Liberal Education: The Antidote for “Two Minutes Hate” In August, Baylor University philosopher Thomas grimacing, screaming lunatic. There are cultural Hibbs honored Zaytuna College by visiting conditions around us now which aim to turn all of the Berkeley campus and offering students and us into grimacing, screaming lunatics.” faculty a brilliant lecture about the contemporary He clarified that such reasoning cannot be taught importance of liberal education. He delivered in a vacuum. Rather, liberal the talk extempore, using “Liberal education, what Orwell’s education necessarily George Orwell’s famous suggesting about ownership of our leads the individual that essay “Politics and the language as individuals, is a way of faithfully pursues it into a English Language” as a avoiding, at a minimum, becoming a vast tradition. “If you’re framework. Dr. Hibbs into liberal education, one grimacing, screaming lunatic.” drew out, through analogy, of the first things you realize modern equivalents of the very phenomena that is that you are heir to at least one great tradition or had so troubled Orwell in his own day. maybe many that you can spend the rest of your He compared the hostile, hyper-partisan style of cable news to “Two Minutes Hate” (from Orwell’s novel 1984), a presentation designed to rile up the audience against political enemies. The “Hate” overpowers better judgment by speaking directly to the basest impulses. Dr. Hibbs explained how such abuse of rhetoric can be resisted:
life studying and never master,” he said. “The paradox is here. The people who spent the most time deeply immersed in a tradition, or more than one tradition, end up being remarkable individual thinkers. They end up making their particular stamp.” Without the context and framework of a rooted tradition of learning, no foundation exists—but when it does, true innovation, rather than a mere collection of accidents, can emerge.
“Liberal education, what Orwell’s suggesting about ownership of our language as individuals, is a way of avoiding, at a minimum, becoming a
Dr. Thomas Hibbs, philosopher and Dean Emeritus at Baylor University, in discussion with President Hamza Yusuf.
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