education. Represented here are the wisdom and insight of such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Basil, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, Thomas Arnold, Albert Jay Nock, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Eric Voegelin.   In an unbroken chain of giving and receiving, the Great Tradition embraced the accumulated wisdom of the past and understood education as the initiation of students into a body of truth. This unique collection is designed to help parents, students, and teachers reconnect with this noble legacy, to articulate a coherent defense of the liberal arts tradition, and to do battle with the modern utilitarians and vocationalists who dominate educational theory and practice.

About The Author
Richard M. Gamble is the Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Professor of History and Political Science and Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College. He formerly taught in the Honors Program at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is the author of The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (ISI Books, 2003).

Reader Reviews
One of the finest works of Christian Humanist scholarship to come out in the last decade, Dr. Gamble's new book, The Great Tradition, should open forgotten but vital realms of the past to the modern reader. Expertly chosen selections--forming the narrative and educational backbone of western civilization--pull the past, the present, and the future back into continuity. Dr. Gamble lovingly and painstakingly introduces us to a vast treasury of wisdom from Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, John of Salisbury, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Petrarch, Melanchthon, John Calvin, Edmund Burke, Cardinal Newman, Paul Elmer More, T.S. Eliot, and Christopher Dawson, to name just a few of the authors. Truly, Gamble ably demonstrates, one can find a direct line of thought and a continuing conversation transcending the generations about the most vital questions regarding the nature, limitations, and potential of our humanity. Indeed, Gamble, a true scholar and gentleman, understands liberal education in its proper sense. A proper education liberates the human person from the tyranny of the moment, allowing him to see the wisdom of the human race across time, the cardinal virtues, and the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Most importantly, an educated person sees behind all of these things the One who made them each not only possible but also desirable.